Our guest: Harry Shapiro

Harry Shapiro is an author -- more specifically, a rock biographer.

Harry is known for biographies of Jimi Hendrix, Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton, and Bob Dylan among others. He has also written for many magazines such as Mojo, Classic Rock, Record Collector, and Blues in Britain. He also had the chance to write liner notes for various record labels. 

About his creative process

The way he gathers and organizes information, every book he has done has been different. He tends to start with the family of the artist since they are the gateway. Usually, he likes to make sure the family knows that he doesn’t have any bad intentions when writing about the artist, and then comes the other part of the process. Which is the recounting of facts, essentially, people tend to forget or misremember the facts which may prove to be a challenge for them. It can be a big triangulation process to fill in the big picture. 

In every interview, people give him bits of information that are valuable. He describes it as a jigsaw puzzle, and even 6 seconds or a quote out of a 30-minute interview is incredibly helpful in building someone’s life story. 

Of course, he has to select what to leave in and out of each book in order to make it factual but also interesting. 

His current project on John Campbell

Up until now, he’s been writing about specific eras he is familiar with. Currently, he is writing about an unsung hero, John Campbell from Shreveport, Louisiana. Last summer, while looking through his library he found an article about John Campbell and reached out to people on Facebook, and was able to reach his family. So far, Harry believes the process for this book has been very fascinating.

John was an exceptional musician who put out incredibly usual music for his genre. He was a gentleman and everyone has had something nice to say about him so far, which also says a lot about him. 

People from all over have been very helpful by sending Harry pictures and memorabilia from John to add to his biography. 

His advice for those looking to start a similar project

He says that the way he started was at a really boring job and then realized that he wanted to do something that would help him express himself. So he started writing about something he liked: music and musicians. And that’s how he started, by doing something he liked and cared about. Talking to people and putting a bit of his enthusiasm into each book. 

Essentially, a writer writes. A writer doesn’t just sit and wait.