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years after 1979, I also wrote for
Musician
and the
Los Angeles Times
briefly, and in the early 1980s I was (for a year or so) the music editor at the
L.A. Weekly.
In the autumn of 1982, I became the pop music critic of the (now defunct)
Los Angeles Herald Examiner,
where I worked until 1987. For the first two or three years, the
Herald
was a sublime place to write; it was a paper that allowed writers to find and exercise their own voice, sometimes at great length (I’m afraid I became a bit long-winded during that period, but brevity has rarely been my strong suit). Then, sometime in 1985, a new managing editor came in to the paper—a self-described “neo-conservative.” I’ve never shared much affinity with conservatives of any variety (I’m pretty much an American leftist and have not been shy nor apologetic about that leaning). In August 1985, I reviewed a live performance by Sting for the
Herald.
Sting wasn’t a performer or songwriter I liked much—that was plain from my review—but I admired two things about his music at that time: his willingness to attempt adventurous, swing-inflected pop with a band that included saxophonist Branford Marsalis, and his acuity about the realities of mid-1980s, Margaret Thatcher-defined British politics. I was particularly taken by his performance of a song called “We Work the Black Seams,” and I wrote the following about it:
    “We Work the Black Seams” . . . was perhaps Sting’s only serious statement that wasn’t saved solely by the prowess of his band, as well as the only one that didn’t need saving. In part, that’s because with its lulling arpeggios and mellifluent chorus it is the one song in Sting’s new batch that is most like his Police material. But there’s more to it than that: It is also the one song uttered from outside Sting’s usual above-it-all perspective—a song told from the view of a British coal miner faced with the uncaring determinism of his government. In order to tell his tale . . . Sting climbs down deep inside the place and conditions where the character lives: He is aware that the fate of the miner’s professions—and therefore the future economy of his class—has already been irrevocably shut off, and so he sings his account in a tired and resigned voice, but also with a dark, deadly, righteous sense of pain and anger: “Our blood has stained the coal/We tunneled deep inside the nation’s soul/We matter more than pounds and pence/Your economic theory makes no sense.”
    The
Herald
’s new editor was not pleased to read such sentiments in his paper. He sent a message to me via another editor: “Rock & roll is music
about and for
teenagers. Write about it from
that
point of view.” I ignored the warning—in fact, I stepped up my politics—which meant that soon my life at the
Herald
was hell. I wasn’t alone. I watched the paper’s managerial structure drive some of its best writers out of the company. The managers believed, I was later told, that it was perhaps the writers’ affections for style and point of view that was costing the paper its readers (and hell, maybe they were even right).
    I left the
Herald Examiner
in 1987, but by that time I was badly disillusioned. Plus I was going through another of my end-of-the-world romantic aftermaths. I wasn’t sure I wanted to remain a writer—but what else did I know how to do? A sympathetic friend and editor at
Rolling Stone,
James Henke, gave me a series of assignments. I remember
hating
writing each of them. All I wanted to do was sulk and drink and hate some more. Still, I had bills to pay. Looking back, I see how those assignments helped save me and also taught me some invaluable lessons: one, that summoning the will to write—even at the worst points in my life—meant I had an inner strength that was invaluable and that I should trust; two, that I had not yet lost my love for popular music and its meanings and how it mattered to its audiences. Plus, I realized it