UWEC Grad Explores the Meaning of Life Through Music's Biggest Rivalries
Steven Hyden works a tangent like a barroom storyteller. In his funny and insightful new book, Your Favorite Band is Killing Me, the UW-Eau Claire graduate and former Spectator editor takes essays on pop music rivalries into unexpected places.
A chapter on Oasis vs. Blur veers off into the Packer-Bear rivalry. Somehow, it works.
In an essay on Nirvana vs. Pearl Jam, he swerves into a side-story about Chris Christie’s one-way admiration of Bruce Springsteen. And this works, too.
Or, consider this chapter title: “Why Does the Thunder Pass Me By? (A Short History of Unfought Celebrity Boxing Matches, Starring Axl Rose and Vince Neil with Cameos by Scott Stapp, Fred Durst, Kid Rock, Tommy Lee, Kurt Cobain, DMX, and George Zimmerman). Even this is somehow a coherent and unified essay.
“I’m gonna be more like Eric Clapton than I’m gonna be like Jimi Hendrix. I’m not going to be the young sexy guy, the brilliant guy, (with a) kind of romantic death. I’m hopefully gonna be that guy that lives on into his 70s.” – Steven Hyden’s personal takeaway from one of rock’s biggest rivalries
The book’s subtitle – What Pop Music Rivalries Reveal About the Meaning of Life – shows high ambition, and the author is enthusiastically up for the task. Though Hyden has spent years as a music critic/editor for the A.V. Club and Grantland, he still comes across as a fan at heart. It’s not that Hyden doesn’t have strong opinions. He does. But his tone is more celebratory in nature, as he explained in a recent phone interview.
“I always feel like if I’m ever critical of something, it’s because I love it so much, you know? Even if I’m joking or kind of ragging on something,” Hyden said. “I mean, I make a lot of jokes about Axl Rose in this book, but Axl Rose is probably my favorite rock star of all time – or one of them, anyway. But he’s also a ridiculous person, so you have to be able to laugh at him. But I love that he’s ridiculous.”
Had Hyden written this book when he was younger, the tone might have been different. While the music rivalries invite conflict, Hyden shows much more nuance than your typical music snob know-it-all. While years writing about pop culture allowed him to absorb a record store’s worth of knowledge, aging has given him clearer perspective on what can be, for a younger person, territorial topics.
“When you’re young, I think it’s really important to draw lines in the sand – to take a stand. That’s what growing up is,” Hyden said. “You’re trying to define yourself. You rebel against your parents. You rebel against the adults in your town that you feel represent the status quo.
“But now that I’m older, that’s changed. I think that when you get older you feel a stronger need for connection, and you become less interested in what divides you from other people. And you start to try and find a way that you can maybe find common ground with people or concepts that seem foreign to you.”
This is most evident in Hyden’s essay on Jimi Hendrix vs. Eric Clapton, which explores whether it’s better to burn out than to fade away. While Hyden shows admiration for Clapton’s hard-living but prolific early career, he derides the “musically cheesy” later career that coincides with Slowhand’s sobriety. But as the essay rolls on, Hyden’s sneer starts to fade as he examines how his own life has evolved since becoming a husband and a father.
“What Clapton did is kind of what everyone does. If you want to be someone who goes the distance, you have to make yourself lamer in a lot of ways,” he said. “You have to give up a lot of things that you did when you were younger that were fun and cool and all that because that’s what surviving is about. That’s what maturing is about.
“It was an interesting process of discovering that this guy I might have made fun of otherwise is actually someone that I can relate to. I’m gonna be more like Eric Clapton than I’m gonna be like Jimi Hendrix. I’m not going to be the young sexy guy, the brilliant guy, (with a) kind of romantic death. I’m hopefully gonna be the guy that lives on into his 70s.”
Like Clapton’s time in Cream, Hyden’s college days in Eau Claire are fading further in the rearview mirror. However, he’s excited to come back to promote the book and remembers the town fondly. He still calls The Joynt his “favorite bar of all time” and remembers carrying groceries out to people’s cars when he worked at Kerm’s on Water Street.
“When I was in Eau Claire, we always called it the Twin Peaks of Wisconsin because it just had a weirdness that was really unique. And I say that with affection because there was that place – The Diamond Lounge downtown. That place just seemed like out of a Coen brothers’ movie. And the Seahorse (Inn). We used to go there and do karaoke in the late ’90s. That was another place that seemed preserved – it just seemed like something you’d see in a movie. It didn’t seem like a place that was allowed to exist anymore,” Hyden said. “There were a lot of things like that that you wouldn’t get if you went to UW-Madison, so I’m really grateful for that.”
Bringing the interview to a close, I bring up Springsteen’s latest tour, from which Hyden pivots to Glenn Fry and David Bowie and Prince and the realization that his classic rock heroes are mortal.
“It’s so easy to make fun of these classic rockers who are still touring, and people will make fun of the Rolling Stones … they still tour and all that stuff. You know, it’s the (expletive) Rolling Stones! They should tour as much as they want! Because there’s gonna come a day when Keith Richards isn’t around anymore, and you’re not going to be able to see the Stones anymore. So they should tour as much as they can, while they still can, and if you have the chance to see it you should,” Hyden said.
“I just saw Paul McCartney the other day and it was amazing, you know? His voice sounds older and he’s obviously an older man but (expletive) … he’s like the Beethoven of now! He played “Let’s Go Crazy” for Prince. How amazing is that? These are national treasures, but they’re not immortal and they’re not infinite. You have to value them while they’re here.”
Spoken like a true fan – slinging stories, several dollars in the jukebox, and ready to order another round. And if his life (or yours) is no longer full of late night bar debates about music, this book serves as a healthy substitute.
Hyden will talk pop music rivalries and his new book Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me at the Volume One Gallery at 7pm on June 3. The book is out now.
