The SPIN Interview
Mike Tyson: The SPIN Interview
It wasn’t always like this for Mike Tyson, this warm cuddly affection we have for him. He stepped into the public limelight as boxing’s brutal destroyer, who in 1986 became, at a precocious 20, the youngest heavyweight champion ever. He scared tough, experienced heavyweights out of their shorts, before he inevitably knocked them out of them. No-one could get close to beating Mike until he virtually threw the championship away four years later in Japan to Buster Douglas, having barely trained or taken the fight remotely seriously. That turned out to be not just an aberration, something course-corrected in a rematch — it was the beginning of a derailment and slide into physical decline and personal disgrace. In 1991, amid reports of excessive drug and alcohol use, he was accused of rap...
The Elder of Filth: Our John Waters Interview
I was early for my afternoon chatter with artist, filmmaker, cultural critic, and actor John Waters. Waiting outside his arts and crafts style house in leafy Baltimore, I tried to pinpoint when this cult creator entered my sphere. It’s funny when you can’t remember a time when you didn’t have the John Waters filth somewhere in your mind. I was a young lad when I first encountered Hairspray — growing up in South Africa in the ‘90s, it was that perfect meld of racial integration and camp, that a gay boy like me could just eat up. But his filth, absurdity, and sense of seeing things from a different perspective felt ever-present in my smutty way of being in the world. And ever-commenting, like Waters, I was also a “minority who cannot fit in with their own minority.” Some people, like John Wa...
The SPIN Interview: Steven Van Zandt
There are many Steve Van Zandts (although, ironically, not Steve Van Zandt, his publicist gently rebuked me, which comes as no small embarrassment since that’s what I’ve been calling him for the 35 years I’ve known him). There’s Little Steven, Stevie Van Zandt, Miami Steve, and of course Silvio Dante, Tony Soprano’s consigliore. There’s also Dr. Steven Van Zandt, awarded an honorary degree as a Doctor of Fine Arts by Rutgers University, who got a typically inspiring commencement speech in return. And UN honoree Van Zandt, recognized for his incredibly effective political activism, including his central role, with Peter Gabriel, in International Peace Day, and for making the western world viscerally aware of the horrors of apartheid with his anthemic “Sun City” song, and later film an...
Dave Grohl: Rock God, Workaholic, Movie Demon
“Let me just play this for you — I recorded it the other day,” says an enthusiastic Dave Grohl. It’s late January, and he’s sitting in his home studio, gearing up for the release of yet another project — one that’s different than anything he’s done before. Over Zoom, he fiddles around with knobs on his speakers. Seconds later, some demonic, bone-crunching riffs are blasting (or as loud as they can through my measly MacBook Air speaker), and the sounds of doom and gloom emanate. “I’m recording the lost album that they were making before the singer kills them,” Grohl says of the fictional Dream Widow, a band whose spirit looms large in his first feature film, Studio 666. He adds that he came up with the idea days before and now has a few weeks to finish the “album” before the movie hits...
RZA Explains It All to Us
“Man, I’ve got to say I had a very joyous celebration,” RZA tells me, the day after his July 5th birthday. “COVID kept everybody away, so this was a great reason for all of us to gather and we gathered and we partied until the neighbors complained.” When asked how he likes being newly 52, he remarks that he “kind of stopped counting” sometime around age 40. “When I turned 40 years old, I was in China. I was preparing for the movie Man With the Iron Fists…” he says, of the 2012 film he directed, starred in and co-wrote with Eli Roth. “And I just looked at myself and was like, ‘You know what? I’m just me. This is me. This is the me I’m going to be,’ and so I’ve been that same guy since then. The only thing I can say that feels different is just the appreciation, joy or blessing of being able...
Deafheaven Know Themselves Better Than Anyone Else on Infinite Granite
Deafheaven vocalist George Clarke was able to live a pandemic dream: He managed to get out of the States safely. His partner, a musician from New Zealand, was able to work and play shows over there; after completing Deafheaven’s latest record, Infinite Granite, Clarke was able to get a visa and spent January through late April of this year in the country. Though it took him a couple days to avoid sidestepping people as he often had to in Deafheaven’s home base of Los Angeles, he felt immensely grateful to see music (especially at a time when summer shows in the States seemed dicey) and be amongst people again. It did, however, feel like an alternate reality to some degree. “My experience was great, but it was interesting how, even though it was all over the news and people were very ...
Billy Plays Guitar
On a likely wet and dreary Manchester, England day, sometime around the mid-’70s, a young Billy Duffy was reading music rags and dreaming of becoming a rock star. “Those were our Bibles,” he says. “We would pour over them in the morning before school when they were delivered to the paper shop and get them from the corner store.” Now 60, he recalls with certainty: One came out on Wednesday, two on Thursday. “You would devour them for reviews of concerts, new albums, photographs of mystical musicians who lived in California. We would just devour all that and scope the world that existed out there and then we’d go and traipse off to school and get rained on.” When he was about 13 or 14, his parents finally relented and bought him a guitar. “I went and asked my parents and they agreed to buy m...
Jakob Dylan, Locked and Loaded
“It’s daunting because you’re starting over every time,” says The Wallflowers’ Jakob Dylan. “You check in and ask yourself, ‘Am I ready to do this?’ It’s not a matter of success or not. It’s another record that I have to write and turn myself inside out for — and then, hopefully, make the record, and then talk about it and tour it.” Seated in the lobby of a Santa Monica hotel, the singer-songwriter is drinking an iced black coffee on a sweltering hot June day. He’s here to discuss Exit Wounds, his band’s soon-to-be-released seventh record — and The Wallflowers’ first in nine years. Dylan’s distinctive bright blue eyes are accentuated by his denim button-down shirt. His sleeves are rolled up, as are the bottoms of his loose-fitting jeans, with the only color deviation being his yellow ...
The Sound of Joy
Some people bring joy wherever they go—Sergio Mendes creates it with his music. This month, PBS honors Sergio’s six-decade career with Sergio Mendes & Friends: A Celebration, a celeb-filled musical tribute featuring those who know and love him, including Herb Alpert, Common, Lani Hall (lead singer of Brasil ’66), Quincy Jones, John Legend, Gracinha Mendes (Sergio’s lead singer since 1971 and his wife of 46 years), Jerry Moss, Carlos Saldhana (Oscar-nominated filmmaker of Rio) and singer/songwriter/producer will.i.am. Check your local listings, you won’t want to miss this. The special was inspired by the upcoming feature documentary Sergio Mendes: In the Key of Joy directed by acclaimed filmmaker John Scheinfeld. “Sergio has the rare talent of making music that transcends generations,” ...
The Rain King
For the Counting Crows’ entire existence, they’ve been known for their blend of rock, country, pop and…singer Adam Duritz’s trademark dreads. Duritz’s hair has been as much of the Counting Crows aesthetic as the band’s hit-laden catalog. But then it was gone. Following a redeye flight from his New York City home to the UK in the summer of 2019, and with his girlfriend laying down in the other room, a jetlagged Duritz decided the best pick-me-up would be a quick shower. On his way in and armed with his clippers (for the uninformed, you still do have to cut dreads) in a haze and a bit dazed, Duritz looked in the mirror and did it: He shaved his head. As you can imagine, his girlfriend, who he only refers to as Z, was a wee bit surprised. “I woke her up and she was like, ‘how are you…AHHHHH,&...
Hey Julian
Since Julian Lennon astounded us with his 1984 solo debut Valotte, he’s repeatedly proven himself a beautiful and poetic storyteller. Now, at 58, with six studio albums and an essential lifetime honing his craft as a photographer, Aston Martin Residences in Miami recently unveiled The Art Gallery with an exclusive virtual exhibition, Vision: 27 images of Julian’s rarest photos, including unseen work, developed at the height of the pandemic, curated by the artist himself. He is the first featured artist in this virtual gallery program. From his exclusive shoot with U2, to portraits of the Princess of Monaco, Charlene Wittstock, to his work in fashion and travel, this state-of-the-art, immersive 3D experience is now showing through July 7 on the Aston Martin Residences website. “I...
Mr. Jones and Me
In 1965, a year after his first single, “Chills and Fever” failed to gain momentum, “Welshman Tom Jones” snapped, clapped and wound his hips in crisp black and white on the Ed Sullivan Show, singing of how it’s not unusual to find out he’s in love with us, a cacophony of histrionic nymphets screaming, hoping he was singing for them. Of course, that was only the beginning. When asked, “How important is sex in rock and roll?” he responds with: “Well, sex, drugs, and rock and roll—but the drug part, I never did. To me, it’s wine, women and song.” He takes a beat, revises. “With me, it’s song, wine, and women—that’s the way it went.” “It’s Not Unusual” was first offered to ‘60s powerhouse Sandie Shaw who passed it off to Tom. Released in early 1965 (January in the UK, March in the U.S.),...
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