-Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Is it odd for you to be interviewed by people?
-Well, it's odd to be interviewed visibly,
because I have the superpower of invisibility on the radio...
-You do. -...and you lose it on TV.
-Yeah. Because I got the --
I was honored. I got to be interviewed by you.
And, also, Questlove, as well.
[ Cheers and applause ]
It was so much fun,
but you don't see you in the interview.
I went into a phone booth -- that was what I remember --
and they shut the door, and I put headphones on,
and you go, "Hey, Jimmy." I go...
[ Laughter ]
"Hey -- Hey, Terry. How's it going?
Is this okay?"
I thought I was being interrogated.
But it was good.
It was a dark room, and where were you?
I was in New York. Were you in New York?
-I'm in a studio in Philadelphia,
and there's a big window
in which you can see onto the street,
but I like to be in a dark room...
-Yeah. -...listening to the guest.
-Yeah. -So I close the shades,
I dim the lights, and I listen.
-Is that the magic of it? Is that why it's so good?
-Well, you know -- -It's a great --
I mean, you've got -- -You can get really personal
when you're not being face-to-face sometimes.
You know, it's like pure --
The person's, like, going right into my ears.
-Yeah.
-And, also, I get to look at my notes.
Do you use notes?
-Yeah, sure. I mean, I have them.
Yes, I do have them, yeah. -I can't work without them.
I always have notes, and I always feel like,
if I have notes, and I'm looking at my notes,
and I'm breaking eye contact with the guest,
the guest thinks I'm not paying attention,
which isn't true, but they don't know that.
-That's right.
-So it's nice when I'm invisible.
I can have them in my ears and look at my notes
and everything's good.
-And you -- Gosh, you're a pro.
I mean, look -- this photo here.
This is -- you interviewed Bruce Springsteen.
So you read his book just to get some notes on Bruce
when you interview him.
Look at how much work -- Look at this poor book.
[ Laughter ] I mean, you --
Look at how many things are dog-eared and notes and --
-What I do is, I dog-ear each page
that I want to remember something on,
and I circle what I want to remember
and then type notes based on what I've circled.
-How great is that?
So, you've been doing this for 30 years?
-Nationally, and then longer than that locally.
-Wow. Let's talk about something
that's not "Fresh Air."
I want to know about your husband.
'Cause he's a jazz critic.
-He's a jazz critic who's written for a lot
of publications, several books.
And I met him at a record store.
A mutual friend of ours worked at the same record store he did,
which was on the University of Pennsylvania campus.
And it was just a few blocks away
from where the radio station used to be.
So I'd go in there to buy records,
and I knew that he had a huge record collection,
and this was in the '70s, so it was, like, all vinyl.
It wasn't a question of like, "Is it CD or vinyl or digital?"
-Yeah, or cassettes. it's nothing but --
Do you remember the name of the store?
-It was a small chain called Listening Booth.
-Oh, okay.
-Anyway, so I thought, you know --
The show was then local, three hours a day, five days a week.
I had a lot of time to fill.
-Wow! That's a lot of time to fill.
-I mean, this interview here, that we're doing,
this is, seriously -- -Six minutes, right?
-Six minutes, yeah.
Three hours? No way, man.
-So I had regular features, so I thought,
"Wouldn't it be great if I asked Francis
to do a regular feature in which he played something very rare,
something out of print, a jazz recording,
that only he would have?"
And he'd write a few words and say a few words about it.
So he wrote me this script.
It was so beautifully written.
His use of language was so great
that I started falling in love with him,
and his writing, and his taste in music
all at the same.
-But now you can't fire him.
If you replace him for three hours, you go,
"Well, he's now my boyfriend."
-And I didn't want to tell anybody at the station, either,
because I thought bad idea to have a relationship
with somebody you're working with, you know?
-But you fell in love.
-Yeah, well, what can you do? -Yeah, what can you do?
-So, eventually, people knew, and it was all okay.
-Oh, my gosh. I love that.
We do a thing on our show, some of the writers,
we do a night of Knicks and jazz,
where we go see a Knick game, and then we go see some jazz.
But you guys should pal around with us, if you're around.
-Oh, thank you.
-Yeah, we'd love to have you. It's fun.
One night, we did Knicks and jazz and jazz.
We went to -- -Wow.
That sounds likes when Louis CK
eats a meal and then eats another meal on your show.
[ Laughter ] -Exactly.
It's almost too much, but it wasn't.
It was just enough. It was great.
But anyways, you're more than welcome to come.
And I want to know, do you have any stories
where an interview just didn't go well?
-Oh, yeah. I mean that happens,
and people have walked out on me, too.
-Have walked out on you? -Most famously --
-But they're not even there with you.
[ Laughter ] -No, that's the thing.
-That's impossible. It's a magic act.
You can't chase them down the hall
and grab them and bring them back in when it's remote.
So, like, one example --
most famously, Bill O'Reilly walked out on me.
He accused me --
I asked him a few challenging questions
about whether he used the microphone
to settle scores or to get even with people.
Before I was even done with the question,
he accused me of throwing every defamation in the book at him,
and then made a little speech about,
"This is NPR. I know what this is.
I know what you're doing.
30 minutes of defamation."
And then he said, "If you think that's --"
He said, "If you think that's fair, Terry,
you should get out of this business."
And I'm thinking, "One of us still has a program."
[ Laughter, cheers, applause ]
♪♪♪♪
-There you go. That's how you do it.
That's pretty good.
Very good.
I love that.
Terry Gross!
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