Bill Knight is the editor of Rick Johnson Reader: Tin Cans, Squeems and Thudpies, a hearty (250 page) collection of critical musings by the late, beloved Boy Wonder of Creem’s new-wave-and-beyond phase–the star writer from what was arguably the greatest era of the greatest music ‘zine ever. Having served as Johnson’s editor for many years at the Prairie SUN and SunRise (two Illinois alternative publications), Knight set out to put Johnson’s work between covers in 2006, after the writer’s untimely death in April of that year.
Most of the reviews in Tin Cans are pulled directly from those Illinois rags, and will thus be unfamiliar to most readers who know Johnson primarily through his work in Creem (though the voice itself, of course, will be very familiar; who else would refer to ELO as the “Ethiopian Lapdog Orchestra” or compare the sound of Focus–of “Hocus Pocus” fame–to “snails menstruating”?). And though the bulk of the book is taken up by “Reek”’s characteristically unhinged album reviews–bizarro and revelatory in approximately equal measure–there are separate sections devoted to Johnson’s writing on sports, video games, and TV.
I recently e-mailed Knight a bunch of questions about working with Johnson and about the how-to’s of putting out such a book.
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Scott: Can you discuss some of the highlights and/or more notable moments in your own career as a journalist, author and editor? Please bring us up to the present day.
Bill: I started writing for newspapers in high school, and resumed after a few years with an “underground paper” in college in the ‘70s, which evolved into SunRise magazine in ‘72, a (sometimes) monthly mix of music and counter-culture coverage. That publication is where Rick and I started working together.
SunRise folded (except for one Life magazine format ‘Reek’ and I did as a “duet” effort in 1976, featuring a memorable Lester Bangs feature on Linda Lovelace), and I worked for a chain of community weeklies for a year, then launched the Prairie SUN, a similar but more music-oriented and more stable weekly (backed by a big Midwest record retail chain) and immediately asked Rick to write and recruit a few reviewers.
