No Failure In America, Whether Of Love

I Was The First Records Editor At Rolling Stone, And There Were No Rules. There Was Nothing To Fall Back On As To How Do You Write About This Kind Of Music, So People Were Trying Absolutely Everything With A Great Sense Of Freedom And Experimentation And Success And Failure, And A Feeling Of, “my God, People Are Actually Paying Attention To This. Let’s Pretend They Aren’t Because We Don’t Want To Be Intimidated By What Somebody Might Think Of What We’re Saying.

We Fight Our Way Through The Massed And Leveled Collective Safe Taste Of The Top 40, Just Looking For A Little Something We Can Call Our Own. But When We Find It And Jam The Radio To Hear It Again It Isn't Just Ours -- It Is A Link To Thousands Of Others Who Are Sharing It With Us. As A Matter Of A Single Song This Might Mean Very Little; As Culture, As A Way Of Life, You Can't Beat It.

Think About How Rare It Is For Anyone To Encounter A Teacher Who Can Open You Up To The Notion That There Is An Infinite Amount Of Meaning And Possibility And Inspiration In The Smallest Thing Before You.

If 'mystery Train' Is My Nixon Book And 'lipstick Traces' My Reagan Book, 'invisible Republic' Is My Bill Clinton Book. I Really Liked Clinton. He Made Me Proud To Be Part Of This Country Again. For All Of His Failings, The Way He Put All That He'd Done In Jeopardy, I Supported Him From Beginning To End.

Punk To Me Was A Form Of Free Speech. It Was A Moment When Suddenly All Kinds Of Strange Voices That No Reasonable Person Could Ever Have Expected To Hear In Public Were Being Heard All Over The Place.