Andy Hibel 0:05
Welcome to the HigherEdJobs podcast. I'm Andy Hibel, the chief operating officer and one of the co-founders of HigherEdJobs

Kelly Cherwin 0:11
And I'm Kelly Cherwin, the director of editorial strategy. Today, we're joined by Dr. Warren Zanes, The New York Times bestselling author, a former professor at Case Western Reserve University, the School of Visual Arts and Rochester Institute of Technology. Zanes is the editor of Collections and Jimmy Rodgers and Tom Petty and has written books including Dusty in Memphis Revolutions and Sound 50 Years of Warner Records, Records and Petty, The biography, which Rolling Stone named one of the top ten music books of 2015. He has been involved in documentary projects, including 20 Feet from Stardom, George Harrison, living in the Material World and The Gift, The Journey of Johnny Cash. He is currently at work on a series of books. A former member of Warner Brothers Recording Act, The Del Fuego, has Zanes solo recordings for Dualtone Records include People That I'm Wrong for the Biggest Bankrupt City in the World and the Collected Warren Zanes. Warren, thank you so much for joining us today.

Warren Zanes 1:07
Thank you so much for having me.

Mike Walker 1:10
And thank you for joining us for the second half of our conversation with Dr. Warren Zanes.

Andy Hibel 1:16
If there's something we've learned through the HigherEdJobs journey over the decades, that if you're feeling something about your career right now, I can 100% tell you many other people are feeling it and going through the bumps and dips of the road on a day to day basis. Everybody goes through that. We've talked about mentorship and sponsorship and allyship. That's all great. But people used to come up to the booth and I really, really encourage people to talk to us. That's what we're here for. We have lived with our friends who use the website on a day to day basis and understand the plight that everybody goes through. It's a shared experience. There's nothing wrong with your job.

Warren Zanes 1:59
Well, there you've kind of given an answer to your first question here. How can what Bruce Springsteen did with Nebraska be instructive for someone who is an academic? Well, you're describing is like allowing a certain vulnerability about being on a college campus as an educator. Talk about it shows some of the vulnerability. Springsteen showed some vulnerability in and ended up being empowering to others. And it can work like that. But that model is, I know, from recovery. So I've been in recovery for a long time, and it's really affected me as a classroom teacher because the basic model of recovery is to addicts come together and they get honest, vulnerable, mutually identify, and then feel more comfortable in the world, which means less need for whatever the addictive quantity is, and particularly in the classroom post-pandemic. I saw a student accommodations rise like 75%. It was just astounding. There was obviously an underreported mental health crisis afoot, and I felt like on the side of the classroom teacher, it was the time to get a little bit more vulnerable, able to be a little less perfect to wear the professorial authority a little lighter, get a little more human, because I saw students looking for that. And, you know, it's a tricky line to find because you want that classroom to be an appropriate, safe place, but at the same time, show your humanness in such a way that the students humanness can come forward a little bit. And it's not it's not easy to do because I feel like it's such a there's so much about performance, you know, you're that, you know, to bring up the cliche publish or perish that's been such an emphasis for so long that I think it's left less room for the kind of vulnerability that a lot of students are looking for right now. But I think there's a way to navigate this that is sane, appropriate and responsive to the moment.

Andy Hibel 4:37
I think one of the reasons and we asked to have you share a little bit more about this deeply personal story about the portrait and your conversation to really kind of get at where we are. And we appreciate you doing this. But I was also kind of like the why why at this point in his life, basically, the book kind of sets out that this is a crossroads for him professionally. He has I think somebody described it in the book as his art film and his blockbuster both going on right at the same time. And he's trying to put himself in a position to be able to handle whatever it is in his blockbuster. And he wants to see himself as who he was becoming. And the battle to reconcile the answers he had to all of the two extremes of his life. He was, as I think, kind of the title of the book suggests he was trying to deliver himself from nowhere. You know, in the songs there were no easy answers, an absence of redemption and an absence of hope. He used his work, his art, to search for those answers. We talked a bit about that. But we know Born in USA happened and we know everything that's ensued as he's become a basically a very, very public figure for many decades now in the American world. But one of the things that when I'm reading this that kind of struck me was the podcast he did a few years ago with President Obama in the episode entitled Money and the American Dream. They both talk about their career left turns and used the term salvation, redemptive and quote unquote, feeling whole. To compare their career choices, while Nebraska enabled him to go on and make Born the USA. Do you feel at the time, maybe not in the long arc, but at the time it given him the salvation, redemption or becoming whole that he seemed to be looking for at that crossroads?

Warren Zanes 6:32
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I use the image of, you know, letting things break down before rebuilding. I think he needed to to go through that. I'll tell you, there's a there is a thread in in my work that ties a lot of it because popular music is is filled with people who have gone through this experience. But what I'm referring to is, is the wild kind of ascent of, you know, a kid from Freehold, New Jersey, who becomes Bruce Springsteen, a kid from Gainesville, Florida, who becomes Tom Petty. These lives that they're living as adults are so far removed from where they were as children. It it I would not want that for myself. I remember coming back from seeing Tom Petty in Malibu and saying to my sons, Our lives are just the right size. Like they're just the right size. Like, it's complicated going out the door for people who've had those tremendous journeys. And I think they're I think they're it's it's rough. I think it's hard on the human mind, heart and body and in that period, he went through something like I use that saying, you know, if you don't deal with your past, your past will deal with you. He went back and he kind of dealt with his past and there was risk involved, psychological risk, career risk. So that he was ready for a born in the USA. You know, I talk about what Elvis meant to someone like Bruce Springsteen. Elvis was so important in their upbringing and then look at his end as a cautionary tale. It made Springsteen's generation really have some ambivalence about success. Yes, if that's where it ends. And Springsteen needed to go through the breaking down the rebuilding, I believe, so that he could go through that. And there's a consciousness to it. But he didn't just like, do it and say, now it's done. His relationship to his hometown is not just fodder for a song like I've I've watched it and he was doing it obsessively in that period now, getting in his car, driving past where his grandparents house was driving past, you know, the duplex that had lived in and Freehold as a kid driving past where the factory was. He has kept this kind of umbilical cord to his early experiences

healthy. You know, it's Tom Petty would talk about Gainesville, Florida, but the way he process it was different. And I think what allowed Bruce to go from Nebraska to Born in the USA is something that he's carried on with, which is like, stay connected. Stay connected despite the changes to your circumstances. Stay connected. Like he he does this. I think I'm not speaking out of turn, but he gets together with guys who were in cover bands when he was in cover bands, guys his age from Freehold in that area. And they go have pizza where they had pizza. And he's not doing it for them. I don't believe they're getting a lot out of it. He's doing it for himself. Like, he's kind of buttressing himself in the world. And so those wild career arcs, he's made it work. So what you're talking about, like his conversations with Obama, there's there two guys who have that extreme situation. And we're told, you know, the kind of Horatio Alger type of American dream story. We idealize that as like, you got it all, not seeing what people get put through when they, quote, get it all. And I like writing stories about these people because I can't believe they did it. And I want to know how they did or did not survive it. And Springsteen, it's just become ever more clear that he very consciously nurtures the connection. And I in my own little life, I haven't done that. You know, I think we all need to do it on different scales. And, you know, it's another one of those damn if Bruce can do it. I can do it kind of thing.

Kelly Cherwin 11:48
Well, we're glad that you are enjoying writing stories because you are such a good storyteller. Like we're I think I can speak for everyone in here saying we are fascinated by these stories. But I want to switch over to your career. You just mentioned the career arc. You mentioned that, you know, your your path to academia wasn't a straight line. So I'm curious, you know, how did you go from being a guitar player in Del Fuegos goes to Professor Warren Zanes and what kind of left turn did you take to get there?

Warren Zanes 12:18
You know, my first. So as the doorway goes, we put out three records on Slash Warner Brothers, and we did the overture to ZZ Top. We toured with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers with INXS, and then really it came down to two Brothers Fighting and I'm the little brother. And so I quit the band and my next job was too much of a left turn. I was a bike mechanic, bicycle mechanic, motorcycle mechanic in New Orleans, and it was tough. Like I when I was a mechanic, I heard Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever record I Won't Back Down, I think was the first single. And I got my hands are covered in grease and I'm working on a Schwinn. And the guy that we'd just been on tour with, I'm listening to his new record and I'm like, What happened? And the woman I was dating,

she she was in graduate school and I was a bike mechanic. And I think she kind of looked over in my direction. What you know, I'm I'm not going for success to success with this guy. And she recommended that I not put all my eggs in one basket. And I didn't even know I had a basket and I didn't know I had a basket

So I had to ask her what she meant. And she said, Well, really what I mean is usually go take some college classes. And I'd never been to college. And so I found my car had been crushed by a tree. True story. So I looked at a map and I found the closest college, which is Loyola University. And I walked down there and I never applied to college. Like, I walked into the admissions office and I said, I went to Phillips Andover Academy and I graduated. And I just want to take a couple classes because I'm trying to stay in a relationship. And they looked at me like I was crazy.

And that and I took I took a history of philosophy and women's literature. You know, like the message being like, I plan to think deeply about women and my girlfriend was going to see it and keep me. But what happened was I fell in love with school Like I, I, I loved both of those classes. And I did not stop until I had a Ph.D. And I remember the professor who taught women's literature sat me down at the end, and she said, Warren, I can see that you really like that. And I just want to caution you against going and getting a Ph.D.. Now, I'd taken two college classes and she's saying this to me, and I said, No need to worry. That is the most ludicrous thing I've ever heard. And then next thing I knew, I had a Ph.D. and. But what happened where it got, you know, initially confusing, but in retrospect, in a good way was I had my first job interview at the University of Georgia to be in their art history program. And in the course of that, there was an article in The New York Times about my brother and me in Sunday Styles. They did this a night out with the Zain's brother and somebody at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame read that article and a headhunter called me and said, We have a vice president of educational programs position we'd like you to apply. And the salary was three times what I would get as a professor. You know, I had no money in the bank. And they said part of the job would be to be a visiting professor at Case Western Reserve University. And this looked good for many reasons. And my biggest concern was that I was going to lose all punk rock credibility. I was going to work for the man. And so that was the only reason I waffled on it. I was completely wrong. It was an amazing position. I got to keep a foot in the academic while I was working directly with artists. Really. It's like my path would have been different without that job, and I had it completely wrong. And I was also anxious about leaving the straight academic path. I was like, boy, I could I could cross over into this world, try to turn back and no one wants me. Music doesn't want me. Academia doesn't want me. And and there's nowhere to go. And I was I just had it wrong. Like, hybridity was possible. And then I got a small book deal and just a thing that looked like a mismanaged career started to look like a carefully curated job experience, and the gods were at work.

Kelly Cherwin 17:36
That's a fantastic story. Thank you for that. And I also wanted to comment. I want to interrupt earlier when you were saying how you when you're in the classroom, how you acknowledge that the students truly needed you to kind of step away from the stiff professor role and touch base with them? More on a personal level, I love that story. So thank you for for doing that. I'm sure your students are lucky to have had you as professor.

Warren Zanes 17:59
So my stepfather. Well, I had a couple of stepfathers between my two parents. There were either eight or nine marriages when I said I was raised by wolves, I mean it honestly. But my mother's third husband, he got his PhD from Yale. And and I remember when his former students would come to visit him. And this is before I was teaching, and we didn't know who these people were or why they were there. And, you know, they were really there to honor something that had happened to them in the classroom. And it really stuck with me like that. His name is Harry Butterworth, and he didn't do particularly well in academia, if you measured it with standard measurement. But the return of these students and the way they came to see him, he did well in academia.

Kelly Cherwin 18:59
That's awesome.

Warren Zanes 18:59
You know that made a mark.

Andy Hibel 19:02
And I really think when when I'm hearing your story and I'm hearing the story you're telling about Bruce, it's very specific that this is all about identity being who you are. This isn't somebody else's career. This isn't somebody else's choices. These are yours. And if they're true to who you are, there's an authenticity that comes through that, whether you're teaching or you're performing or whatever profession you're doing or you're performing that authenticity. And I see this in Nebraska. It's awesome to see somebody once again in 2024 who's just who they are, imperfections and all. And people relate to that.

Warren Zanes 19:43
Yeah. Bruce, I think is a master and Nebraska is a masterpiece in that sense. Like he really boiled it down to the essence of who he was and what he did and knew it was an unconventional move. It just went against the grain of the time. It went against the grain of the business, but it was the thing that he was feeling was most completely him and trusted that that was enough. And the fact that when he put it out, he wouldn't do interviews, he wouldn't tour. Like all the things you do to promote, he said. When it was done and it was released, it was the listeners business to figure out what it meant. And he had such trust in what it created. It's like that I aspire to that level and it's hard to do. It's hard to do. I'll tell you, with this book, I wrote it twice. There's another version. It's two times as long, and my editor and my agent,

they're very good. They got people who are way bigger than Moore and Zane and they stick with me and I love them for that. But they're also very smart. They I don't know if they were drawing straws to see who was going to talk to me, but my editor came in a gentle and kind way and said, We don't think this is the book he meant to write. And there was one day where it stung, and then I started the book that was published and I took the first version and I just turned it into a parts department and, you know, put it kind of by topic and and time and categories busted it out into folders and wrote another book and it was shorter and it was the right book because sometimes, you know, I think Bruce really did it by himself. He boiled it down to the essence of who he was. I need help sometimes doing and I think what my agent and editor together did was they helped me get out of my own way and to distill that thing and the result is the result. Like this was supposed to be a smaller book project. It's just about an album. It's not a full biography. And what it's gone out into the world and started doing back flips. And I'm just watching from afar going like, Oh, it's an amazing experience that when you make something and you send it out and it does things that it does and you're like, Oh, I didn't do that.

Kelly Cherwin 22:39
Well, you actually set me up for my next question. Really?

Andy Hibel 22:42
Well, perfect.

Kelly Cherwin 22:44
Andy, I'm like,

Andy Hibel 22:46
That was like, the perfect,

Kelly Cherwin 22:46
You like, yes. I'm like, Oh, So speaking of your book, one of the messages in your book about Nebraska was Springsteen asking himself, Do I want the success that I'm about to get? So you said that when you felt down in your life, you've reached for Nebraska, so now you've reached Nebraska as a subject of your book. And by all accounts, it's been a huge success with the book being named 2023 NPR Best Book of the Year, and a film in the works starring Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen. How prepared were you for this success?

Warren Zanes 23:20
My Life won't change. Like when my kids come home from college, everything look the same. So when I was talking about those lives, like Springsteen's, like Tom Petty's, you know, I just read a memoir by Jamaica Kincaid grew up in Antigua, and, you know, then teaching at Bennington, these are big changes. I have furniture from my mother's house and it fits right in here. So this is not to downplay the success of the book. It's done. Like I just said, it's done some wild stuff that I could only marvel at, and it's thrilling, but it's still the kind of success that, you know, the clothes in the closet are the same. So it has been really helpful to me in my my writing life is Peter Guralnick, who I just think is the best music writer out there. You know, he is, as you know, when the big thing happens again, I hope I'm not speaking out of turn, but it's like, don't forget, that's my house money, that's grocery money. And it always, you know, from afar, it's like, oh, my ship's coming in. And then when it actually gets there, it's like it's grocery money. It's a little more secure pretty for down the road, but it's not that big. The again, I think it's the gods looking down and going, How much can Warren really handle?

Kelly Cherwin 24:55
Oh, well, Warren, I love how authentic you are. And we can tell like how grateful you are to have, you know, experience what you have in life. But I know one of your biggest roles is probably you keep mentioning your son. So being a dad is probably one of the most successful things you can probably manage. So you wrote that the book was written if you were talking to your sons about making meaningful art. So I believe that art or work that is truly meaningful is always consistent with who you are. So what would you tell your sons if they chose to be educators about finding meaning in their work?

Warren Zanes 25:26
My boys are 20 and 22 and and both are in school now and we do talk about that because it's really the key educators in my life haven't always been in the classroom, but they've been foundational for me. And so when we talk about it, it's a little less as classroom teachers. And what is it? It's a kind of service almost. And I've really I'm a guy who never really knew my father. I only met him a handful of times. But I've had men in my life who've been really important in me finding my way and me finding out who I am. And that's the educator category. So when I'm talking to Lucian and Pietro about it, it's it's in the broad sense. And I see Pietro A he had a really late breaking interest in hockey because his best friend was just this girl who is a great hockey player and kind of in tribute to her, he started playing hockey like got on the JV team in 11th grade, having learned to skate the previous year, you know, was just like, They're going to eat you up, man. But now he goes back and works with the JV team and with the coach. And then he started teaching younger kids and he's he doesn't even think he's doing it for them. He really is a good educator in the sense is like he's thinking about what he's getting from the experience of working with them. So that's a great experience as father, my older son Lucian is is going to school in Wales Royal Welsh for acting. He started at SUNY Purchase and then got it an HBO series, A Steven Soderbergh production took a year, did that, and in the middle of it felt like he needed more training and just started applying to schools in the UK. And we listen to a lot of podcasts with actors and I feel like the ones who have the longer careers are all just organically teachers because they've been taught so much that they just imperceptibly become teachers themselves and solution and I will talk about that. I also say in the acknowledgements to the book, I describe it entertainment as the disappointment business. And that's not to say don't do it, it's just know it's hard. And what you do when you don't get the thing you're aiming for is like pivot. And in the acting profession, one way to pivot is like right in to teaching. So I can see both these guys as educators are ready. You know, it's much more a mindset than anything because I've ended up feeling hurt when I think of it as a in the strict sense, a job. I've got to be more fluid because it's it's a rough place in the academic world. And when you're cultivating a hybridity like I am, I want to be a musician, I want to be writing songs, I want to be writing books, I want to be teaching, I want to be working with movies. If you are that greedy for experience, you're not going to fit perfectly in academia and at times you're going to feel that as a kind of hurt. You don't belong there. So it's like, I want my guys to stay fluid and recognize that teaching goes on everywhere, that it is a mindset. But also if they want to formalize it, formalize it like it can be, can be a great life. And it's a bit of a family tradition. And that's one of the better things about the family I come from. So...

Kelly Cherwin 29:39
Thank you for that.

Andy Hibel 29:40
Thank you, Warren. We really appreciate you spending so much time with us and sharing so much about your experience of of what you've learned from these left turns in writing the book. But also just hearing about your own career path and in your own deep satisfaction from the the work you do in teaching. So we really appreciate it.

Warren Zanes 30:01
Thank you so much for having me. I love the, I love the deeper conversation.

Andy Hibel 30:07
And if you have any questions for Warren or questions for us or comments, please feel free to email us at podcast@HigherEdJobs. com or send us a direct message on X @higheredcareers. Thank you for listening. We'll talk to you soon.