Andrew Stafford

the music as he was writing about the people that made it and their character flaws.

He wrote the most horrific profiles in the dark stuff of people like Brian Wilson and Jerry Lee Lewis, and also, you know, more marginal cult figures like Sid Barrett, Rocky Erickson, who passed away very recently.

I think he had an intuitive understanding that many of the protagonists of rock and roll, many of those originals were profoundly damaged human beings.

Well, the last book that I read before I started to write Something to Believe In was by Tim Rogers from UMI.

His memoir, Detours, from 2017.

I liked it because, for a number of reasons, again, it's beautifully written, but Tim presents himself...

as the opposite of the kind of, you know, rock god windmilling his guitar on stage.

It was a really tender book.

It was very vulnerable.

And he talks a lot about mental health, particularly his struggles with anxiety and other more complicated mental health and DNA issues without getting voyeuristic.

And I talk about mental health quite a bit in my book as well.

His book's very elliptical.

It's told in vignettes, in a way.

That's kind of more truthful, I think, than telling a straight narrative of your life.

Our memories of our lives are kind of impressionistic, aren't they?

There were a few things that I took from it, though.

He had these little digressions in between chapters that he calls bagatelles, little random bits where he just riffs, and I thought that was great.

Thank you very much.

It's been a pleasure.