<div><img width="250" vspace="20" hspace="20" height="327" align="right" src="/files/fckeditor_files/image/psbcover.jpg" alt="Please Step Back" />“<a href="http://www.mhpbooks.com/book.php?id=199">Please Step Back”</a>, <a href="http://bengreenman.com/">Ben Greenman</a>’s new novel about a funk rock star named Rock Foxx in the late-1950s, '60s and '70s is a nostalgic tale. Loosely based on the life of Sly Stone, it offers a rare glimpse inside the creative mind of a musical genius that is mercifully free of pat, neat summations. There is no redemption in this telling of a fantasy ride to fame, but plenty of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll.</div><div> </div> <div>Greenman's range as a writer is impressive. An editor at the <em>New Yorker</em>, he has written <a href="http://bengreenman.com/content/?page_id=17">several novels</a>, a bunch of <a href="http://bengreenman.com/content/?page_id=21">essays</a>, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2009/01/19/090119sh_shouts_greenman">humour columns</a> and reviews. He has also penned some "<a href="http://bengreenman.com/content/?page_id=25">current-events-themed faux musicals</a>", such as "<a href="http://bengreenman.com/content/?page_id=118">Fragments from Steroids</a>", about Mark McGuire, and is a regular contributor to <a href="http://moistworks.com/">Moistworks</a>, a music-driven blog. Everything, he says, is unified by his conflicted feelings about the world.</div> <div> </div><div>On a rainy Thursday night in New York City, Ben Greenman takes a moment to meet me at the Temple Bar downtown to discuss his book, Sly Stone's genius and the perils of keeping it real. With his running banter that swings like a song, and the lip-smacking curiosity of a sly cat, Greenman suggests a paler, thirsty version of Foxx, his protagonist/alter-ego. </div> <div> </div><div><strong>More Intelligent Life: You wrote <a href="http://bengreenman.com/content/?page_id=329">the lyrics to the book’s title track</a> and what turns out to be Rock Foxx’s, last song, "Please Step Back". Was that also you singing on the accompanying CD?</strong></div> <div> </div><div><strong>Ben Greenman: </strong>No. A guy named Jerry Williams was a soul producer and singer and created this other identity called Swamp Dogg. He was a funk star in the early '70s around the time of Sly Stone, which is who the main character of the book is loosely based on. About three years ago I reviewed a record Swamp Dogg made and we became friendly. When I was finishing this book I asked if he’d record a song and he agreed.</div> <div> </div><div><strong>MIL: You’ve written a handful of musicals, you are a contributor to an mp3 blog, "Please Step Back" is about a rock star…why aren’t you a professional lyricist?</strong></div> <div> </div><div><strong>BG:</strong> Is that a job?</div> <div> </div><div><strong>MIL: I think it’s a job.</strong></div> <div> </div><div><strong>BG:</strong> I started writing the musicals because I watched the news and heard it rhyming in my head and the only way I could get it out of my head was to write it. For the book when I would burn out working for two or three days on a section or a scene I’d relax myself by writing all the fake lyrics.</div> <div> </div><div><strong>MIL: How did writing a straight novel differ from your books of short stories or more “art book” style collaborations?</strong></div> <div> </div><div><strong>BG:</strong> The appeal of this book was to take the kind of artist and the kind of music I’ve always loved and try and do it straight. It’s not tricky, there’s not a lot of irony in it, there’s not a lot of jujitsu, it’s basically the first thing I tried to do that people would accept at face value.</div><div> </div> <div><strong>MIL: The most illuminating moments to me in the book were the small moments like when Foxx and Tony [his best friend and band mate] walk an older man up Russian Hill. They have a brief interaction and that’s all. It’s very simple and very human. </strong></div> <div> </div><div>BG: I thought Foxx and Tony had to encounter people who don’t know anything about them. You know, how do you present yourself to someone without any preconceived notions? And so the scene is just about goodwill, there’s no hidden agenda. In a world where everyone is trying to get a piece of Foxx or he’s trying to survive at every turn, he meets this older man who asks him a question and they walk him up a couple blocks and leave. And that happens all the time, it seems universal.</div> <div> </div><div><strong>MIL: Everyone likes looking at magazine photos of celebrities in great clothes, living unattainable lifestyles, but we also want to read about how these same people go to the drug store and buy $2 lip-gloss and soap. There’s a desire to dream, but also to not feel inadequate. </strong></div><div> </div> <div><strong>BG: </strong>Celebrity now has a thousand layers of nonsense. As soon as it became apparent that our musicians were so lucrative, the cost of them screwing up got higher. In the time that the novel takes place, 1965 to 1975, the artists made a lot of money but they also lost a lot of money. It got siphoned off to the labels and the managers because they weren’t professionals in that sense yet. The Stones were the first band to really take that to another level. Ian Hunter [former front man of Mott The Hoople] told me in an interview that the guys in a lot of these bands, when you look back at the ones who were perceived as assholes, they were the people who made it possible for the geniuses to have careers. Now there are people outside of the bands who do that.</div><div><strong><br type="_moz" /></strong></div><div><strong>MIL: The artists are more important as commodities, but more expendable because there are a thousand people lined up behind them to take their place. </strong></div><div><br /><strong>BG:</strong> I talk about this a lot with Sasha Frere-Jones [the <em>New Yorker</em>'s music critic] about how pop stars are minted and released–like Rihanna or Feist. How does that happen? How do you go from being a girl with a good voice who takes a good picture, living in Canada to suddenly you’re everywhere? There’s this really rapid evolution as it goes through MySpace to FaceBook to MP3 blogs to Twitter that’s changed everything so radically.</div><div> </div> <div><strong>MIL: <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html">Elizabeth Gilbert did a talk for TED</a> recently about how fame is killing our artists–that believing you’re the conduit that genius passes through is too much for the human psyche, and that’s why artists turn to drugs and <a href="http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/content/tom-shone/when-novelists-sobe... or just go crazy.</strong><br /> </div><div><strong>BG: </strong>I’ve said in interviews, I’ve said it on the radio, and I’ll say it to you, I think for a three or four year period you can take any artist of the century–Hemmingway, Joyce, Matisse, Picasso–I think Sly Stone’s their equal. If you look at “Stand” and “Fresh” and “There’s A Riot Going On”, I don’t see any body of work in the century that comes close. So that’s a lot of pressure. And if you’re a human, which he was, and a vulnerable human and a flawed human, which he was, the drugs, the sex…I would say, as an author having had some success, what you try to do is remember what it is that got you there.</div><div> </div> <div><strong>MIL: Another part of the book that really stands out is when Foxx calls Betty, and unable to say what he wants in words, plays songs to her over the phone. Music is an outlet that allows him to speak in a way he can’t otherwise, and to some degree, this is his downfall–that he can’t communicate like everyone else. </strong><br /> </div><div><strong>BG: </strong>When I was in college I would go to parties with my roommate Dave and we’d go in and within five seconds I’d have to leave because I couldn’t stand that the room was so…you’d see <em>that </em>guy trying to have sex with <em>that </em>girl and <em>that </em>girl thinking she didn’t look as good as <em>that </em>girl and I couldn’t take it. I had to go.</div><div><br /><strong>MIL: You had no armour.</strong></div> <div> </div><div><strong>BG:</strong> I had armour, which was to be a sarcastic jerk. Rock Foxx pretends he doesn’t give a shit, but he’s really sad about a lot of stuff and when he gets married and has people he has to care about, it becomes very difficult for him to negotiate. For me it isn’t so much about where you locate your genius, it’s how you balance that with real responsibilities.</div> <div> </div> <div><em>"<a href="http://www.mhpbooks.com/book.php?id=199">Please Step Back</a>", by Ben Greenman (Melville House), out now </em></div> <p> ~ <a href="http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/authors/deborah-stoll">DEBORAH STOLL</a></p>
Email this page
Print
del.icio.us
StumbleUpon
Facebook