Thomas Wictor

 

Thomas Wictor was born in Caripito, Venezuela, on August 6, 1962. He has worked as a stevedore in Stavanger, Norway; a bartender in Portland, Oregon; a conversational English teacher, technical writer, e-news editor, and voice-over actor in Tokyo, Japan; and a delivery driver and document retrieval agent in San Francisco. He was also a freelance music journalist for ten years, five of which he spent covering Los Angeles as a Contributing Editor at Bass Player. In Cold Sweat: Interviews with Really Scary Musicians is his first book. He currently lives in southern California, where he pursues his dream of becoming a novelist. Visit Thomas online at http://www.thomaswictor.com

 

 

Pageonelit.com: Where did you grow up and was reading and writing a part of your life? Who were your earliest influences and why?

Thomas Wictor: I was born in Caripito, Venezuela, of American parents. My mother was an elementary-school teacher, so she taught us to read and write before we went to kindergarten. I can still remember learning the alphabet; I always left out the letter Q, maybe because it wasn't used very often. It was embarrassing to keep going from P to R because Mom would give me that look, like, "Wait a second, pal."

The first novel I ever read was The Day of the Jackal, by Frederick Forsythe. I was in the first grade when I read it, which means I was six years old. I found a hardback copy of it in the school library and was attracted to the cover, a drawing of some guy in a funny square hat with a crosshair on his face, like he was somebody's target. I didn't understand most of the book, but it made such an impression that I've reread it once or twice a year ever since. It's my favorite novel. I liked it so much that it made me want to write books too, books that drew people in and put all sorts of pictures into their heads using only words. It seemed like being an author was one of the most glamorous jobs in the world.

 

 

Pageonelit.com: Why did you write In Cold Sweat: Interviews with Really Scary Musicians? Tell us about this book --- How long did it take to put together and write?

Thomas Wictor: In Cold Sweat: Interviews with Really Scary Musicians is a collection of uncut, unabridged, uncensored interviews with four scary musicians: Gene Simmons of Kiss; Peter Hook of Joy Division, New Order, and Monaco; Jerry Casale of Devo; and Scott Thunes of Frank Zappa's live band. I put it together as a sort of swan song for my ten-year career as a freelance music journalist. I'd had it with writing about music--mostly because the acts were getting worse and worse--so I decided to try and publish my four best interviews in all their complete glory. It seemed like such a shame to discard some truly terrifying, funny, and poignant moments caught on (audio) tape.

The book itself only took a matter of a few months to write, as I already had transcripts of the interviews. By the way, all four interviews were originally conducted for Bass Player, where I was a Contributing Editor.

When I queried my future publisher Limelight Editions, I was told that they might be interested in my book if I expanded the introductions to each interview in order to provide the reader with more background info about the musician in question. Limelight then accepted the manuscript and had me sign a contract, following which the book was copyedited. This meant another rewrite--I discovered that I didn't know as much about ellipses, em-dashes, and three-em dashes as I thought.

So altogether, I spent almost a year writing and rewriting the book.

 

 

Pageonelit.com: You interviewed four musicians Gene Simmons of Kiss; Peter Hook of Joy Division and New Order; Jerry Casale of Devo; and Scott Thunes. Which of these interviews was your favorite to do and why? Which was the most difficult and why?

Thomas Wictor: Though it's hard to choose, I'll say that favorite interview was with Scott Thunes (pronounced "TOO-niss") because it was so otherworldly. One of Scott's conditions was that I come to his house a couple days before the interview to hang out with him. I did so; it was quite hairy. I've never met a smarter, more antagonistic, unpredictable person. He speaks at four times the speed of a normal human, he uses his own lexicon, and he likes to make extremely personal comments on very short notice. If he hates your hairstyle, for example, he'll tell you immediately, maybe even as he's shaking your hand. He's also one of the most gifted musicians alive. He's certainly one of the greatest electric bassists ever. He spoke to me for almost four hours, resulting in an interview that takes up almost half the book. His is one of the saddest stories in rock music, about what happens to a man with a gigantic talent but absolutely no desire to get along with most of his peers.

The most difficult interview was with Peter Hook. He was three hours late, and when he finally showed up, he could only spare me twenty minutes for what was to have been a feature-length article. The interview was conducted in the venue's kitchen as the sound check was in full swing and three cooks bashed pots and pans all around us. Hook was notorious for giving journalists a hard time anyway, and since he's a native of Manchester, England, his accent was often unintelligible to my American ears. The interview lasted twenty-six minutes and ended when the tour manager screamed at me to end it.

 

 

Pageonelit.com: Why do you call these musicians scary? Please explain.

Thomas Wictor: All four have reputations for not liking the music press, and two are dogged by stories of amazing physical altercations--bar brawls or band brawls or even journalist brawls. One is famous for his thousands of conquests, and another has been pegged as a kind of supercurmudgeon, hating everyone and everything. Face to face, all four are terrifying. At least to me. I don't do well with new people anyway, but these four almost left me incapable of speaking. I guess it's a question of persona. All four of these musicians have well-honed public persona, and that always scares me. When somebody is in persona, you don't know what they're really thinking. You don't know if you're doing a good job or not because they're not giving you feedback. They're not responding, really.

 

 

Pageonelit.com: What makes a good interview? How did you go about getting these interviews?

Thomas Wictor: As both an interviewer and a reader, I think it's a good interview if the person says something that they haven't said elsewhere. One of the reasons I quit interviewing people was because the whole process had become just another way of hyping a current project. The responses were canned, and there were restrictions on what you could and couldn't ask. I was bored with it all. And the younger musicians I was interviewing had nothing to say. There was no way I could make them interesting because they simply weren't.

At Bass Player, I would pitch an interview subject to the editor, and if he agreed, I was in business. I had to come up with most of my own ideas. Only occasionally was I assigned a person to interview.

 

 

Pageonelit.com: What has been your feedback from readers? What do they like about the book?

Thomas Wictor: People seem to like the fact that these are the complete interviews. In most interviews published in magazines, the writer and/or editor's voice can distort or even obliterate what the artist is saying. In this book, the reader can see exactly what the artist wanted to get across because every one of his words is there.

People also like the photos and the way the four interviews cover almost the whole spectrum of the professional musician's experience, from superstardom to abject failure, from heavy metal to pop to classical to avant garde. There's something in it for everybody.

 

 

Pageonelit.com: Are you working on a follow up? Or something totally different?

Thomas Wictor: I will probably never publish another work of nonfiction. It was too much work, and I had to rely far too much on totally unreliable people. Getting the photos to the publisher under the deadline was an absolute nightmare that I'm sure shortened my life by a decade. No, I've had it with interviews and music and the whole shebang. Never again.

I'm currently shopping the manuscript for a novel about rage and personal transformation, set in present-day southern California. It's a black comedy, full of anger, venom, and spite. We'll see how it does.

 

 

Pageonelit.com: What was the last book you read?

Thomas Wictor: Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self, by Leslie Fiedler.

 

 

Pageonelit.com: Do you have any hobbies? What are they? How do they enhance your writing.

Thomas Wictor: I play the bass guitar; I sometimes draw or paint; I write essays for my Web site; and I build models of figures, aircraft, and tanks of the First World War. Only writing essays for my Web site enhances my writing. I do everything else to escape my writing.