Category Archive

Tom Petty sat in his Malibu home on a warm summer afternoon, sipping from a mug of cold coffee and wearing a suede fringed jacket, brown moccasins, and black socks. From a distance he looked like he hadn’t changed in a quarter of a century, but up close his face was etched with deep lines of experience. Only his pale … Read More

In the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles, Hugh Hefner, age seventy-two, sat in the library in his second skin: a red smoking jacket and black silk pajamas. On the table in front of him were a bottle of Diet Pepsi and a plate of cookies, accessories that replaced his pipe after his 1985 stroke. He spent most of the interview … Read More

Some eight years ago, a friend brought me to meet Leonard Cohen. “A writer named Neil Strauss is coming over,” he told him. “Oh, you mean Style?” Cohen responded. I was in awe: Cohen was, and remains, one of my favorite musicians, songwriters, and poets of all time. The beauty and eloquence of his lyrics are part of what inspired … Read More