Frank Zappa on Rock Journalism

                    Frank Zappa once said in an interview, "Rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read."

I don't subscribe to Rolling Stone magazine or anything along similar lines, but it would seem to me that if I did I would fall into Zappa's category of those 'who can't read'. Surely if I decided to read a magazine about rock music I would need atleast one skill. I would need to be literate. Now like academics and research professionals who break down hypotheses to prove them right or wrong, I'm going to do the same with Zappa's seemingly simple statement.

Starting at the end is always a good place to start, working backwards. Now we've established that I can read, I am literate. If I then read rock journalism it doesn't suddenley become another type of journalism just because I can read it.

Zappa then suggests that rock journalism is someone interviewing people who can't talk. But, how can you interview someone who can't talk? Interviewing is typically a conversation between two or more people, one person generally asks questions and the other answers. How can someone expect to conduct an interview with another person if that person can't talk? Have you ever seen an episode of Larry King where he interviews a donkey? No, because animals can't talk. So it stands to reason that interviewing can only be done with a person who can talk.

Finally I've worked my way back to the first part of Zappa's statement; 'Rock journalism is people who can't write'. Well this statement just seems bizarre, how can you put together an article or piece of writing if you can't write. All journalists can put together a sentence, if they couldn't they wouldn't be called journalists.

Zappa could read my argument against his statement's validity and argue that it is not journalism of the highest standard, or that these musician's are not always the most well spoken characters, or even that the stereotype 'Rolling Stone' reader is not usually the kind of person who would also read the New York Times. And at this point my rebuttal would have to be that his statement says nothing of standards or levels, it only uses the word 'can't' and for that reason alone I have proven your statement invalid.



(The realities of rock journalism www.musicuse.wordpress.com)