Q+A: Lily Moayeri on Her Favorite Music Books and Writing from a Personal Place
Interview with a journalist, podcaster and educator!
Lily Moayeri
Today, we welcome Lily Moayeri, who describes herself as “music journalist since 1992, educator since 2004, podcaster since 2020 and Iranian American since birth.” She’s a Teacher Librarian in Los Angeles, a longtime friend and colleague and the first person to join the Music Book Club!
Tamara Palmer/Music Book Club: First off, thank you for being the official first member of Music Book Club, and for supporting us with authors, members and ideas. We have really appreciated it! What would you like to see happen in this space that we aren't doing?
Lily Moayeri: Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed starting my mornings listening to replays of your virtual author appearances. They made for good podcast-style content. Because the conversations were so in-depth, I ended up reading the books (or mostly listening to the audiobooks) of every guest you had on Music Book Club. Having said that, I like referencing points made in your author Q+As as well. In other words, pun intended, keep doing all the things you’re doing.
We've been trying to get together for a long time to talk about your experience writing a chapter of The Life, Death, and Afterlife of the Record Store: A Global History. How did the opportunity to write a chapter come about for you, and what does the experience of actually doing it mean to you? How does it fit in with other work of a personal nature that you have done in recent years?
It might have been you who brought my attention to the call Gina Arnold put out in a Facebook group about chapter proposals for what ended up being The Life, Death, and Afterlife of the Record Store. I sent Gina a message suggesting I write about a cassette shop in Tehran, Iran that used to be across the street from our home and how during the Islamic Revolution, I watched rioters and protesters break its windows and destroy all the merchandise. Gina encouraged me to send through a chapter proposal, which I did, and it was accepted.
That was summer of 2020. Until that year, I shied away from talking about anything to do with Iran, let alone writing about it. When we left Iran for the final time in 1986, I put my experiences post-Islamic Revolution in my rearview. In fact, I put a lot of effort into whitewashing myself and distancing myself from anything Middle Eastern.
Many years ago, Sam Wick, who was my editor at Surface Magazine and later, Planet Mag, who had heard about my experiences accessing Western music via an underground network in Tehran asked me to write about it, but I refused. Partially because I didn’t want to be associated with it, but mainly because I didn’t think I had the writing skills.
But Sam’s idea remained with me and in 2019, I tossed it around the dinner table with my best friend Sally Gross and her reaction and perspective motivated me to approach the Los Angeles Times with the idea. Craig Marks, the music editor at the time, accepted my pitch with the caveat that I find people like myself in the ‘80s in Iran in the present day.
I had a very difficult time writing that piece and wouldn’t have been able to do it without my husband, Laurence Schroeder, who is my secret weapon at-home editor. He dragged me into an uncomfortable space and wasted zero words telling me what was wrong with my piece until it became what you see today. He sat with me through lots of tears and frustration and sadness. Through writing that article, I realized I had PTSD from my experiences with the Islamic Republic, which made me seriously angry.
That Los Angeles Times story, “Tech is Music to Their Ears,” was my first time writing anything about Iran. It was published in the March 8, 2020 Sunday edition as a big feature in the Arts & Entertainment section. Once I navigated that hurdle, writing personal stories about Iran wasn’t a taboo area for me anymore.
The chapter for The Life, Death, and Afterlife of the Record Store, which is an academic book, has historical research from databases as its scaffold, but the core of it is personal narratives, not just from me but from friends and family who shared their experiences with accessing Western music from the ‘50s through to the present time. Gina was a tremendous editor. She saw trends and patterns in my writing that I was too close to have perspective on. Her input allowed me to have a broader understanding of my own experiences. The chapter is kind of a square peg in the book, but I love that. And when I saw Geoff Travis from Rough Trade Records namechecked it in his quote about the book, that rocked my world.
There was a gap of a year and a half between the LA Times article and the starting of my chapter and another year or so before I wrote my next Iran-related article. That piece was about, inarguably, the most popular Iranian singer of all time, Googoosh, in the context of the Woman Life Freedom movement that kicked off in 2022. It was published in SPIN. Again, I had a positive editing experience as my editor, Liza Lentini, was very thoughtful in her observations and direction, pushing me to share more personal experiences, at the same time being very sensitive to my trauma. We were both super-happy with the final product and I’m so proud of that piece.
After that, Shirley Halperin, my then editor at Variety, came to me with the idea of a listicle of Iranian protest songs other than “Baraye.” It was a stroke of genius on her part, which is pretty common with Shirley. Once I went down that wormhole, I discovered many Iranian musicians whose work touched me deeply, not the least of which are Toomaj Salehi, whom I’ve written about quite a bit, and Justina, whom I had the honor of interviewing for Under the Radar Magazine’s current Protest Issue. I’ve connected with several Iranian creatives since 2022, some of whom have become good friends such as Ali Pink of Techno Tehran Records and Arash Rahbary from the heavy metal group, TarantisT. Being exposed to such great Iranian talent motivated me to approach the different publications I write for and pitch them a range of Iran/music-related ideas. I say this often, but I’m so grateful to all my editors who give me the space and support for these musicians from a country whose government is mistaken for its people and a people who are so brutally oppressed.
Once I started writing stories about Iran (all of which you can find aggregated here), I discovered I was able to write other personal stories on subjects that were just as difficult to broach for me. There are a couple of them in Faith Fanzine: “Raving Away the Pain” about grieving the deaths of my mother and sister on the dancefloor, and “Lily and Laurence Go to Berghain” about being an aging raver looking at entry to Berghain as a sign of validation.
Do your students show interest in music books, or have you turned them onto any particular titles?
Our students’ interests tend to be trend- and pop culture-based. For example, when the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody was released, there were a lot of requests for books on Queen and/or Freddie Mercury. Kurt Cobain is always of interest, as is Jim Morrison. Students also gravitate toward those skinny school library books about specific current day rappers. Speaking of rappers, Tupac Shakur’s poetry books are regularly checked out. I’ve also noticed he’s the musician most referenced in young adult novels. When Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner’s stellar memoir Crying in H Mart was released, many of our Asian students asked for it, but I don’t think anyone actually finished it, which is a shame. That’s a stunning book.
Could you recommend any music books that you've read recently to us?
It’s not recent, but I’m still reeling from Crying in H Mart. A couple of years ago, before the WHAM! documentary premiered on Netflix, I went to a screening followed by a Q+A with the director. He recommended Andrew Ridgeley’s book, WHAM! George Michael & Me: A Memoir, but suggested listening to Andrew reading the audiobook. I took his advice and from that moment got hooked on listening to musicians reading their books.
Last year, I read/listened to and can recommend Boy George’s latest autobiography, Karma, Kathleen Hanna’s Rebel Girl, Moon Unit Zappa’s Earth to Moon, Jenny Boyd’s Jennifer Juniper (2020), DJ Paulette’s Welcome to the Club: The Life and Lessons of a Black Woman DJ, as well as Renegade Snares: The Resistance and Resilience of Drum & Bass (2021) by Ben Murphy and Carl Loben. I also listened to Dan Charnas and Danyel Smith read the books they were talking about on Music Book Club. I just finished listening to Alex Van Halen read his memoir, Brothers, which was great. I recently received Ella Fitzgerald: The Official Graphic Novel, which is gorgeous. I love graphic novels and I learn a lot from nonfiction ones. The musician titles are particularly moving. I loved Billie Holiday written by Carlos Sampayo and illustrated by José Antonio Muñoz and Miles Davis and the Search for Sound by Dave Chisholm.
Obviously, I’m a library fan. I check out audiobooks and ebooks on Los Angeles Public Library’s Libby and Hoopla Digital apps and listen/read them on my devices. Here is a link to my Goodreads. I’m very good about logging every book I finish–a positive thing that came out of the pandemic.
Despite your infectious love of books and your extensive interview archive, why don't you want to write a book? Could anything change your mind?
Ack! This is brought up to me often. Honestly, I’m not sure what the book would be. Is it about my experiences as a Western music lover in a fundamentalist theocratic dictatorship where all music is forbidden? Katherine Turman suggested turning those experiences into a short story collection. Is it a compilation of my interviews with artists like Noel Gallagher, Johnny Marr, Chris Martin, Robert Smith, Daft Punk and the like? I’m already publishing those to the paid and founding members tiers of my Substack, plus sharing the audio for the interviews in my Pictures of Lily Podcast (Vintage Edition), which is 100% free. Is it a collection of interviews like what I did with my Carl Craig cover story for Faith Fanzine where I revisit a classic interview with an artist and conduct a fresh interview with them in the context of the original interview? I loved what Nelson George said in your Q+A about creating a collectible book that includes print articles along with memorabilia. I have so many passes and all my ticket stubs and even the odd photo here and there, and I have every single magazine in which I had anything published. Is that it? You tell me what it should be.
Previously in our Q+A series:
Megan Volpert on Why Alanis Morissette Matters and Writing 15 Books in 18 Years
Mark Swartz on Biggie + Yoko Ono as a Crime-Fighting Duo and Other Fictional Ideas
Annie Zaleski on Cher, Stevie Nicks and Pushing Past Writing Fears
Nelson George on His Next Book and Making Mixtapes in Paper Form
Michaelangelo Matos on Writing and Editing Music Books
Thank you again for having me!