Interview Magazine and its Pop Culture Influence

Vinyl Bay 777, Long Island’s music outlet, takes a brief look at the influence and legacy of Andy Warhol’s famed magazine

Covers of "Interview Magazine - displayed in the Andy Warhol
Museum, Pittsburgh, PA. Found on Wikimedia Commons. Taken
by Becca923 on June 27, 2011.

On Monday, it was announced that legendary arts publication Interview Magazine would be ceasing operations. The move comes after months of legal issues, the most recent of which was a law suit brought on by former editorial director Fabien Baron who alleges that the magazine owes him $600,000 in back pay. Because of this, the publication has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and is liquidating their assets.

On the surface, it may seem like this is just another print publication closing down. A lot of magazines have been suffering in the last decade or so. NME announced the end of their print edition just a couple of months ago. The Pitchfork Review and Nylon shut down their print operations last year.

However, Interview Magazine is different. Launched in 1969 by artist and cultural pioneer Andy Warhol, the publication let artists from all mediums (musicians, actors…“celebrities” if you will) interview other artists, something that hadn’t been widely done before. Interviews were often rough and left unedited, which meant that these conversations were very candid. By putting together stars that might be fans of each other, interesting, often intimate questions and answers were given, employing a new perspective that former editor Ingrid Sischy told Publishers Weekly in 2004 said leads to “full[er] portraits of people.” One of their most recent interviews finds comedian and actor Seth Rogan interviewing rapper 21 Savage about everything from music and weed to flying planes and video games. This candid style led to the magazine being given the nickname “The Crystal Ball of Pop.”

Besides its groundbreaking interview style, Interview Magazine also turned heads with its artwork. Featuring photographs from top photographers, many of the magazine’s covers pushed boundaries. Over the last decade, photographs of Kate Moss, Claire Danes and Kanye West have drawn headlines for their risqué-ness or the light that they portray the artist in.

Over the years, Interview Magazine has had its issues, but has always bounced back. The magazine has re-launched twice: once in 1990 after it was sold to Brant Publications three years earlier following Andy Warhol’s passing, and again in 2008 under the editorial direction of Fabien Baron and former Factory member Glenn O’Brien after Peter Brant took full ownership of Brant Publications.  

Interview Magazine has continued to play an influential role in popular culture over it’s more than four decade tenure. In 2004, an extensive seven-part retrospective featuring many of the magazine’s most important interviews was released. The magazine helped boost the careers of writers, artists and photographers alike. Following Monday’s announcement, many celebrities that were inspired by the magazine or had the opportunity to be interviewed / interview others took the internet to lament its end, including musicians and bands like Wavves, Best Coast, Moby and more.

With its unique artistic and written style, Interview Magazine has managed to capture some of the most candid interviews ever published. Originally an extension of Andy Warhol’s iconic artistic empire, it’s groundbreaking celebrity on celebrity interviews and edgy artwork helped it remain relevant for more than 40 years. The magazine helped launch the careers of writers, musicians, actors, photographers and artists of all kinds. Despite their recent legal troubles, Interview magazine will be a piece of pop culture that will be sorely missed.

---

Find music from some of Interview Magazine’s most iconic interview subjects and more at Vinyl Bay 777. Long Island’s favorite new independent record shop has thousands of titles in a variety of genres to choose from. Browse through our wide selection of new and used vinyl records, CDs, cassettes, music DVDs and memorabilia in store at our Plainview location or online at vinylbay777.com. With more titles being added to our selection all the time, you never know what you might find at Vinyl Bay 777.

Gibson Could be going into Bankruptcy: A Brief History of the Iconic Guitar Manufacturer

Vinyl Bay 777, Long Island’s music outlet, takes a brief look at Gibson’s financial predicament and musical history

 News broke yesterday that guitar manufacturer Gibson is potentially headed for bankruptcy. According to a report in The Nashville Post, the company has $375 million in senior secured notes that are set to mature with another $145 million that will become due if the previous notes aren’t refinanced by July 23. This means that if the deadline to refinance is not met, CEO Henry Juszkiewicz could face losing his company.

One of the largest names in guitars, Gibson was started by Orville Gibson in the late 1890s as a manufacturer of single-piece mandolin-family instruments. Their first guitars, circa the 1910s and 1920s featured a more durable violin-like shape. In the mid-1930s, the company made their first electric guitars, a Spanish-style lap guitar with a hexagonal pick-up referred to as the ES-150. Since those first designs more than a century ago, Gibson has produced several highly popular guitar models, including the Les Paul (solid-body), the SG, the ES, the Flying V, the Firebird and the Explorer, and continue to be innovators within the industry.

Gibson guitars have been a standard with rock, jazz, country and blues musicians for decades. Going back to the beginning, the ES-150 was endorsed by jazz musician Charlie Christian. Les Paul designed his groundbreaking solid-body electric guitar in the 1950s, which continue to be their most popular models. B.B. King’s “Lucille” was a custom ES-355. Other famous Gibson players include Beatles John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison, Jimi Hendrix, Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, Guns ‘N’ Roses’ Slash (the company’s current ambassador), Eric Clapton, Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia, Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, both Arlo and Woodie Guthrie, Metallica’s James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett, Bob Marley, Jimmy Page, Elvis Presley and The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards, just to name a few.

This isn’t the first time Gibson has been in hot water financially. In 1986, current CEO Henry Juszkiewicz and company president David Berryman bought the company from the Norlin Corporation, who had been slowly driving it into financial turmoil since 1969. At the time, sales were dropping, as was the quality of the product and the company’s reputation. Juszkiewicz and Berryman were able to salvage and repair the reputation of Gibson, as well as expand the company’s hold on the music industry, which includes the acquisition of many other instrument and technology companies. Some of their current holdings include Epiphone (guitars), Baldwin (pianos), Philips (audio equipment), KRK Systems (audio equipment), TEAC Corporation (audio equipment) and Cakewalk (audio software).

Unfortunately, things haven’t been going well for Gibson’s electronics acquisitions in recent years. Sales have been slumping, which has led to stakeholders fearing for their investments. It also doesn’t help that their CFO, Bill Lawrence, left in the midst of the financial issues less than a year after taking on the position.

Gibson doesn’t seem to be too worried about the bankruptcy issue though. In a statement made by the company today (reported by Billboard), they "fully expect the bonds to be refinanced in the ordinary course of business" and are "concluding a thorough strategic and budget planning process to identify those areas where it can maximize its investments, and pare back areas where investments have not been performing to expectation." The company has already sold a couple of their underperforming warehouses and is looking to streamline underperforming acquisitions, like Philips, to “focus on brands with optimal growth potential.” Gibson has already hired a new CFO, Benson Woo, to lead the company’s recovery efforts.

Whether or not the company finds a way to restructure their finances and holdings before the July 23 deadline, Gibson’s reputation for high-quality instruments to will likely remain untouched. The iconic company has been deeply rooted in music culture for more than a century with countless artists using their guitars to make history.

---

Delve into music history by finding music from iconic Gibson players and more at Vinyl Bay 777. Long Island’s favorite new independent record shop has thousands of titles to choose from in an array of genres ranging from rock, pop, rap and R&B to dance, classical, reggae and everything in between. Browse our wide selection of new and used vinyl records, CDs, cassettes, music DVDs and memorabilia in store at our Plainview location and online at vinylbay777.com. With more titles being added to our selection all the time, you never know what you might find at Vinyl Bay 777.

Seven Weird Places Artists Have Recorded Music

On Tuesday, NME reported that a London location of fried chicken chain Nando’s built a recording studio in their restaurant. The studio features “pioneering” recording equipment and an in-house engineer to help aspiring artists create the perfect sound. According to the story, the studio is an extension of chain’s “Nando’s Music Exchange” program.

Inspired by this unique recording experience, Vinyl Bay 777, Long Island’s music outlet, has collected a list of other odd places artists can and have recorded music. From coffins and bank vaults to bodegas, electronics stores and record shops, here are seven of the most unique recording spots in the world.

1.       Apple Store: While a handful of Apple store locations have programs where you can learn how to edit photos and audio, it is less common for an artist to record an entire album there. But that is what Brooklyn rapper Prince Harvey did. Upon losing his friend’s apartment and all of his equipment, he decided to set up shop in one of Apple’s NYC stores and complete his debut album.

2.       Record Shop: At most record shops, one can only purchase albums and possibly see an in-store performance. But Nashville’s Third Man Records goes a step further. The shop owned by former White Stripes frontman Jack White gives you the opportunity to record and press it on vinyl, all in one place. There are two options for recording there:  an old-style record booth where you can record on the fly and a “live venue with direct-to-acetate recording capabilities.”

3.       Bodega: In 2015, soda brand Sprite decided to advertise their product and support hip-hop music at the same time with a bodega-style pop-up shop in New York on the Bowery. Besides selling Sprite and Sprite-themed products, the shop also had a stage and recording facility, and held events throughout that summer. Artists that recorded there included Vince Staples and Wale.

4.       Coffin: Sometimes you have to do something drastic to get the sound you want. Such was the case when metal band Sunn O))) were recording the song “Bathory Erzebet” for their album ‘Black One.’ The story goes that when it was time for guest vocalist Malefic of Xasthur to perform his vocals, the band handed him a microphone and made the extremely claustrophobic artist record from inside a coffin.

5.       Bank Vault: Many artists create music in their own home studios. However, not many people have a home with a bank vault in it. Aphex Twin allegedly bought an abandoned bank in the mid-1990s and kept his music equipment set up in its vault.

6.       Science Lab: A lot of artists nowadays like to “go back to basics” when they record. But none have done this quite like They Might Be Giants. In 1996 during the recording of their sixth album ‘Factory Showroom,’ the duo decided to record the track “I Can Hear You” in the most analog way possible: using Thomas Edison’s 1890 wax cylinder recorder. The recording was done at the Edison Laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey in front of a small audience, where, according to a press release, they were “singing and playing acoustic instruments as loud as we could into a pair of enormous metal cones…which fed the sound into a hundred year old non-electrical recording device…The wax cylinder recorder carves a groove into a rotating tube of softened wax with a needle that is vibrating from the sound pressure collected at the small end of the cone.”

7.       Dungeon: Again, a castle doesn’t necessarily sound like that crazy a place for a band to record music. But Black Sabbath isn’t just any band. When they decided to record their album ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’ at the Clearwell Castle in Gloucestershire, they decided to do all their rehearsing in its dungeon. The band’s members claimed to have seen apparitions down there, which inspired some of the albums darker songs, such as the title track.

Artists have recorded music in a lot of strange places. Retail spaces, science labs and coffins don’t seem like locations you would ever think to combine with the recording process. Nando’s restaurant recording studio seems just as outlandish. But who knows, maybe the next breakout star will record a monstrously popular album there while enjoying a chicken sandwich.

---

Find music from these creative artists and more at Vinyl Bay 777, Long Island’s favorite new independent record shop. We have thousands of titles to choose from in a wide variety of genres. Browse our selection of new and used vinyl records, CDs, cassettes, music DVDs and memorabilia in store at our Plainview location or online at vinylbay777.com. With more titles being added to our selection all the time, you never know what you might find at Vinyl Bay 777.