The Odyssey of An Oddball:
The Crazy Truth of a Music Scribe

Part One: The Introduction

By: Steven Rosen : Nothing touched me like music. The first time I experienced the reverb and Stratocaster twang that painted the Ventures’ “Walk Don’t Run,” the sound turned me around and slammed me in the head leaving an indelible dent. I didn’t know what it was or how they did it, but I knew I wanted to be part of it, part of that glorious society strumming on guitars and capturing it on vinyl for generations to come.

So, as a high school novice, I created the first music column the school’s student newspaper had ever seen. Sending out letters to the various clubs and record companies, I received correspondence allowing me entrée to these palaces of passionate guitar picking [the Whiskey, Troubadour, Ice House, and Starwood, all Hollywood monuments giving birth to the impending sonic revolution that would quickly stampede over all of us] and, on occasion, was sent tickets to review concerts at the larger arenas around town. And when free records began appearing in the mail, I knew there was no holding back the floodwaters.

As an up and coming rock journalist, you had to make your bones. You began by writing pieces gratis for the local rags. Then, I had a live review printed in the Los Angeles Free Press, a once mighty publication gone to seed, but nonetheless, providing me with my first real by-line. $15 U.S. and I thought I had just won the Pulitzer. From there, I scratched my way slowly up the ladder of credibility, landing stories in Creem, Circus, Zoo World, and Rock, desperately trying to create a name for myself and some relatively steady work.

Then, in mid-1973, a publicity company befriended me, took me under their wing as it were, and landed me an interview with Jeff Beck. As a guitarist myself, and someone who’d listened to Truth every day in an attempt to emulate the Englishman’s astonishing solos, I felt like a god. If I never met another musician in my life, this was enough.

Rosen and Jeff Beck around 1975 on top of the Continental Hyatt House in Hollywood

I interviewed Jeff at the infamous Continental Hyatt [nee Riot] House in the very heart of the Sunset Strip, one of the only hotels in town that tolerated the craziness and manic antics of the rock bands staying there. This is the hotel that was home away from home for Zeppelin and the Who and virtually everyone else, Brit bands on the road seeking to let off steam. “Bonzo” riding motorcycles up and down the hallways, rooms completely trashed and set ablaze, and Keith Moon tossing television sets out of windows. Business as usual. The groups ponied up the tab at the end of their stay and the management looked the other way.

The day comes and equipped with a $29 cassette player and a thousand questions, I ride the elevator to his room, knock on the door, and do my best imitation of faux-self-confidence. Fainting was one breath away. Jeff opens the door and the moment is so surreal, it feels like I’m watching myself standing there shaking heads with the world’s most profoundly gifted guitarist.

Beck is talkative and expansive and I’m still floating three inches aboveground. As I’m turning the cassette over to side B, I figure a safety check couldn’t hurt. I rewind a few inches, press play and … silence. Devastating, career ending nothingness. Pressing play instead of record was not on the agenda. Jeff sees this and to my utter astonishment, says I can come back tomorrow. We continue our talk – making certain to punch the record button – and I’m so embarrassed I can barely speak. I return the next day, we cover all the missing questions, and in the end it was truly perfect. That would represent the first of sixteen cover stories I’d write for Guitar Player magazine over the course of six years. When I came back that second day, I brought an all-maple Strat I had, thinking he’d maybe dig checking it out. He loved this Fender and joked about not giving it back. Truth be told, I probably would have given it to him had he asked.

So, that was the beginning of a career that has now spanned about thirty years. There were so many remarkable encounters it’s almost impossible to recount them all. I went on to interview Robert Fripp from King Crimson, a notoriously difficult subject. Before we even begin, he takes my pages of questions, reads them to himself and spits out his responses as if I’m not even in the room. In 1977, I went on the road with Zeppelin for nine days. Page was another one of those immortals I never thought I’d meet. After vegetating for four days in a Chicago hotel, I’m finally summoned by one of the handlers and instructed, “Jimmy will see you now.” Entering his room, I see a huge hole in the wall, plaster on the carpet, a broken telephone lifelessly lying nearby. Jimmy is a very private individual so he had pulled the item from the wall, flung it against another wall, and thus was the crater created. An auspicious start to say the least.

Rosen and Jimmy Page aboard Led Zeppelin's private jet

Several days later, I almost came to blows with John Paul Jones because of that Beck cover I mentioned earlier. Seemed, I didn’t make positive comments about the band and when JPJ read the story [me, in my benign ignorance had brought copies of this issue for each of the band members], he wanted to pummel me.

Those incidents were just a drop in bucket. I flew to San Francisco for a Todd Rundgren interview and the response to my first question elicited this answer:

Me: “So, Todd, can you talk a bit about the guitars you’re currently using?”

Todd: “ Guitars? I’m not going to talk about guitars. Ask my roadie.”

Or the time I crossed the country to interview Pete Townshend. He was more than happy to talk guitar but at one point he said, “I played that guitar with the two horns. What was that called?

Timidly, I whispered, “an SG?”

“Yeah, that’s it, the SG.” Pete Townshend not knowing the type of instrument he played. It was priceless.

Frank Zappa, another intimidating personality. I queried him on the early days of the band and he shoots back with, “What magazine is this for? I’ve already talked about that before. And now you’re just gleaning what somebody else has gleaned and …” I didn’t know what he was talking about but I knew he wasn’t going to talk about those formative days.

Cream, one of my favorite bands ever, and I have the opportunity to conduct a phoner with Ginger Baker. This was around the time of the Baker/Gurvitz Army project and a few years after his work with Clapton and Bruce. But I wanted to know about that period and offering up the interrogative, “Could you talk a little bit about working with Cream?” resulted in him burning down the phone line with invectives and bile. Big mistake but I learned: if you want to talk to an artist about his early work, start with what he’s doing now and work backwards. That was maybe one of the shortest interviews I ever did, running fifteen minutes at most.

But balancing all this were the golden moments: interviewing ZZ Top upon the release of their first album and establishing a relationship with Billy Gibbons that has lasted to this day. Doing the first interview Bad Company ever granted and having Paul Rodgers say to me at one point, “That’s one of the best questions anyone has ever asked.” Later I’d take Paul to see Elvis Presley at the Inglewood Forum, driving him there in my beat-to-hell Triumph Herald. Accompanying Humble Pie on a Japanese tour back in 1973. Befriending Edward Van Halen and writing three cover stories for Guitar World magazine.

There are too many tales to talk about in this limited space. At the end of the day, I can only say that I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to meet my musical heroes. Everyone from Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson to Page and Beck and Van Halen and Supertramp and Procol Harum and hundreds of others. There have been great moments and torturous moments, times when I wanted to shrink into a tiny little ball and disappear and times when I knew I was establishing a rapport with a relative stranger that would endure for years to come.

I write about music because I have to write about music; I’ve read so much garbage over the years, I felt that I could truly provide a voice for all those record buyers and concert attendees who would never have the chance to meet these icons. I’d like to think I ask the questions they’d ask if given the opportunity. But, like any gig, there are deadlines and rejections, pats on the back and near punches in the nose. I wouldn’t trade my life for anything.

And in coming parts of this feature, look for some of these stories I’ve mentioned; interviews with the Beatles and the Who and Zeppelin and more. And when you read them, my greatest hope is that you come away from this assemblage of words and periods and semi-colons with a more profound insight into the artists you love. If I’ve provided you with that, then I’ve done my job. That’s what keeps me writing all these years later; I’m nothing without someone to read what I’ve written.

So, these future tales and odysseys are for you … I’ll do everything I can to not to let you down.

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