Colbert, Carrie Brownstein, And The Art Of The Rock-Star Interview
Carrie Brownstein appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday night, and it was in many ways a segment superior to the Hillary Clinton one that preceded it. Brownstein — founding member of the band Sleater-Kinney and co-creator and -star of Portlandia — was there to promote her book Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, but the interview ranged well beyond that.
Early on, Brownstein quoted the cultural critic Walter Benjamin’s phrase “All the decisive blows are struck left handed,” explaining that to her, it meant that “when you’re using the weaker, more unexpected part of yourself is when you’re at your best.” Asked to explain her book’s title, Brownstein noted that the title derives from a Sleater-Kinney song, “Modern Girl,” and that it’s about, in part, “how I found community and belonging through creativity in music” and how music is a vehicle to discuss “want hunger and desire and the lack thereof.”
Colbert brought up the label “rock star” — an assignation Brownstein resists, not least because, as she said, most of Colbert’s viewers were at that moment looking at her and saying, “Who’s that?,” so how much of a star could she be?
The history of rock-star interviews on television is usually one in which the musical celebrity is brought on to say a few words about his or her music, most often not particularly eloquently. As Colbert said this night, he’s found that musicians aren’t the greatest at what he calls “the talky-talk” — with Brownstein being an exception.
More often, talk shows like to play up the unruly, rebellious side of rock stars, because it makes for good television. Sometimes they get more than they bargained for. Little Richard’s histrionic appearance on The Dick Cavett Show in 1970, in which he shut down the fussy natterings of Love Story author Erich Segal and critic John Simon, served as a spark for Greil Marcus’s great book Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock & Roll Music.
The all-time classic in this area remains Tom Snyder’s remarkable, hilarious 1980 Tomorrow Show interview with John Lydon — then a member of Public Image Ltd., and better known as Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols. Without even intending to, Snyder got the ultimate “bad” rock-star interview, with Lydon sneering at Snyder’s every question, dismissing rock music (“It’s dead. It’s a disease, a plague. It’s vile. It’s been going on too long”), and ultimately leading Snyder to respond with withering sarcasm and dismissal. It’s well worth watching if you’ve never seen it:
Brownstein on Colbert was entirely different, of course. We’re well beyond the time when pop musicians are presumed to be inarticulate artists-in-the-rough, and Brownstein is particularly knowing. In a web-only extra on Colbert’s website, she even offered an amusing parody of what her “real” musical passion is, “traditional English folk ballads”:
The segment was complete with a mock-up of a supposed new album, O Dreary Baneful Mourning. The funniest thing is, it’s likely that many of Brownstein’s fans would probably buy this album. I think I would; would you?
