Much appreciation for conducting and posting the interview. I especially appreciate that you at least attempted to point out to Hirsch that, for all of the complaints, come the end of C50 Brian wanted to continue and Mike didn't, so it *was* Mike who was functionally the one who had to and could have made the decision to continue. Hirsch of course didn't really have an answer for this, I suppose eventually sort of admitting through process of elimination that functionally it was Mike who said no.
No fault of your own, but despite Hirsch saying at one point that he doesn't want to come across as a Mike surrogate, that's of course precisely what he is and how he speaks. He doesn't it very politely, and I wouldn't expect the co-author of Mike's book to be anything other than this.
It's disappointing that he tries to further the "people around Brian" thing. I think there's a tactful way to point out that all of these guys, and Brian perhaps sometimes more so, have a barrier around them, and that people around them can constrain relationships. But he continues the pattern of inadvertently if not directly likening all of the "people around Brian" through his life to each other. Melinda isn't the same as Landy. Heck, even Murry wasn't the same as Landy.
Also still perplexed (though I guess not surprised) that both Mike and Hirsch can't offer *any* explanation for what happened between Mike and Al in the late 90s. Both in the book and in this interview it amounts to "relationships are bound to crumble eventually; it was surprising it lasted that long." Yes, Mike in the book mentions the "Al trying to plan a tour behind my back" thing, but that seems minimal. Completely ignored is what Stebbins and Marks mention in their book regarding Al not wanting to be an employee of Mike's production company.
No fault of your own, but despite Hirsch saying at one point that he doesn't want to come across as a Mike surrogate, that's of course precisely what he is and how he speaks. He doesn't it very politely, and I wouldn't expect the co-author of Mike's book to be anything other than this.
It's disappointing that he tries to further the "people around Brian" thing. I think there's a tactful way to point out that all of these guys, and Brian perhaps sometimes more so, have a barrier around them, and that people around them can constrain relationships. But he continues the pattern of inadvertently if not directly likening all of the "people around Brian" through his life to each other. Melinda isn't the same as Landy. Heck, even Murry wasn't the same as Landy.
Also still perplexed (though I guess not surprised) that both Mike and Hirsch can't offer *any* explanation for what happened between Mike and Al in the late 90s. Both in the book and in this interview it amounts to "relationships are bound to crumble eventually; it was surprising it lasted that long." Yes, Mike in the book mentions the "Al trying to plan a tour behind my back" thing, but that seems minimal. Completely ignored is what Stebbins and Marks mention in their book regarding Al not wanting to be an employee of Mike's production company.
I suspect that it must have been determined to be too difficult to put any kind of positive "spin" on how Al was treated in the late '90s, so it's just ducked and avoided like so many questions by presidential candidates. It's frankly pretty obvious to me that glaring omissions are omitted because there's little wiggle room for a certain someone to come off as anything other than having largely acted in a pretty lame, power-hungry fashion.