When rock and pop-culture critic Paul Nelson was commissioned by LA Weekly in early 1991 to profile Lucinda Williams and Leonard Cohen for separate profiles, both by-then-veteran artists were only just beginning to enjoy the most fruitful phases of their careers. They had achieved personally unprecedented acclaim while reaching their largest audience to date with their most recent studio albums, both of which were released in 1988: With respect to Williams, it was her self-titled LP (more commonly known as “the Rough Trade album”), galvanized by such Southern-spiced highlights as “Passionate Kisses” and “Changed the Locks”; in Cohen’s case, it was I’m Your Man, its synth-laden Sturm und Drang infusing songs like “First We Take Manhattan” and “Tower of Song” with postmodern spunk.
Buy I Like People That Can’t Sing…In I Like People That Can’t Sing…, editor and author Kevin Avery presents Nelson, who died in 2006, from the near real-time standpoint of a working journalist on assignment, chronicling how he plied his trade: probing his subjects, transcribing each taped conversation, painstakingly editing those transcripts, gleaning new insights and ideas from those transcripts that inspire new questions in further conversations. Avery employs an unobtrusive editorial style — adjoining a series of multi-hour sessions with Williams and Cohen into two marathon-length Q&A’s, for instance — which establishes narrative continuity.
No stranger to Nelson’s back pages, Avery served as custodian of his works beginning with the 2011 publication of two volumes, Everything is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson, a hybrid biography and compendium of the titular subject’s extensive journalism; and Conversations with Clint: Paul Nelson’s Lost Interviews with Clint Eastwood.
Despite instances when Nelson comes across as overly methodical or even tedious in his questioning, he nevertheless maintains a congenial rapport with both Williams and Cohen, yielding markedly unguarded exchanges and revelations. What’s more, his meticulousness is underscored by ardent curiosity about these artists’ varying approaches to craft, including on assorted prior works as well as — and even more so — on songs they’re presently composing for the albums that lay ahead: for Williams, Sweet Old World; for Cohen, The Future.
In later years, Nelson suffered from mental-health issues which wielded an increasingly debilitating toll not just on his writing, but his quality of life until his dying day, leaving the longform profiles, for which his 1991 interviews with Williams and Cohen were to have been their foundations, unwritten.
Yet, in bringing Nelson’s interviews to fruition as he has done in I Like People That Can’t Sing…, Avery has delivered an illuminating work of both journalistic value and casual reading enjoyment. In so doing, he not only captures a singular moment in the careers of two gifted, influential musicians but of a venerable scribe as well.
