NEW SG Interview: Neil Strauss – Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead0

by Nicole Powers

Neil Strauss has a talent for honing in on the very essence of who a person is. It’s an attribute that has served him well as an interviewer for publications such as The New York Times and Rolling Stone, as a writer penning biographical books with the likes of Mötley Crüe (The Dirt) and Jenna Jameson (How To Make Love Like A Porn Star), and in his other life, as Style, the seduction guru and author of the pick-up bible, The Game.

On the surface, his latest book, Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead, is an anthology of interviews culled from Strauss’ extensive back catalog, which includes conversations with everyone from Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Britney Spears to Chuck Berry, Leonard Cohen, and Johnny Cash. However, the acknowledgements section at the back of the book, which sums up all that’s included, isn’t just a laundry list of high profile names. Amongst the interviewees are some surprising and lesser known people (Kenny G, Patrick Miller, members of the Calabrian Mafia, et al.), and it’s these inclusions that perhaps give an indication of the collection’s greater purpose – that of a self-help book compiled from lessons learnt (or not, as the case may be) from those with problems on a grander scale than our own.

Because of this underlying narrative, readers are advised to read the book from start to finish, cover to cover, rather that skipping about to find preferred interview subjects as one might initially be tempted to do. “I think I maybe should have put a note or something in the beginning of the book about how it’s supposed to be read,” admits Strauss during the closing moments of our interview, “because I do think if you skip around for a favorite artist you won’t get the experience.”

In serving this higher purpose, Strauss chose to omit a few seemingly beyond qualified people. “I interviewed Stevie Wonder and Iggy Pop, two of what I would consider the greatest artists in the last fifty years,” says Strauss, “and yet there weren’t those profound moments in the interview so I left them out, even though they were huge artists who I’d love to have in a book.”

The result of Strauss’ labors is an anthology like no other, one that he hopes will stand the test of time. “You assume if you write a book it’s not for the moment. It’s for a longer period of time. I wanted a book that even in ten or twenty years would still be intrinsically interesting even if half of these people were obscure by then. I wanted it to hold up on its own.”

Having read the 500+ page book in a surprisingly short space of time, in our humble opinion, Strauss has achieved this goal. After making the journey to the back cover, SucideGirls called Strauss up to talk about the things he’s learned from interviewing the great and the late.

Read our exclusive interview with Neil Strauss on SuicideGirls.com.