Ben Fong-Torres

I'm working on right now of Jack Kerouac.

But basically, I got to be Ben Fong-Torres' sidekick when he was doing his research for his biography of Gram Parsons called Hickory Wind, which came out in 1991.

And the way I got that incredible gig, which basically was like an internship on how to write biographies, because Ben was, like, the real deal, seasoned journalist who knew the ropes about everything, um, was growing up in North Carolina.

I believe I got, in the '70s, I think there was like, I have it somewhere up in my attic, it's like a, you know, like kind of a Flying Burrito Brothers greatest hits kind of thing called Close-Up the Honky Tonks.

Connor II.

Second.

And he was a, I mean, I'm telling you, it was just wonderful thinking back to get ready for today about this experience I had with Ben Fong-Torres, because I, you know, he lived out in San Francisco, I lived in New York City.

We met in Jacksonville, Florida at the airport, and drove all over Florida and Georgia, you know, going to primary sources to uncover the true story of Gram Parsons, who basically told Rolling Stone that his daddy was a country singer who died drunk in jail, you know? [laughs]

actually, just to kind of, because I think it would be good to be more- So many threads here, yeah.

Yeah, but to be more to like some of the impact of these things on kind of American culture more widely, but- We were walking, just before coming here, we were walking around in Brooklyn with Ben Fong, who's a damage editor, and he pointed out that a lot of the cafes used to have kind of seating, because we're looking for someone to have breakfast.

They used to have seating, but in COVID times, they kind of just closed off that seating.

And they've never returned it.

So couple of things I thought was really cool was, uh, I pulled up some, uh, reviews of the album, and Entertainment Weekly said the album was stronger than its predecessor and called Danzig, quote, "A unique hard rock band that thinks evil dominates the world and seriously examines the consequences." That is some, like, pretentious douchebag journaling, but I l- I would love to have someone write that about my shit, you know?

Uh, who's your editor? Ben Fong-Torres? Here, write this down.

Here, wait.

Now hold on a second.

I mean, he's like, "Hello."

That's, it's inconsideration for the cover.

Hello, Ben Fong-Torres.

Like, don't tell the band.

I think it's the circumstances that Colin was in just to find this out, and to know that there's somebody else out there literally living your dream.

Shortly after that bizarre call, a writer named Ben Fong-Torres at Rolling Stone wrote a story about the fake Zombies.

Things were unraveling with Keio.

And once the Rolling Stone story came out and the fake Archies got busted, the fake Zombies went away, and that's kind of the end of the story.