Robert Rosen

In this conversation, my returning guest (see episodes 189 – 245 – 266) discusses his recent visit to Spain, where a belated Beatlemania is in full swing. He also offers his insights on the recent May Pang documentary, The Lost Weekend: A Love Story, as well as his take on David Whelan's investigation into John Lennon's murder and Lennon's preoccupation with "lucid dreaming."

–Robert Rodriguez

The author of Nowhere Man returns for a conversation prompted by the book's recent re-publication, augmented with an array of new material and appendices. Among the subjects we talked about this time round were: 

• May Pang
• Fred Seaman
• Early 1970s US politics and its coverage in Observation Post
• His upcoming book, tentatively titled No Future
• John's opinion of Double Fantasy
• Jack Douglas
• John's murder
• The Manchurian Candidate Theory
• Robert's purported role in John Lennon's murder

–Robert Rodriguez

Bringing the War Home to 11th Street
The Weathermen thought they could change the world with bombs, but their self-inflicted disaster was the beginning of the end of their revolution
by Robert Rosen

245: Catch and Kill – Controlling The Narrative with Robert Rosen

Returning guest Robert Rosen (Nowhere Man) penned an essay last year discussing a phenomenon called "catch-and-kill," wherein the powerful who wish to keep unflattering stories from reaching the public exert pressure and influence to keep media companies from publishing them. In the instances he wrote about, a pair of book projects detailing life at the Dakota during John Lennon's final five years were suppressed, for no apparent reason beyond the estate wishing to keep any variance from the narrative they have been controlling for decades to be challenged in any way. This led to a discussion on the why and the how these stories are being kept hidden, despite the legitimacy of the narrators. —Robert Rodriguez

189: A Conversation with Robert Rosen

My guest today is best known in Beatles world for having published Nowhere Man (originally in 2000 but since revised in 2015), a book in part drawn from Rosen's exclusive access to John Lennon's diaries. He is also the author of the newly published memoir, Bobby in Naziland, a telling of his coming of age in Flatbush during the late 50s and early 60s. Rosen's work captures the essence of time and place, with an eye for detail and an ear for the rhythm; true for both of the aforementioned titles. —Robert Rodriguez

Talking with Evolved Idiots' Matthew Nathaniel about Nowhere Man, Beaver Street, and Bobby in Naziland/A Brooklyn Memoir

Talking with MindDog TV's Matt Nappo about Bobby in Naziland, Nowhere Man, and Beaver Street

Author Robert Rosen joins me to talk about his 2000 book on the last years of John Lennon's life, as told through the diaries that Robert transcribed in the early 80s, as well as his new book, Bobby In Naziland, which details his early life growing up in a neighbourhood of Brooklyn still living under the shadow of World War II. —Antony Rotunno

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Talking with María Martín, from El Submarí Groc, about Nowhere Man and how I edited John Lennon's diaries. In English with Spanish subtitles

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For sixteen years Robert Rosen worked behind the X-rated scenes of such porn magazines as High Society, Stag, and D-Cup. In Beaver Street: A History of Modern Pornography, Rosen blows the lid off the lucrative and politically hounded adult industry, providing a darkly engaging account of its tumultuous decades—from the defining Traci Lords scandal and the conception of "free" phone sex to the burgeoning success of smut in cyberspace in the twenty-first century.

Beaver Street is now available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Strand, Powell's, Left Bank Books, and McNally Jackson. You can also download it on Kindle, Nook, Kobo, iTunes, and all other e-book formats.

An excerpt from my interview with Kendra Holliday, editor of The Beautiful Kind, conducted at Shameless Grounds, a sex-positive coffeehouse in St. Louis, where I'd begun my 2012 promotional tour for the U.S. edition of Beaver Street. Here, I explain my so-called "experiment in participatory journalism"—posing for an X-rated photo shoot to gain insight into the mind of a porn star. Click here to see more interview excerpts.

In this segment from the Rew & Who? Internet TV show, the conversation turns to Beaver Street, and later to the book I was writing at the time, Bobby in Naziland. Click here to see more Beaver Street interviews, promo videos, and the Nowhere Man segment from Rew & Who?

In Beaver Street, I write about my officemate at Swank Publications, who's both the managing editor of For Adults Only magazine and a professional actor who specializes in playing Nazis. (He's probably best known as The Weeping Nazi in the premiere episode of Late Night with Conan O'Brien.) In the book I call him "Henry Dorfman." Since Beaver Street was published, he's asked me to use his real name—Paul Slimak—and has done a series of promotional videos for the book playing his favorite character, renegade Nazi Erich von Pauli. Erich von Pauli on Beaver Street: Episode 3 (above)—featuring Agnes Herrmann as Diana Clerkenwell—caught the attention of Village Voice columnist Michael Musto. Click here to see more von Pauli videos.

Talking Beaver Blues on Rew & Who?