Listening to my good friend and fellow voice-over/podcast professional Mary Anne Ivison on a podcast brought to mind many interviews I did over the years.
Mary Anne was on The Sound Off Podcast with Matt Cundill, talking about her career. And her career is sort of also my career. We are both ex-radio (as is our other support-system sister, Rachel Gilbert) and now we are voice actors and podcast hosts. Mary Anne asked Matt whether he had ever decided to not air an interview because it wasn’t good. Fascinating question. Short answer from Matt: no.
When Bad Live Radio Happens to Good People
I’m sure we all also have stories about guests who were so terrible, so uncooperative or just boring, that we wished they hadn’t joined us live. For me, that number is small. But the recently departed Mike Bullard was one of the most notoriously bad radio guests in Canada. I previously wrote about his appearance with me on CHML in Hamilton.
“Bullard delivered one-word answers during a live interview in an attempt to be funny (not the first of his attempts to be funny that went wrong, I might add!) and wouldn’t abandon the ruse even when I practically begged him during a commercial break. “
He had also come into the studio late for the live interview, on purpose. He and one of his writer friends crashed into the room as I killed time. They behaved as if my talk show didn’t matter at all, to anyone, least of all them. The writer actually leaned into the mic and snored, right from the start of the interview.
The Recorded One That Never Aired
But the interview I recorded that never aired was one of the ones I went to the most trouble to get. (Forgive me if I’ve told this story but I have a lot of new subscribers!)
Vince Neil had been fired (or did he walk away?) from Motley Crue in the early 1990s. I was on air at what was then known as MIX 999 in Toronto. The opportunity to interview Tommy Lee and Neil’s replacement, John Corabi, came up, if I was willing to go to their hotel room.
I can’t remember which hotel it was but I do remember that I was outfitted with a brand new DAT (Digital Audio Tape) recorder. A stupid bit of technology that some thought was the future of audio. Standard Radio had just invested heavily in these machines. I literally learned how to use a portable one before I got on the subway to head to the hotel.
Tommy Lee couldn’t have been nicer. He made me a cup of tea. Corabi was taking his lead from Tommy, who did most of the talking. Partway through the interview, I looked down at the DAT to see how much time had gone by. Not even one second. I had forgotten to take the machine off pause.
To Be or Not To Be
Do I confess? Or leave having failed in my mission? I confessed and to my great relief, Tommy Lee laughed his head off and told his publicist he’d need more time with me. We started over.
I was mortified, of course. But they were so cool, despite teasing me relentlessly and writing Pause Yerself on the cover of my copy of the new, self-titled album.
But the album and the single, Hooligan’s Holiday, stiffed. Few fans bought tickets to live shows with Corabi as frontman. They wanted Vince Neil back and that’s what they soon got. As a result, my interview with Lee and Corabi never aired. Not even a snippet, as far as I can recall. A reporter covering a murder case probably recorded over it. It simply wasn’t worth the airtime despite the effort it took to get it.
Oh, and DAT was abandoned forever – as it should have been. It was clumsy to use, and not just because I didn’t see the blinking pause light! It just wasn’t user friendly for the amount of audio a radio station, especially the newsroom, needed to allocate.
Sometimes we have experiences that never make it to air. More often, though, we have done live interviews that we wished we’d recorded ahead of time so we could have erased them ourselves.
Now, About Those Podcasts
Mary-Anne Ivison’s Let’s Take This Outside.
Rachel’s Due to Underwhelming Demand – with Dave, Rachel, and Forman.
Matt Cundill’s The Sound Off Podcast.
Gracefully and Frankly – Erin Davis and me.
The Trade Up Podcast – John Finan and me.
Great stories! Especially the one about leaving the DAT machine on pause. Really wasn’t fond of those machines. Good for you for owning up to it!
Thanks, Joe – the company spent a ton of money converting everything to DAT and then abandoning it in short order.
I remember the minute there that DAT was the future of recording! “A tape with the sound quality of a CD” is how they sold it, if I remember correctly.
I love that you admit your mistakes. I think one of my missions as a journalism instructor is to normalize the making of mistakes.
Worst interview for me is a tie between Christopher Plummer and Michelle Trachtenberg. The latter assignment went off the rails before I even got in the room with her. She is now residing in the “Whatever Happened To” bin.
Best interview? I think you know. I’ve interviewed him multiple times!
I know! But for everyone else, Dan is referring to Don Henley.