The Unlikely Leader: Navigating Popularity and Duty

Howard Bloom ran the most successful rock 'n' roll and pop PR firm in the 1970s and 80s. His client list was hundreds of names long and included the likes of Michael Jackson, Prince, Bob Marley, AC/DC, KISS, Queen, Aerosmith, Joan Jett, Billy Joel, Bette Midler, Paul Simon, and hundreds more.

I was introduce to Howard by my friend John Giuffre who asked if I'd be interested in interviewing him after listening to the first episode of this show with Mike Hill. Normally, when someone tells me that they know someone I should interview, my guard goes up instantly. I've always been selective with the interviews I do, even more so now. The goal with The Jacob Kelly Interview Series is to be incredibly proud and excited of each and every interview I do. There will be no interviews done on this show just for the sake of it.

So when John said he had someone I should interview my brain instantly started running through my stock answers to get out of this situation. But after John told me who Howard was and why I specifically would be a good person to interview him, I was in. John only recommended Howard after getting to know me, what I'm interested in, the goals of this show, and listening to some of my other interviews. I wanted to publicly give John my thanks for being one of the view people to be this considerate when recommending a guest.

Once I booked my interview with Howard I spent two weeks reading his book: Einstein, Michael Jackson & Me: A Search for Soul in the Power Pits of Rock and Roll, taking copious amounts of notes in preparation for the interview.

There's a couple of things that I did differently with this interview that started in the prep process. For the first time ever, I removed large chunks of my notes. I had tons of different topics and tangents to ask Howard about but I'm working on making my interviews more focused, to give them a consistent arc and not just a bunch of random questions. In doing so, I set the A-story, and B-story for this interview in advance and removed every other piece of notes that didn't fit, no matter how good they were (I had a whole section on subcultures I hope to ask Howard about in a future interview one day). The focus for this interview that I had written down was "How to Build Stars in the 1980s and How to Build Stars Today". We didn't get through nearly as much as I wanted to do but I have lots of info ready for another interview.

The second thing I did was to take notes throughout the interview. We recorded this interview using Riverside (also my first time using Riverside - shout out to my friend Danny Desatnik for letting me use his) and I recently got a Remarkable II tablet and thought I'd try taking notes of interesting things Howard said throughout the interview. I find it easier to keep follow up questions top of mind while also actively listening to the guest during in-person interviews as opposed to remote ones. Taking notes during this interview allows me to quickly jot down interesting follow up questions and then turn my attention back to the guest. Overall, this helped me ask more relevant follow up questions throughout this interview and is something I plan to continue for future remote interviews.

The last new thing I did has nothing to do with the interview itself but with how I presented the interview on YouTube. For the last couple of interviews I've cut them down to 6-20 minutes long, and reordering questions to create a more satisfying narrative. This resulted in one of my interviews becoming the second most viewed interview I've ever released. With this interview, instead of just cutting down the length, I removed my questions and instead layered in talking head videos of me providing additional context. The end product is a cross between an interview and a video essay. If you'd like to watch that, it's available here.

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