Sometimes when I interview my friends it's a little different. Like, Rick Springfield and I are longtime friends. It's an easy interview, but sometimes I'm asking them questions that they damn well know I know the answer to. It makes me think sometimes that they are thinking, "Why are you asking me this?" My prayer is that they understand what I'm trying to do. I may know the answer to this, but Suzie might not.
Right you get into those situations where you have to ask questions you know the answers to for your readers – well, for me it's readers, for you it's listeners.
Exactly. I have a lot of memorable interviews, but my style is just very laid back, and it lifts those artists up. I would never put them in an (awkward) situation. Like, for example, if I ever get to interview George Michael, I'm not going ask him about 'what the hell were you thinking in a Beverly Hills bathroom'. I would never ask Michael Jackson about allegations. Any situation where there's any controversy with these artists, like Lionel's had his challenges in the public eye or even Rick about eight or nine years ago there was some issues, I just stay out of that stuff. It's always about what they're doing now, giving the product a big push.
Even though we're talking to artists from the eighties and nineties and sometimes seventies, and yes we want to know the history behind "Jessie's Girl" or "Hello" from Lionel Ritchie, but we also want to talk about the new stuff they're doing because a lot of these artists don't get the press these days to talk about the new stuff.
Kenny Loggins is another great friend of ours and he has a children's album coming out for Disney in July. Thursday we're going down to interview him and catch it in HD. We really pride ourselves in promoting the new stuff from these artists.
So to answer your questions we interview a lot of artists, but a few stand out. Some may stand out because it's someone I really admire and it's my first time talking to them. I have to say, anymore that's pretty rare because I've done a lot of these acts for a long time.
The beautiful thing is they talk to each other and the word spreads because they travel in the same circles. We've got a good rapport with these artists. Sometimes they talk and it helps us land interviews.
I mean, Lionel Richie is an Oscar winner and a Grammy winner so when we try to arrange interviews with some of these artists who we don't have a longstanding relationship with and they see that... like with Bobby Brown, we don't know Bobby Brown but we're going to sit down with him partly because he's seen our interview with Lionel and to him that's a big deal. He figures we must be cool if we can talk to Lionel.
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