“It was the pandemic. Everybody was home. Everybody wanted to talk about Leon.
.. Springsteen and Willie Nelson, Elton, Clapton and Rita Coolidge.
Anybody I wanted to talk to pretty much, except for Brian Wilson...
and even Brian Wilson was pretty close.” wasn’t Janovitz’s first literary effort: he has been published twice on the Rolling Stones, firstly as part of the 33 1/3 series on iconic albums with his thoughts on and then which was released to mark the band’s half-century. “Back in the earlier two books, I was a little bit nervous about doing interviews.
But with the Leon book, I had a little butterfly thing with Elton John and Springsteen...
but once you get them talking about music and they understand that you’re somebody somewhat informed, then you’re just having a conversation with another guy about music. ‘Somebody somewhat informed’ is a bit of an understatement. Janovitz is lead singer, guitarist and songwriter with Buffalo Tom, who released their 10th album earlier this year.
The Boston trio of Janovitz, Chris Colbourna and Tom Maginnis have been going for almost 40 years and by the time they released and in the early 90s, wore a much wider circle of influences than their ‘grungier’ contemporaries. Janovitz’s ‘dream book’ would be a definitive biography of Stevie Wonder, but he is not holding his breath. “My agent gives me very good feedback, he’s just very frank.
He’s like ‘a white guy doing a biography in America this year .