Off The Beaten Track Interviews:

Right out of the box Melissa Etheridge was a force of nature. Chris Blackwell signed her to Island after seeing her perform at a couple of west coast venues. Prior to her debut album, Island released a four track sampler CD to press and radio. The artwork was similar to the album cover, it looked intriguing, so Michael gave it a listen. Upon listening to it once, he called Kathy Kenyon at Island in New York and said, is Melissa Etheridge coming to the east coast and will she be available for an interview? Kathy started laughing. Michael was the first member of the press to call.

The answers were yes, and yes. Island had scheduled Melissa Etheridge to do a concert reception for the press at The Bottom Line in New York. The following day, Melissa would be available for interviews and photo shoots. Due to a tight budget, Island had chosen The Grammercy Park Hotel. It was the only decent place left in the city where you could stay for $100 a night in 1988! Melissa would be there for 3 nights: Rehearsal, show and then a press day. Come for the show, stay over for an interview.

The show was amazing! It was the power of all those early songs, fresh to everyone’s ears, coupled with a confidence and self assuredness uncommon in a freshman recording artist. Melissa won over a tough, prove it to me crowd of press snobs, not easily impressed because, well, you know, they’d seen it all...but they hadn’t seen or heard Melissa! She fronted her four piece band with that big, acoustic 12-string front and center, using it as much as a percussion instrument as a stringed instrument. And, how to describe that voice? Gravel melodic? And powerful. Is there such a thing? What was on display that night was a major new artist taking flight.

The Bottom Line show was on May 19, 1988. It was not an SRO crowd...not quite...but almost. Most were there as guests of Island, but they did sell general admission tickets to that show, as well. There were probably a hundred or so paying customers and still some empty seats. 

It’s interesting to note that a little over a year later, Melissa would return to The Bottom Line for 8, count’em, 8 SOLD OUT nights! That much had happened in her career in a single year! The first night of that run, Melissa and her manager Bill Leopold asked Michael to join them in their limo as they made their way to The Bottom Line for the first night’s show. It was their way of saying thank-you for being the first at Melissa’s debut event and to request an interview the previous year. Michael was planning on being at the show, but wouldn’t you know, he had made a commitment to another artist to do an interview at the time the limo would depart. He kept that commitment, but joined Bill and Melissa later in the evening. A second interview with Melissa was done in conjunction with this second Bottom Line series of shows and to coincide with the release of her second album, Brave And Crazy. That second interview will be posted here at some point in the future.

This interview was the first east coast US interview done for radio, conducted 18 days after the release of  Melissa Etheridge’s debut album. It was conducted the morning after her auspicious debut performance for the press at The Bottom Line in New York City.  Upon arriving at The Grammercy Park Hotel, Michael saw Melissa sitting on a window seat in the hotel lobby. She was in the middle of a photo shoot for New Musical Express (NME), the British music industry newspaper. For whatever reason, Michael made a face and Melissa, not missing a cue, made a face right back. The NME guy wondered what was going on. He seemed a little miffed that somebody was messing with his photo shoot. No sense of humor. 

Once the shoot was over, Michael and Melissa made their way up to her room. As The Grammercy Park evolved as a hotel, the owners bought up an adjoining property to increase room capacity. Problem was, the floor structure was not quite the same as the original building. It was a half floor off. So to remedy the situation, they installed an elevator that would stop at half floor increments. Michael’s thought as they walked through endless hallways, crossing the threshold from one building to another,  finding their way to Melissa’s room on the fourth floor of the second building was, ‘Wow! I wonder if this is what it was like trying to navigate the Titanic under duress!’  He said to Melissa, “You do know if there’s a fire in this building the outcome probably won’t be good, right?” Melissa responded, “Yeah, I thought about that...heaven forbid!”

During this interview, Melissa is at ease and basking in the success of her first major encounter with the press in New York. She’s relaxed, funny, and the conversation seems very warm, as though Melissa and Michael had known each other for far longer that the 12 or so hours since they had first met the night before. Melissa Etheridge is like that. She’s quick to make you feel comfortable. That comes from her being very confident in her own skin. She talks about her parents, Berklee College of Music which she attended, getting signed to Island and having to scrap the original recording sessions for her debut album when she and her label realized they were going down the wrong path. It’s a delightful introduction to an artist at the very beginning of her musical career. 

The interview was coordinated by Island Records’ Publicist Kathy Kenyon and by Bill Leopold, manager of Melissa Etheridge.