Rock Jounalist Greg Prato Goes Overtime (INTERVIEW)

It was a warm summer evening in 1993: That’s how author Greg Prato remembers his brief shooting star moment meeting Shannon Hoon. He was in New Haven hoping to see Blind Melon play a concert at a venue he was too young to get into legally. So he was hanging around the venue with some buddies when Hoon walks up, learns of their predicament and within a few songs of their set, Prato is inside watching his favorite band. It is one of those classic moments that happen maybe once in a lifetime: your favorite band is occupying the same time zone as you and in the blink of an eye, they’re in front of you, talking to you; and then the next blink they are gone.

Prato is now used to being around rock stars. He started off as a journalist and although he still does interviews for articles often, he has made a sweet transition into writing books about his favorite musicians, the first being an oral history of Hoon and Blind Melon, which he self-published in 2008. He went on to write books about KISS drummer Eric Carr, the grunge era in Seattle, Faith No More, the Meat Puppets, and a few sports books. Eleven books all total. His twelfth book is something he did for fun, to remind music fans of albums they may have forgotten about. Titled Overlooked/Underappreciated: 354 Recordings That Demand Your Attention, it came out earlier this summer. This month, Prato has a new book out on the band Primus which he wrote with the band’s cooperation called Over The Electric Grapevine. How does Prato have the time to research and write two books while still researching and writing regularly for magazines?

Glide had the opportunity to chat with Prato not long ago about his career, his books and his love of music.

You’re usually the one asking the questions. Have you gotten used to people asking you the big questions?

Yeah, I’ve actually done quite a few interviews in the past, either for magazines or websites, or radio interviews. I’ve been interviewed by Eddie Trunk. I did one or two interviews with him in the past on his radio show. He’s always been a very big supporter of my books.

A few months ago you released Overlooked/Underappreciated, which is basically a long list of albums you think should be given new listens. Why do this as a book and not as an article in a magazine?

Well, the thing I enjoy doing the most now are really books cause it seems like I reach a lot more people with books and I make more money with books as well (laughs). So that’s pretty much what it is. But as I explained in the forward of the book, this started out as just me making a list of albums that I always tend to overlook but that I’ve always really enjoyed, because nowadays the majority of people are listening to music on little digital devices and it’s very easy to sometimes forget albums or overlook albums. So I just started making a list and the list kept growing and then I realized, oh, this would probably make a good book.

It seems also a lot of these books have the most underrated heavy metal albums of all time or the most underrated punk rock albums of all time, but never is it really just a bunch of styles together. I listen to a wide variety of music and most of the people I know also do that too. I really don’t know too many people that listen to just one style of music and that’s it. So that’s pretty much how it started off.

How long was your original list?

I really didn’t have a set number and it just kept growing and growing and growing. When I knew it was a book, I started to really research through my iPod and all my digital files that I have saved, cause about one or two years ago, I completely phased out all my CDs. At one point I had about 2000 or 2500 CDs and I wound up just selling them all on ebay and overstock.com because I never listen to CDs anymore. So I would think I had one number and it kept being more and more. Also at one point I realized, pretty early on in the process when I knew I was going to do this as a book, that I wasn’t going to list this in numerical order. I decided to put them all in alphabetical order. It’s easier to locate albums and also discover albums just by the artists’ names.

Did you go and revisit every song on every album from your original list before committing it to the final list?

No cause a lot of these albums I’m very, very familiar with. For instance, the Blind Melon album Soup I’ve probably listened to thousands of times over the years. That’s one of my favorite albums of all time. Funny enough, if I could point to one album that may have made me do this book, there is a band that no one knows about, a band called the Beautiful and they were from the early nineties. They had an album out called Storybook, which I talk about in my book, and I remember I discovered them in the early nineties through reading a feature on them in Rip Magazine and also seeing their video on Headbangers Ball. I remember I bought a used CD of that back then cause I couldn’t even find the actual CD. And I became a huge, huge fan of it and then for some reason I didn’t listen to it for probably twenty years. About a year ago when I was selling off all these CDs I came across that and wondered if this would still hold up because I haven’t heard it in so long. And when I put it on I was absolutely blown away. That has to be one of my most favorite underrated albums of all time. They sound a little bit like a cross between Jane’s Addiction and the Smashing Pumpkins but they aren’t a rip off of either band. They were very good songwriters and it’s pretty befuddling why they never became big. I guess cause they didn’t get the push from their record label or they didn’t get a good tour supporting a big band. But that’s a band I think truly are underrated in my view.

And Frank Ferrer of Guns N Roses was in that band.

Yes, exactly. Also something else with this book is I list the top three songs that I recommend from each album. With things now like YouTube you can easily just go and check out these songs. It’s not like you have to go out and actually buy the CDs to check out these albums.

YouTube is like this generation’s MTV.

Yes (laughs). It’s funny how when I was younger MTV was how I discovered the majority of my bands but now it’s really just word of mouth and YouTube, I would say.

What was your main criteria for an album to be in this book?

It was kind of tough cause like for instance I debated the Led Zeppelin album Presence. That’s an album that isn’t the most well-known Led Zeppelin album and I was tempted to include that but then I’m thinking, especially here in Long Island, Led Zeppelin is played constantly on classic rock radio and I would say almost every day, every two days, you hear songs like “Nobody’s Fault But Mine,” which was a song off Presence. So there really isn’t an underrated Led Zeppelin album, I guess. Maybe the album Coda but it’s not really one of my favorite Led Zeppelin albums so I just didn’t include Led Zeppelin at all.

But by the same token I included the Rolling Stones album Goat’s Head Soup because even though that was a number one album, that’s an album that not too many people ever mention and I think it’s a great underrated Rolling Stones album. In fact, that may be, in my estimation, the last true great Rolling Stones album. So it was kind of like a grey area. I guess I just used my own judgment as far as maybe albums that truly do get overlooked.

You have Def Leppard’s High N Dry on there and I didn’t think that was so overlooked.

Yeah, I mean, there’s definitely going to be some albums in there that could be debated. There’s the album by Queens Of The Stone Age, Lullabies To Paralyze, and that was a top ten album but that album never really gets mentioned. I remember when I first heard that album I wasn’t that impressed with it but as time goes on that’s become probably one of my most listened to album of theirs. So there are certain albums that it just takes a while to kind of sink in.

I’m glad that you listed the first Badlands album.

I can’t say that I like the whole album. I even mention that in the book that sometimes it gets a little too much like Zeppelin; like their first song, I think it’s called “High Wire” on the album. But then there’re some other great songs and I’ve always been a huge fan of Jake E. Lee’s playing. I think he’s the most underrated Ozzy Osbourne guitarist and I’ve always hoped in the back of my mind that he would maybe one day get back together with Ozzy. I even interviewed Jake last year for the Bravewords site and I asked him that and I learned that in the late nineties or early 2000s there was like a half-hearted attempt to maybe reunite but it wound up not panning out.

But as far as his playing, I think his playing is great. I also thought it was a cool idea to have several different vocalists [on his Red Dragon Cartel album]; like he had Robin Zander and I’m a huge Cheap Trick fan. He even had Paul Di’Anno and I’m a huge fan. Probably my two favorite Iron Maiden albums are their first two albums. So I thought it was a solid album. He obviously can’t get back together with Badlands now that Ray Gillen passed away and as far as him and Ozzy every reuniting, I don’t know if that’s ever going to happen.

When you were selecting your list, did you have to go into critic mode?

I wouldn’t say too much because a lot of these albums I picked because I was a fan of them. The way that I looked at it was I was a friend who is talking to you and I’m suggesting all these albums. It’s not like I’m out to nit-pick and say, “This album is bad because blah-blah-blah.” I’m saying that this album you should really check out and listing the reasons why this album is so worthwhile and why it should be listened to over Nickelback and all the other do-do they play on radio nowadays.

I enjoyed your stories in the segments where you tell us how you discovered each album and why it was special to you.

Thank you. I was thinking, how could I make this book a little bit different than your average list type book. And also I’m thinking it will be interesting for me, say in twenty or thirty years, when my memory starts to go, at least I’ll have it documented as far as how I discovered most of these bands.

How long did it take you from start to finish?

Not very long. Probably just a few months. This book is completely self-published. I had a friend (Kurt Christensen) who designed the cover. He’s a very good photographer and also a designer and he’s actually designed several of my previous books. I think I started in maybe February or March of this year so less than a year from start to finish as far as writing it, editing it, formatting it, designing it and it actually being released.

Do you think that self-publishing is the best route to go for journalists who want to take a bigger step or want to focus on one artist?

I used to think that it was but now as I’ve done books, I would say it depends. For instance, this type of book is, I think, perfect for a self-publisher. But then I collaborated on a book with Primus on their entire history called Over The Electric Grapevine and that’s coming out through the publisher Akashic. If you go through an official publisher like they did, they were able to have a color section with the photos. I know when you go the self-publishing route, as soon as you have a color section, then suddenly the price goes dramatically up and you make not that much money anymore on the book cause it just costs so much extra to insert a color photo spread. So it really just depends on the project cause with this book, Overlooked/Underappreciated, this didn’t have any photos inside so this is a perfect example of a book that is good for self-publishing. If you go through a traditional publisher, they can get the book in the store and they also take care of review copies and setting up radio interviews, appearances and stuff. So I guess it’s just really on a project-to-project basis.

Your first book was A Devil On One Shoulder And An Angel On The Other about Shannon Hoon. What made you feel like you were ready to take that big step and focus on Blind Melon?

I started writing in 1997 and that book came out in, I believe, 2007, so I was writing for about ten years by then so I was pretty confident in that. Also in the early 2000’s, I started writing for the British magazine Classic Rock and a lot of those articles are pretty long and lengthy feature articles. I saw how I really enjoyed doing those articles and how a lot of those articles were so thorough that it was really like a starting block for a book. I actually did a Blind Melon feature for them. I don’t know the exact year but it would have been about 2004/2005 if I had to take a guess. Once I did that article, I realized with that I really had a good head start if I ever wanted to do a book and that’s when I reached back in contact with the Blind Melon guys and I said that I’d really like to use this as a seed to let it grow into a book and they were totally for it cause they all enjoyed the article. And that’s how I pretty much came up with the idea to do that book. To me, Shannon Hoon is one of the best rock singers ever and definitely one of the best performers that I’ve ever had the opportunity to see live. Like I said before, their album Soup is the most underrated album and without a doubt in my Top 5 albums of all time.

What was the most interesting thing you learned about Shannon while doing your research?

It’s been so long since I did the book and it’s been even longer since I actually sat down and read it (laughs). But Kim Thayil from the band Soundgarden had a very interesting comparison to Shannon. He said that when Soundgarden first took Blind Melon on tour, which may have been in 1991/1992, they saw a comparison between Shannon and the late singer of Mother Love Bone, Andy Wood. I didn’t really see that until he said that. There was a great Andy Wood documentary that came out a few years ago and when I saw that I absolutely could see there really was a comparison between Shannon and Andy. They were really larger than life figures on stage and they even looked a little bit the same. They maybe weren’t stylistically the same cause Andy Wood was more into the Elton John type piano thing but I think they were both great and they are absolutely two artists that I would have loved to have seen what they would have gone on to do.

Do you think the way you’ve done your books in the oral history format that maybe you’ve been an inspiration for other authors to do their books like that, as that seems to be a popular format these days?

The first one I ever saw was Please Kill Me, which was by Legs McNeil and Gilliam McCain, and that’s probably my favorite rock book of all time for me. That focused on the early punk scene. I really can’t take sole responsibility cause I know that there were other books before my first book that used that format. There was the Motley Crue book, The Dirt, which was set up that way. Then there was also even a KISS book that came out maybe ten years ago. It’s a format that I really enjoy the most because you’re getting the story straight from the horse’s mouth. For instance, the book about grunge. I was a fan of all those grunge bands but I didn’t grow up in Seattle. When Soundgarden first started out, what the audience’s reaction was or what the band was thinking, I would much rather hear people telling me what it was about that were there. So the way I look at oral history is it’s a documentary but in book form. That’s probably my most favorite way to read things. Even back before I was a writer, the things I enjoyed the most was reading magazines like Rolling Stone and Kerrang where you’re just reading straight ahead Q&A’s with artists rather than writers talking about, “I met Tom Cruise at a coffee shop,” and it’s like stupid stuff that you can just cut out and get right to the heart of the matter. If you can speak to people who actually were there, it’s always best to have them tell the story.

Did you get any opposition when you started Grunge Is Dead since you weren’t from Seattle?

I could see people saying that but then you could say no one should write a book about the Civil War or JFK cause they weren’t there. At some point there’s a line that you could say it should be written by someone that was there but then does that person know the history? Is that person an actual fan? Does he or she have an axe to grind with someone? So with my books, especially the grunge one, I was very open-minded. I really just wanted the people to tell their own story. One of the main reasons why I wanted to do that book is that a lot of the books written about grunge at that point either weren’t very well written or the ones I tried to read just weren’t easy to follow, or they were outdated. Some of them were written before Layne Staley died or even before Soundgarden broke up. That’s pretty much what made me want to write the Grunge Is Dead book. And really the reason why I’ve done every single book so far is just that it was on a subject that I’ve always wanted to see a book about and there hasn’t been a book about yet.

Would you say the hardest part was putting it together?

You know, I would say that is probably the easiest part cause if you’re doing oral history, it’s almost like you’re fitting a giant jigsaw puzzle together. Probably the hardest part, I would say, is getting the interviews. Sometimes people will be on tour and sometimes you have to go through like five people to get to this person. So I would say the most time-consuming thing is actually setting up all the interviews and having all the interviews done.

Who was the first interview you did when you decided you wanted to be a music journalist?

As far as the very first interview I’ve ever done, I really can’t remember who. I know some of my earliest interviews were Ric Ocasek of the Cars, and I’m a huge Cars fan so that was great to speak with him. I know I interviewed Moby early on and to this day I’m not really familiar with a lot of Moby’s music. People sometimes ask me, how do I get started writing, and I know for me in the late nineties, I got started just writing for free for a local paper. Then once you have a big enough listing of things you can show people then you can start getting some paying gigs. That’s probably not even the way it’s done anymore because it seems there’s not a lot of newspaper-type music magazines around anymore. It seems like it’s mostly sites and things like that. But I think Ric Ocasek and Moby are the two early ones. Also, I know I interviewed Mike Patton, who I’m also a very big fan of, when Mr Bungle’s California came out, about 1999.

Did you start off doing reviews first or did you jump right into the interviewer chair?

You know, it’s funny that you say that. I totally forgot that I started off by doing album reviews. I used to write for All Music Guide, but I don’t write for them anymore. I did hundreds or thousands of album reviews for them over about a ten or fifteen year period. I did a handful of reviews for the Rolling Stone site. I just don’t do them anymore. Now, I just do primarily interviews, book reviews and press releases for management companies as well.

To make a living as a music journalist, you have to have a paying gig and you almost have to have a day job. But then you get to the point where the day job is interfering with the writing job. Was that a factor in you doing more books?

Well, I’ve been lucky that I have been doing this full-time since late 1997 and I haven’t had to get a job outside of this. I’ve been able to do this 100%. So either I’ve been lucky or I guess I have some talent at doing it (laughs) but books, I think, are more lucrative, as long as it’s a subject that people want to read about. For instance, the book about Shannon Hoon. I tested the waters a little bit and all the publishers said the same thing: no one would buy this book, this isn’t a big enough subject; but yet that book has gone on to be one of my top sellers and it’s still selling steadily.

How and when did the Primus book come about?

I interviewed Les Claypool for the Rolling Stone site a few years ago, when the album Green Naugahyde came out. The interview went very well, and at its conclusion, I mentioned to Les that I would be very interested in doing a book about Primus’ history. He was receptive to the idea and put me in touch with management and we worked out a deal. Soon after, it was decided that the book would go beyond just the career of Primus and include all of Les’ other projects as well. I’m quite happy with how it came out and it was great interviewing all of Primus’ band members, past and present, as well as Tom Morello, Stewart Copeland, Geddy Lee, Kirk Hammett, Chuck D, Matt Stone, etc.

What was the most interesting thing you found out about Les Claypool?

That Les and the rest of Primus got in hot water with the David Letterman folks when they appeared on the show to perform “Wynona” in penguin outfits in 1995. Because the show wasn’t aware the band was going to wear them, they didn’t wear them during rehearsal, they almost didn’t let the band perform! Not exactly what you’d expect from a show that seems to enjoy unpredictable/zany moments, and doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Which artist surprised you the most by being not what you expected them to be like?

(laughs) I know that Steely Dan has this persona of being kind of cranky and being kind of hard, they don’t really like journalists, but I interviewed Walter Becker a few years ago and he couldn’t have been a more nicer gentleman. I guess because he also realized that I was a fan of Steely Dan and from some of the questions I was asking it wasn’t like I was a hoity-toity journalist asking him stupid questions to get him all riled up. He was very nice.

Probably one of the best interviews I ever did was for Grunge Is Dead and I interviewed Eddie Vedder on the phone for about close to two hours. It was like the longest interview ever but it was definitely one of the best interviews. He was very, very friendly and very, very talkative and I feel absolutely blessed and lucky that he chose me to speak about those early years of Pearl Jam. I know Rolling Stone around that time did a cover story on Pearl Jam and he just flat out refused to discuss those early formative years. I think it was because at that point in the interview process, he was one of the last interviews I did for the book, and I think a lot of people were vouching for me to him, saying, “Greg is a good guy. He knows what he’s talking about. He’s also a very big fan of this music. He’s not writing some kind of sensationalistic piece of garbage book.”

What was the first band that really hooked you?

I would say that the first band that I was a really big fan of was KISS and that was when I was in Kindergarten (laughs). I was a very big KISS fan and I still enjoy seventies-era KISS quite a bit. The first popular music 45 that I ever owned was “Silly Love Songs” by Paul McCartney & Wings. I know that my mom bought that for me. But once I got into KISS, that kind of led me to a lot of other rock type bands. I started getting into Queen and Joan Jett, then AC/DC. The first concert I ever saw, I was seven years old and my dad was kind enough to take me to see KISS in 1979 with Judas Priest opening up. That was a great show. Then the second show I saw was AC/DC on the Flip Of The Switch tour.

As far as favorite bands? I would say Queen is my top, top band of all time, just for the simple reason that they could do any kind of musical style and pull it off absolutely brilliantly. I also really dug the fact that all four of the members could write so great. All four of the original Queen members wrote Top 10 hits. I think Faith No More is absolutely outstanding. Albums like Angel Dust and King For A Day, I still listen to. Blind Melon’s Soup I think is fantastic. Shannon Hoon is absolutely one of the greatest rock singers of all time, and lyricist and performer, and I’m lucky to have seen them with Shannon I think five times in concert. And Primus I also think is a fantastic band. To me, Les Claypool is almost like the Jimi Hendrix of bass. I don’t think there’s ever been a bassist whose personality comes out as well through his bass playing.

Bucket list – who would be your coup de graces to interview?

Maybe James Hetfield from Metallica. I’ve never interviewed him. I always thought he was a very talented songwriter and singer and guitarist so he would be cool. Brian May from Queen cause he’s one of my favorite guitarists of all time. Joan Jett also cause I’ve been such a long time fan. Maybe Angus Young or Brian Johnson because I’ve also been a huge fan of AC/DC. It would be cool to interview Roger Taylor from Queen cause he was also a great drummer and great songwriter.

Where can we find your work?

Probably the best thing to do is go to my Twitter page, which is @gregpratowriter. I always list my latest interviews and my latest books there. Also, you can go to Amazon.com, which is probably the best way to either buy my books or you can check out samples prior to buying them.