If a musician cares about what he or she is doing, and you show up and care, you can go some place. That will never change. There are a number of ways to approach this, and my favorite is the way we're doing it now - just talking.

When I started teaching, I would get miffed if a student asked me to write him or her a recommendation for law school - I'd feel like that's not what we were doing in the course. But now I see that person as someone who might be gainfully employed. I bring in a lot of people to speak to my classes, and I've gotten to the point where I've expanded the type of guests I invite to include people both inside and outside of the traditional publishing world.

Doing an interview you're going to have certain things you want to get at, but you're better off if you play to people's strengths a bit. You're also assessing how it's going and adjusting as needed. Does your subject seem up for it, willing to do it, and is he or she enjoying the interview? Or do they need to be coaxed, or reassured, or whatever they might need from you? Like writing, interviewing is a process that you keep learning, and you're always trying to get better and better.

When I broke into music journalism it wasn't easy but there was more of an established path. I wanted and was able to have a grown-up person's job with a real salary writing for a fairly sizable audience about stuff I cared about. When you're starting out, you try to get as much experience as you can so people will see your work, and maybe start giving you the assignments you want, and paying you (hopefully both). And if you're lucky you land someplace where you can stay for a while. But today that's a trickier trajectory to envision.

In Othello, Othello kills Desdemona, but no one reads that play as a model for their own behavior. In Lou Reed's case, you're listening to a song, and in my case you're reading about a life. Like Lou, I trust my audience to make their own moral determinations.

If a musician cares about what he or she is doing, and you show up and care, you can go some place. That will never change. There are a number of ways to approach this, and my favorite is the way we're doing it now - just talking.

I'd always read a lot about rock 'n' roll growing up, but the first real thing I set out to do was become an English professor. Even so, I always hoped in some way or another that I would get to write about music in a popular - non-academic - format.