How did the idea for the book No One Here Gets Out Alive come about?
Jim was not a friend of mine, but he was more than an acquaintance. Our paths crossed, we drank in some of the same bars. I was the Rolling Stone correspondent in LA, and I interviewed him a number of times. He invited me to poetry readings and screenings. After the infamous Miami concert, where he allegedly dropped his pants, and I am convinced he did not, he refused to give interviews for a while, even with Rolling Stone who he was upset with for portraying him as a drunken clown. Eventually I got the interview though, and I wanted to do it because I knew that Jim had a lot more to him than the media was painting. During the course of the interview we discovered that we had the same literary agent. The idea of doing a biography had appealed to me. I considered doing Frank Zappa. I had known him pre-rock n’ roll, and I thought he was intelligent and articulate. Jim said he would like to read a book about Elvis, so I wrote a book about Elvis back in 1969. People said, “What are you wri
