Who am I?
An American Werewolf
in Times
Square
My father was a reporter for the famed Brooklyn Eagle and a correspondent for The New York Times. He covered the Lindberg kidnapping; the Hindenberg Disaster; the rise of the Nazi movement in America; knew legendary Times managing editor Clifton Daniel, husband of first daughter Margaret Truman; met Bobby Kennedy; and drank with Harry Truman. I was rock critic for The New York Times and a nationally syndicated columnist. I covered rock and roll and the rise of the counterculture in America; met Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock; and drank with Jimi Hendrix, Rod Stewart, Janis Joplin, and Cher.
It's so gratifying when you can do better than your father.
That failing, sarcasm ain't too shabby.
During the first half of the 1960s, I was an undergraduate folkie. I listened to a lot of Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and purported to play acoustic six-string. I also wrote and edited the college paper, so later on it made sense to combine music and writing. During the last half of the 1960s, I spent a fair amount of time as a graduate student, some of it at Columbia University.
During one of the all-night antiwar protests, I was sitting up talking to one of the guys covering the event for The Times. He knew that I wrote about folk, blues, and rock, for weekly newspapers and one magazine, Saturday Review. He told me that Bob Shelton, the Times' legendary folk critic who was the big champion of Dylan, had quit to write the biography that appeared casually 20 years later.
We critics only hurry when we have to.
My friend told me to send in my clips. I told him, "no one starts their daily newspaper career at The New York Times."
"Send in your clips," he said again.
Two weeks later I got my first job. Given the recent tendency of The New York Times to talk, in two sanctioned books as well as its own pages, about my groundbreaking assigment in the big building on Times Square, it's time to admit that what I did on my first job really was very cool indeed. Insofar as a werewolf can be cool, that is.
I learned that The Times had called me "the werewolf" when the fact appeared in the 1996 book, The Paper's Papers: A Reporter's Journey Through the Archives of the New York Times, by Richard F. Shepard, the werewolf's former editor. The story reappeared in February 2000 when Clifton Daniel passed away. In his full-page obituary, reporter Eric Pace told this story:
"Mr. Daniel relished his role in expanding The Times's coverage of arts news. 'Any newspaper that didn't cover a major industry in its community would be judged derelict,' he said. 'I thought the coverage should be conscientious, thoughtful, and thorough' ... In 1968, when The Times retained a long-haired culture writer as a rock critic, Mr. Daniel enjoyed breaking the news gently to the well-groomed former marine who was then the paper's publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger. 'His name is Mike Jahn,' Mr. Daniel wrote in a note to Mr. Sulzberger, 'and he is going to write pieces on folk/rock music.'
"Mr. Daniel went on to report that another editor had reassured him: 'Mr. Jahn wears his hair in a somewhat bizarre style--in fact he looks like a werewolf. But since his work will not require him to be in the office very much, I don't think he'll bite any of us.'"
Below, the werewolf in the city room in 1971 and three or four years ago.
I may have been the werewolf to the Times, but was the original "lizard king" to Rolling Stone. You will have to read my Doors page for the lowdown on that. Let me say only that I am almost certainly the only man mentioned by name in the Times obituary of Clifton Daniel and the Rolling Stone obituary of Jim Morrison. Unless Nixon is in both, a chilling possibility.
I started a series of mystery novels in the 1980s, using the name Michael Jahn. I won an Edgar Award and have published over 50 books. I have a site for my fiction, Michael Jahn's New York.
I also have a son who followed me into my line of work, much the way I followed my father into newspaper work. Evan is a New York rock marketing executive who had a lot to do with the success of three of the hottest acts of the past several years. Two of them won Grammies, and the third is a staple of Ozzfest. My daughter-in-law, Denise, is a major label sales executive. Their apartment is full of CDs, bicycle parts, back issues of Mojo, and reggae.
Not to mention the Tribble that Mr. Spock gave Evan that time the three of us were talking. We all get something from our dads.
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