Pot, Porn & Punk

Mike Edison's Savage Tales

Pornography… punk rock… drugs… to quote Mike Edison, that’s not a resume, that’s a crime scene.

Edison, sometime punk rocker and former editor/writer of everything from High Times to Hustler, details his exploits working on some of this country’s most notorious periodicals in his aptly titled memoir “I Have Fun Everywhere I Go: Savage Tales of Pot, Porn, Punk Rock, Pro Wrestling, Talking Apes, Evil Bosses, Dirty Blues, American Heroes, and the Most Notorious Magazines in the World.”

He spent years playing drums in Sharky’s Machine, The Pleasure Fuckers, The Raunch Hands and behind GG Allin, and has since moved to the front of the stage heading up Edison Rocket Train. But it’s life in ink that takes up the bulk of this fantastically detailed memoir. 

Edison, now working as a book editor and freelancing on the side, took some time recently to talk about his years spent hanging with the stoners and deviants.

Are you still writing for Screw magazine?

No, unfortunately Screw is now defunct.  We shut down last year sometime for various reasons. When you read the last chapter of my book, that’s where it was heading. Unfortunately the people who bought the magazine out of bankruptcy, after Al (Goldstein) drove it into the ground, didn’t really have the vision to make a great magazine. In fact, I don’t think their goals were ever to make a great magazine. They weren’t prepared to invest in the Internet. As a penny saver for hookers it wasn’t much of a business model, as long as you can get a girl from the Yellow Pages. And they weren’t willing to invest much in editorial. When this Elliot Spitzer thing came up I realized how much I miss my job. Boy, when that astronaut got caught in the diaper I was like, “why can’t we still be doing this?” 

Were you ever embarrassed to tell your parents “I’m writing for High Times” or “I’m writing for Cherry?”

Oh no, of course not. I think my parents were just happy that I had a job. My father was far more upset that I was writing for wrestling magazines. Somehow that had far less cache than Hustler.

One of the things that surprised me about your book is that the publisher, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, is kind of known for more high brow fare… those books you feel like you should read, but you don’t.

They’re the best publisher in the world.

How did you hook up with them?

Because my editor is a visionary who saw that the book would do well there. I got offers from other, bigger corporate publishers and they offered me more money, but all they saw were pot leafs and tits. It was almost like they weren’t even reading the book and I’m a writer and I don’t want this to be the last thing I ever write. I want to be taken seriously for a change. High Times is a pretty big stigma to be walking around with. High Times and pornography. I want to be known as a writer, not a guy who used to work at High Times. I don’t want to be the stoned guy; I want to be the smart guy for a change. That’s why I chose to go with this publisher, because that’s their reputation. They’re a literary publisher. I talked to one publisher and I got the idea that they were going to like print it on a Frisbee and chuck it out like at an Allman Brothers concert. I’m a writer God damnit; I don’t want it on a bong-shaped book.

Is there any magazine job– from the porn mags  to High Times – that you ever regretted taking?

I don’t regret anything. I have zero regrets. I move forward, I’m like a shark. That’s how I stay alive. I’m sorry High Times didn’t work out. I thought I was going to stay there for a long time and I really did believe in the magazine. I’m not a stoner, per se. I like pot, I just don’t like slackers.

Any magazines you really wanted to work at?

I never really tried to work at any of the other magazines. I don’t really like Conde Nast. I don’t like their corporate culture and I wouldn’t fit in. If they made me the boss that would be ok, but that’s not bloody likely. I have no desire to work for Rolling Stone. Jann Wenner is the biggest sell out in the business. I don’t want to be part of that. I read the New Yorker every week, but I don’t really want to work for them – I would like to write for them, just not work there. I do like National Geographic and would like to write for them.

You’ve played in a number of bands. Do you ever missing playing shows with GG Allin?

No. I played a couple of shows and nearly got the shit kicked out of me a few times.   I told him, “I really don’t need to see you beat up another audience member or dodging beer bottles.”

How many shows did you play with them?

Four or five. It was over the course of a couple of years. This was before he went to prison for the big stretch. And I saw him when he got out. He had some other band. I didn’t really want to play with him again. The last time I saw him we were cooking out, having a barbeque, and it was on the roof of someone’s apartment in Manhattan just flipping burgers. We were wearing aprons and the silly chef hats just goofing around and drinking beer. We looked like a couple of suburban dads and we were talking about Chuck Barry, who he loved, and Hank Williams, John Waters and all these things he was into and he said, “You coming to my show tomorrow?”   And I’m like, “No.  Why would I want to do that? We’re having such a nice time.” He’s like, “Yeah, you’re probably right.” Those shows were bad vibes.

Obviously you use humor throughout the book. But the thing that hit me was how touching it was in parts, especially when you’re talking about your friends who have since died.

Thank you for recognizing that. No one seems to mention that. 

You’ve obviously covered a lot in this book, but I’m under the impression that there’s a whole lot you haven’t written about yet. Have you thought about continuing this and writing another book?

“I Have Fun Everywhere I Go, Part 2”? Yeah, we’ll see if the American reading public is receptive to this one before we go there. But yeah, there’s a lot that’s happened after this book. There’s a lot of things at Screw that I don’t talk about. I certainly don’t want to revisit High Times again. That part is done.  Here’s the thing. You get a job reviewing records and people say, “That’s cool, you get free records,” or you review books and you get free books, and then you get to High Times and you get free pot and start reviewing pot, that’s amazing, right?  Or you go to a porn mag and you get free movies because you’re reviewing pornos. I reviewed massage parlors for Screw. That beats all of ‘em.  “I review records;” that’s nothing, I review blow jobs. That’ll be the next book.