There were others, like Lester’s Stooges piece, about the last show at the Michigan Palace and Metallic KO, the cover story where Iggy’s breaking all the records. A lot are like that, dating back from Lester’s and Dave Marsh’s days. Brian and I hands down, knew that was because one, we thought it was one of Sue’s best pieces and two, Sue talks about Dave DiMartino and I as much as she does the Pretenders. Sue Whitall’s interview with Chrissie Hynde, the Pretenders piece, is there. He’s written a couple of books that are in the library of congress, one on the Doors and he’s always been an editor some place, yet doesn’t have the same kind of presence that the other Daves (Marsh & Fricke), have had. And that’s what I was trying to say about Dave DiMartino. That’s the great thing about this book going to get his day and a lot of people will get to see them. That would have been from late ’71 and largely due to Charlie Auringer’s photos. One of the standouts to me that we used was Dave Marsh’s Who cover story, which is kind of formulated and formatted like a Dick and Jane book. And then it would be, “we need a T-Rex piece we need a Mitch Ryder piece, MC5, Stooges”, that kind of thing. The criteria that Brian and I used for what we chose for the book could have fallen into four or five different kinds of categories: “well, we need a Susan Whitall piece, we need a Jaan piece … hey, we don’t have a Ben Edmonds piece”, so we’d find one. RM: Per Jeffrey Morgan’s suggestion, we used Eno’s Oblique Strategies. The Stooges tore into “Loose” and that was that. While waiting for them to start, I told him how we thought that he should be the first editor of Creem in its new life. I gave him my extra photo pass and a camera and took him into the pit to see the Stooges up close. Creem brought Brian out to Coachella the year the Stooges reformed. By any means, the way that Brian got involved was, as we say, very blowjobian. So, his expertise would be from being a journalism professor, working at a couple of newspapers and editing the Creem website the past four years. Brian in turn brought some fine new young blood in, writers that he had in his class at Grand Valley. They both had the same take as Brian began to write more, saying how they enjoyed his work – kind of casting their votes without knowing it. I asked them how we were going to find the next editor. Richard Riegel and Dave DiMartino were always touchstones with the website archive, the direction we should be taking it, that kind of thing. So, he started doing some reviews for the website. His love of the MC5 and all things related encouraged me to re-embrace my Detroit music roots as well. RM: He started writing via the website little emails about what he was into, sensibilities and musical taste, that kind of thing.
And I’ve told the story how I, or how Brian Bowe found me… In that time I went to Rod Stewart, Alice Cooper, and Iggy Pop for their color comments, we’d add those while Harper Collins was doing test runs on the photos and proofing. We only had three weeks for the first submission, then for corrections, proofing, etc. Greg Allen, our art director, had been working with us on the website as well, so it came together pretty fast. Since Brian and I had spent so much time with the old issues over the last four years, we knew what was good and where to go.
BEBE BUELL CREEM ARCHIVE
After we started the website archive and then the new era Creem, the readers never stopped asking for it. I’m not saying that I was the right person, but the only one to get it done. RM: No brainer, it was never not an idea.