Lizzy Goodman Interview

A little bit emo, a little bit rock and roll, journalist and author Lizzy Goodman experienced the height of New York City’s early-aughts music scene and lived to tell the tale. Her oral history tome, Meet Me in the Bathroom is a compilation of first-person anecdotes from rock icons such as James Murphy, The Strokes, and Karen O, prompted by intimate questions asked by Goodman. If you’re into the parables of destruction, fame, high-highs, low-lows, inexorable concert experiences, and the deep-rooted influence of music on youth culture, then Goodman is your girl. She feels all the feels and strives to unpack the nuance of human experience. All of this and so much more is what makes Lizzy Goodman so damn Dandy!

Five of your essential beauty products:

Alba Jasmine Face cream. I have one in every bag and on every exposed surface in my house.

Tatcha The Pearl Illuminating Eye Cream. I don’t know what is in this, but it performs some kind of light refracting voodoo magic that helps me look awake and vibrant instead of like a person with permanent under eye circles. Also, it feels good to put on. This is shimmery and smooth-feeling.

Chanel Liquid Eyeliner. I like how the applicator feels like a delicate little quill being dipped into a delicate little vial of jet-black ink. It’s a romantic, almost literary tool, which delivers the perfect subtle wing.

Mac Relentlessly Red Lipstick. It’s their super matte line, which means it’s like a powdery stain. The perfect pinkish red, it’s also versatile – can go on super bright or blended as a kind of post-make-out daytime pout situation. It feels lived in, which is how I want all makeup to feel. Like it’s part of the ongoing story of your life.

CAP Beauty Bath Salts. I’m obsessed with all things bathing and I have a million potions in my shower, but this is my favorite! I used to live near the CAP Beauty in the West Village, but now that I’m LA based (for now…), I buy it online by the cartload. Hot water + this stuff + a long soak and a good book = perfect self-care ritual.

Will rock and roll ever have its moment in the sun again? Gaze into your crystal ball and tell us!

YES! It’s a perennial thing, the way rock and roll seems to drift away and then swings wildly back into our lives. It’s baked into the whole rock and roll story. It’s supposed to lie fallow for a while and then just when people are saying this time it’s really never coming back, something dramatic happens. We get jolted in some significant way, and suddenly everybody is craving loud guitars and whiskey and provocation and sex. And also: it never goes away. There are swings, for sure, but there is always someone making rebellious music with instruments that makes you want to cry or spit or laugh or fuck. Check out King Princess’ “Ohio” if you don’t believe me.

For writers, quarantine doesn't feel like a big shock to the system. But it still burns. How have you been spending your time so far?

Mark Wahlberg movies. Then when that was tapped, Denzel Washington movies. To paraphrase a famous producer whose name I can’t recall at the momentt, some movies are just about movie stars, and right now I’ve wanted to be kept company by alpha male movie stars with a sense of humor. I’ve also been moving into a serious Fred and Ginger/George Cukor phase. I notice when things get truly hard for me—even under non-pandemic circumstances—I shed the bleaker reading/viewing/listening material. It’s like my psyche inherently knows I can’t afford it right now, and seeks out instead the medicine of joy. And rage. So that means, today, “Shall We Dance” and Fear of a Black Planet while dressing and roasting my first chicken.

Currently reading/watching/listening to:

All of the above, but also to add that recently a friend of mine was lamenting that while she’d like to read the new very cool and definitely probably super good novel by this guy who is legit an amazing voice-of-his-generation writer, she simply could not. She was, she said, just “done with books by men.” They’d had enough of her brain’s attention. And the only way to rectify the situation was to just OD for a while on books by women. To that end, here’s what I’ve been tearing through while locked in my house: Writers & Lovers by Lily King and The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud. I’m about to start Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick, which I’ve never read. And this week I intend do watch documentaries on Toni Morrison, Betty Davis, Susan Sontag, and Maria Callas. My usual style is to schedule in a week what should take a month, so all is going according to plan.

You never thought you would:

Be a hand sanitizer person. I’m from the country. We wash our hands with real soap and call it a day. My mother uses the expression “good clean dirt.” That’s what her mother called it on the farm in Kentucky. So, it’s weird and disorienting to be worrying about sanitizing my hands 100% of the time.

Your favorite member of The Strokes:

Dangerous question! But obviously I have to go with Nick Valensi. We have known each other since we were 19! He’s the best.

You're really good at:

Fussing over my senior basset hound, Jerry Orbach.

The most difficult age for you and why:

Ugh. Now? Jk. Sort of. I think it’s safe to bet on 11/12 being pretty brutal, especially for girls. I felt so much, and had so few places to put all those feelings. I think my whole creative life is an outgrowth of that sensation: having so much welling up and this terror that you would never find an outlet for it all. I still feel that way a lot of the time.

How you cure your own blues:

I should say something like move your body or phone a friend. I am a believer in changing the channel when it’s showing something shitty. But really I’d have to say I don’t think of blues as something to cure. I really want to learn to let myself have moments where I don’t feel what I think I’m supposed to feel, without trying to fix them. Sadness is okay. It’s good in limited doses. It’s a flavor in the emotional palate of life. Ditto anger. It’s long been a goal of mine to get better at having enemies. It’s healthy to have a few people you can’t stand, and who can’t stand you.

Books that mean the most to you:

Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Charlotte’s Web, Hamlet, Please Kill Me, Liar’s Club, Infinite Jest, Garden of Eden, Sheltering Sky, Secret History, My Brilliant Friend, Catcher in the Rye, Rum Punch, Go Ask Alice, Less Than Zero, Henry and June, The Iliad.

Your favorite spots to visit when you're in NYC:

Café Mogador in the East Village for eggs, McNally Jackson for books and inspirational hanging, Angel’s Share for chatting and drinking, Stella Dallas for vintage shopping, Cozy Soup and Burger for late night pea soup. Abingdon Square for sitting and reading. Hotel bars and museum cafes for everything else. The thing I like most about NYC, is that even though there are a million perfect destinations, the real trick of the place is to feel a part of its perpetual motion. The magic comes when you look back and say where you went that day: you grabbed coffee at Lupe’s and then had a meeting near Flatiron, then read/people watched in Madison Park. Later there were martinis and kumamotos at The Oyster Bar and a slightly boozy wander around the NYPL just to feel and see it, before DJing your own walk down to dinner at Old Homestead with someone weird who tells great stories. But you can never repeat it somehow. By the end of the night, you’ve found yourself on a rooftop in Chinatown at a bar you never knew the name of and will never be able to find again. The whole thing feels scripted by the city itself. The best New York days feels ordained.

Bar beverage order:

Negroni.

Adapting a book for television has been:

Intimidating and then really, really fun.

A montage of your life would include these songs:

“Then He Kissed Me,” The Crystals; “Thunder Road,” Bruce Springsteen; “She’s in Love With the Boy,” Trisha Yearwood; “Down By the Water,” PJ Harvey; “Downtown Train,” Tom Waits; “Fuck and Run,” Liz Phair; “Cactus,”The Pixies; “Modern Age,” The Strokes, “Ha Ha Ha Armageddon,” Julie Ruin; “Lost in the Supermarket,” The Clash; “Our Time,” Yeah Yeah Yeahs; “Get Ur Freak On,” Missy Elliot; “Blood In My Eyes,” Bob Dylan.

Your favorite memory of living in the Catskills:

Taking my dogs in the Jeep to this CSA farm share. Picking insanely fragrant purple basil in the height of summer. Going home to make pesto and listen to Lucinda Williams and Wu Tang.

Currently nostalgic for:

Leaving my fucking house.

You secretly wish you were:

Living in the middle of nowhere again. (This is not really a secret.)

What you had for breakfast:

This amazing toast from Erewhon that tastes like matzoh brei, covered with peanut butter.

Your vices:

I stand behind (most of) my bad habits.

Lizzy Goodman