South Jordan’s ‘Professor of Rock’ has interviewed hundreds of pop legends
Adam Reader of South Jordan during an interview for his new Rock and Roll Network. Reader has conducted interviews with approximately 150 legends of pop music, from Brian Wilson to Brian Setzer.
Adam Reader and Ann Wilson, lead singer of Heart. “I really just consider myself to be a stand-in for all of the fans out there,” Reader said.
The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson with Adam Reader. The Beach Boys gave Reader his "Professor of Rock" moniker.
Journey guitarist Neal Schon, from left, vocalist Arnel Pineda and Adam Reader. Reader said he and Schon have become good friends since their interview.
Guitarist Carlos Santana sits down with Adam Reader. “They’re regular people that use their experience to write a great song," Reader said.
Adam Reader of South Jordan during an interview for his new Rock and Roll Network. Reader has conducted interviews with approximately 150 legends of pop music, from Brian Wilson to Brian Setzer. Visit heraldextra.com/ticket to read more.
Journey guitarist Neal Schon, from left, vocalist Arnel Pineda and Adam Reader. Reader said he and Schon have become good friends since their interview.
At this point, Adam Reader has interviewed 150 of pop music’s most influential artists — everyone from the Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson to Journey guitarist Neal Schon. With that collective wisdom he’s accrued, what’s been the biggest “a-ha” reveal about these pop music legends?
Reader, a South Jordan resident, referenced the famous “More Cowbell” sketch from “Saturday Night Live.” In the sketch, Christopher Walken plays a legendary rock producer. “I put my pants on just like the rest of you, one leg at a time,” Walken says. “Except once my pants are on, I make gold records.”
“It’s funny, but it’s true,” Reader said. “They’re regular people that use their experience to write a great song. We all feel joy, we all feel pain and love, and the difference between a genius like Brian Wilson, or a goddess like Ann Wilson, is that they’re able to take that and turn it into art.”
Under the moniker “The Professor of Rock,” Reader is launching Rock and Roll Network, a streaming service a la Netflix and Hulu which will feature episodes based on his interviews. The service is scheduled to debut in February. Segments from the show are also broadcasting Sunday nights on ABC 4.
* * *
In many ways, Reader has been prepping for this gig his entire life. Growing up in the small town of Blackfoot, Idaho, during the 1980s and ’90s, Reader fell in love with popular music. (“While kids were memorizing the back of baseball cards, I was memorizing the top 40 countdown,” he recalled.) Popular music cast a wide net back then: He’d hear a single radio station play everything from Stevie Wonder to Depeche Mode in the same hour. His local record store became a gateway to another world. Listening to Van Halen’s screeching bombast, he said, the band felt as far away from Blackfoot as Mars or Saturn.
“The first time I heard Bruce Springsteen or Billy Joel, I felt like I was busting out of prison,” he said. “It really kicked open the door to my mind and made me want to pursue it in some way, realizing there were bigger and better things out there.”
Reader remembers getting a special edition of Rolling Stone magazine in 1989, which named the decade’s best albums. The pop behemoths, of which he had an encyclopedic knowledge, didn’t dominate the list like they dominated radio. Reader was a bit surprised.
“I didn’t have a filter for what the critics said was cool and what wasn’t cool,” he said. “I respect Toto in the same sentence as I respect The Clash, and for different reasons. I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. And that’s how I approach the show.”
* * *
As inseparable as Reader is to Rock and Roll Network — he’s the face of it, after all — Reader didn’t exactly expect it. He was initially tapped as a producer, but they couldn’t find a host with the right mix of music knowledge and personality. A manager at ABC suggested Reader be the host, even though Reader hadn’t ever done interviews like this before.
Two years ago the team did a test interview of sorts with Reader and Kenny Loggins. A ways into that interview, Loggins stopped and told everyone it was among the best interviews he’d ever been part of. He took Reader aside and told him he should pursue these interviews more fully — the top contemporary musicians from previous eras are gradually dying off, and need someone to help tell their stories. During his second interview, with the Beach Boys, the band was amazed at Readers’ rock knowledge. “You’re kind of like the professor of rock,” they told him. Like that, a namesake was born.
That interview signaled the wave of good fortune to come. At first, Reader and his team did interviews from their studio in Salt Lake City. As their interviews and goodwill accumulated, word started spreading in various music circles. Famous musicians started inviting Reader’s crew into their homes.
“I really just consider myself to be a stand-in for all of the fans out there,” Reader said.
They aren’t finished, either: They’re scheduling interviews with Fleetwood Mac, Elton John and John Fogerty, among others, for 2016. Younger performers from bands like Panic! At The Disco, The 1975 and Neon Trees have also been interviewed about their biggest musical influences.
All these interviews, Reader said, have impacted his perception of pop music and its trajectory. There used to be more space in pop for grand, “Bohemian Rhapsody”-esque ideas. Today’s music industry seems to have devalued that kind of ambition. In addition, he said, the modern music industry hasn’t carved out a significant space for older musical legends who are still writing great tunes.
“There’s a great line between art and commerce. And the greatest bands have been able to figure out how to sit right in the middle of that,” Reader said, referencing R.E.M. and the Beach Boys. “I think you’ve got everybody who is so focused on commerce now. There are a million indie artists out there right now who are incredible, who are just as good, and could grow into the next Sam Cooke, the next Prince, the next Michael Jackson, but I think that focus on the money is too much.
“In the last 15 years, have you heard a ‘Hey Jude,’ a ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ a ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ on the radio?” he continued. “I don’t think so.”
For more information, visit facebook.com/professorofrock.