“
When I interviewed Chan over the telephone in 2005 for a small piece in Spin magazine (where I was freelancing), we talked about the blues (better to sing about them than to have them), moonshine (gets you through the long nights), peanut-butter ice cream (gets you through the long days). It felt as if we were at a slumber party and had stayed up all night watching Christian Slater movies and eating Lucky Charms and sour straws. I hung up the phone feeling exhausted but sugar-high.
Chan, like Morrissey, Kurt Cobain and Conor Oberst, comes across as so inclusive that it’s easy to believe she is actually your friend. No one knows you the way she knows you. That feeling suck with me throughout the first few weeks of this project in which I listened to all the music and dreamed of what would lie ahead. The idea of spending the next year of my life over at Chan’s house made me giddy. I didn’t seriously consider that this woman, who documented her most private thoughts on record for public consumption, who told every journalist with a pen and paper - credentialed or not - about her deranged parents and her wild Southern-gothic childhood, would have a problem with me picking up the narrative where she left off. After all, I was a fan.
”
