When Musicians Ask the Questions
OVER THE COURSE of 52 years and thousands of interviews with musicians, actors, politicians, and celebrities in these pages, at least one thing has remained consistent: We’ve always asked the questions. Aside from a memorable encounter between Carrie Fisher and Madonna for a 1991 cover story, our staff has rarely given up the role of interlocutors. Until now.
For our first annual Musicians on Musicians issue (or, the “Icons on Icons” issue, as Diddy and DJ Khaled renamed it in their conversation), we invited some of our favorite artists to get together for intimate conversations about music, life, inspiration, and creativity. “You had to ignore every instinct you have as a journalist to jump in,” says senior music editor Patrick Doyle, who edited the package and moderated several of the conversations. “It was almost like you weren’t supposed to be there, and that’s how we wanted it to feel. All the layers of mystery, ego, or anything else fell away when they sat down together.”
In many cases, the conversations paired an artist with one of her or his biggest influences: H.E.R. and Lenny Kravitz bond over breaking industry rules as black artists; St. Vincent reveals to Metallica’s Kirk Hammett that he inspired her to put down her violin and pick up the guitar at age 10; Billie Eilish — who was two years old when Green Day’s American Idiot came out — visits her hero Billie Joe Armstrong and finds out that she’s his hero too. “I always gravitate toward music that sounds like freedom,” Billie Joe told Billie. “And that’s what I get from your music.”
Artists went to great lengths to make these conversations happen: Brandi Carlile flew across the country from a tour stop to sit down with Bonnie Raitt; David Byrne rode his bicycle all the way across Brooklyn to talk to Tierra Whack; Elton John sat down with Lana Del Rey at his Beverly Hills home hours before a concert in Anaheim. Del Rey pulled up to his house in a pickup truck armed with 13 pages of questions she wrote on a typewriter. “She opened up to Elton in a way I’d never seen her open up to anyone,” says Doyle. “Elton had such respect for her. It didn’t feel like anyone was a superstar in that room. You were just sitting at a kitchen table talking to two people.”