Mike Edison is a New York-based writer, editor, musician, social critic, and spoken word artist. He was one of many publishers/editors of the marijuana counterculture magazine High Times, and was later named editor-in-chief of Screw, the self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Newspaper." In his memoir I Have Fun Everywhere I Go, Edison recounts his adventures across twenty years of druggy adventurism and his parallel careers as a magazine editor, writer, and musician. His other books include the sprawling history of American men's magazines, Dirty! Dirty! Dirty!: Of Playboys, Pigs, and Penthouse Paupers, An American Tale of Sex and Wonder; the political satire Bye, Bye Miss American Pie; several collaborations including Restaurant Man with Joe Bastianich and The Carnivore's Manifesto with Slow Food USA founder Patrick Martins; and most recently, Sympathy for the Drummer: Why Charlie Watts Matters, a history and appreciation of the Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts, and the history of blues and rock ’n ’roll drumming. Edison speaks frequently on free speech, and the American counterculture. Between 2011 and 2018, Edison was the host and producer of the weekly Heritage Radio Network series Arts & Seizures.Arts & Seizures hosted by Mike Edison & Judy McGuire
Early life In his memoir, Edison describes growing up in a dysfunctional Jewish household in suburban New Jersey, and discovering marijuana at the age of fourteen. Soon after he had his first LSD experience. He later attended the New York University Film School, and Columbia University, dropping out of both to pursue a career as a musician and writer.
Career: Pro wrestling, sex, and the American counterculture Edison earned his first magazine publishing job in 1986, as editor of Wrestling's Main Event, by defeating the incumbent editor in a bloody Loser Leaves Town match.Wrestling's Main Event, Pumpkin Press, October 1986, "Bloody Office Battle: Editors Fight to a Finish"
Between 1985 and 1988 he authored 28 pornographic novels, and in his career on the seamy side of the publishing business, he has written about German whorehouses and Spanish coke dealers for Hustler,Hustler Magazine 1993 and has published a series of erotic “confessions” for Penthouse Letters. He was also a frequent contributor to Screw magazine, penning chronicles of 42nd Street, then the adult entertainment mecca of New York City.
In the late 1980s Edison began writing a featured column about television and politics, "Shoot the Tube," for marijuana and counterculture magazine High Times. In 1998 Edison was named publisher of High Times, and soon after took control of the editorial side of the magazine as well.High Times Magazine, 1998-2001
As editor and publisher, he caused a furor among staffers by putting Black Sabbath singer Ozzy Osbourne on the cover, and then leaking to the New York Posts Page Six gossip columnNew York Post, January 267, 1999 that thousands of dollars of pot had gone missing from the photo shoot. After taking the magazine to new heights in sales and advertising,Village Voice, Press Clips, October 27, 1999 he was instrumental in producing High Times first feature film, High Times' Potluck.Washington Square News, October 5, 2003, "Dropout Produces Pot Film" Edison left High Times in 2001.New York Post, Page Six
Following High Times, Edison became the editorial director for upstart Jewish culture magazine Heeb, for whom he went undercover and exposed Jews for Jesus as a Baptist organization.Heeb Magazine, 2003, also The Jewish Telegraph Agency www.jta.org He also covered the 2003 harassment trial of Screw magazine founding editor and publisher Al Goldstein.
Edison left Heeb later that year in protest over a cover story on The Passion of the Christ, a rebuttal to the Mel Gibson film.
In 2003, Edison was named editor-in-chief of Screw (replacing Al Goldstein), where he began writing 17 years before as a freelancer. In late 2006 he announced that he was leaving the editor-in-chief position. Soon after Screw ceased publication.
Edison lives and works as a writer, editor, journalist, and musician in New York City. He continues to write frequently about sex and American culture, and he was the senior editor of music publisher Backbeat Books from 2008 to 2012. His acquisitions at Backbeat ranged from biographies to scholarly and pop histories for all genres of music — from soul music to punk rock to classic rock, jazz, classical, country, and beyond. The final title that was published during his tenure, Lisa Crystal Carver's Reconsidering Yoko Ono, was excerpted extensively in The New York Times Magazine. He has contributed to many publications and websites, including Spin, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, and the New York Press, for whom he covered professional wrestling and classical music. In 2010, he won the 26th NYC episode of Opium Magazine's “Literary Death Match,” when he surprised the audience and judges by pulling former Sonic Youth drummer Bob Bert out of the audience, who proceeded to play bongos while Edison read from his book, I Have Fun Everywhere I Go. After his performance, celebrity judge and Czech supermodel Paulina Porizkova told HuffPost, “Mike Edison could be reading a tractor manual and I would be interested.”
Edison has also written bios, press releases, and liner notes for numerous bands, including The Stooges, the Ramones, the New York Dolls, Was (Not Was), Zappa Plays Zappa, and Robert Gordon and Chris Spedding. Edison wrote the extensive liner notes for a series of seven deluxe reissues by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, including the 2010 compilation Dirty Shirt Rock 'n' Roll: The First Ten Years. Jon Spencer has also played on and produced recordings by the Edison Rocket Train.
Books
I Have Fun Everywhere I Go His 2008 memoir is I Have Fun Everywhere I Go: Savage Tales of Pot, Porn, Punk Rock, Pro Wrestling, Talking Apes, Evil Bosses, Dirty Blues, American Heroes, and the Most Notorious Magazines in the World (May 2008, Faber and Faber/Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Reviewing the book, Bookforum called Edison “Cooler than Toby Young and more credible than James Frey,” while the SF Weekly called I Have Fun “high-spirited sleaze, overeducated yokelry, and intensely American egalitarian humor.” Kirkus Reviews gave the book a starred review, calling it, “A beer-sozzled, speed-cranked nail bomb of a book—what everybody's Saturday night should be like." Edison has also been criticized for spending too much time “settling old scores with his enemies,” particularly his former co-workers at High Times, which he refers to as “that dope rag.”Publishers Weekly
In addition, Edison has recorded a "beatnik bop and punk rock boogaloo, outerspace soundtrack and spoken word" CD, a companion piece to the book, also called I Have Fun Everywhere I Go. The CD, a collaboration with rock musician and producer Jon Spencer, has been called “a revolutionary turn for the spoken word record,” and has been compared to “Lenny Bruce, Jack Kerouac, and Richard Pryor.”BPM Magazine, April, 2008 “Dean of Rock Critics” Robert Christgau gave the record three stars, giving special praise to the tracks “Pornography, Part I,” and “Ozzy, High Times, and Me.”
Edison performed the book numerous times on the subsequent book tour with his band the Space Liberation Army. Spin magazine commented “Smart, filthy, and funny, Mike Edison is no ordinary author... Edison brings the stories from his book to life with the performance chops of a seasoned rock’n’roller.”
Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! Edison's 2011 book Dirty! Dirty! Dirty!: Of Playboys, Pigs, and Penthouse Paupers, An American Tale of Sex and Wonder was described by journalist and historian Rick Perlstein as "foul-mouthed popular history at its most entertaining." Largely a history of American men's magazines, beginning in the 1950s with Hugh Hefner and Playboy and winding its way through the 1960s and 1970s following Hefner's less genteel proegeny, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, and Screw founder Al Goldstein, the book covers approximately sixty years of American popular culture and free speech as "viewed from the darkside of the newsstand." Also prominently featured in the book are comedian Lenny Bruce and pornographer Ralph Ginzburg among others. The book was well received. Kirkus called it “an enthusiastic romp,” and LA Weekly noted that, "Edison is a fast enough talker to move the reader quickly into what turns out to be a well-crafted history of censorship and sex." Jewish culture website Jewcy praised Edison's tact in handling the subject of pornography, writing, “a prevalent persuasion in the book is Edison's staunch feminism,” and adding that, “he loves people and their freedoms.”
While working on Dirty! Dirty! Dirty!, Edison was named a Writer in Residence at the New York Public Library. He told PopMatters of the experience, "I went to write and research in my own space at the big library on Fifth Avenue. It was the best, walking past the lions and up the stairs to my desk to look at dirty magazines." Edison would later lecture on free speech at the Library, as well as the University of Chicago and other venues.
In November 2011 Ian's Pizza in Chicago honored Edison by naming a pizza after him, the Mike Edison Dirty Pie.
Bye Bye, Miss American Pie
In the run up to the 2012 presidential election, Edison released the novella Bye Bye, Miss American Pie, available exclusively as an ebook, and printed in a hand-bound, limited edition of 300 numbered copies. The book was described as "the first bawdy political satire of the 21st century ... Myra Breckinridge meets Breakfast of Champions."Mike Edison Takes on Political Hypocrites, Mr. Skin, 18 September 2012
You Are a Complete Disappointment
In 2016 Edison published his second memoir, You Are a Complete Disappointment — A Triumphant Memoir of Failed Expectations (May 2016, Sterling Publishing). The title comes from his father's very last words to him, delivered on his deathbed. In the memoir, which covers the period before Edison's first memoir, I Have Fun Everywhere I Go, Edison discusses growing up in New Jersey with a narcissistic, bullying father, and how he learned to escape from an abusive situation. Eventually he finds forgiveness with the help of a therapist, whom he refers to (“with her permission”) as "Dr. Headshrinker", comparing her to Jennifer Melfi on the television series The Sopranos, and a rescued kitten named Jeepster, after the song by Marc Bolan. Edison also returns to familiar themes featured in his other books, including space travel, rock and roll, and professional wrestling, using the concept of “kayfabe” —wrestling argot for “the portrayal of staged events as real or true” — to discuss his father's obsession with his own polished public image. Previously Edison has used kayfabe to discuss the self-perpetuated myth-making of Hugh Hefner in Dirty! Dirty! Dirty!
You Are a Complete Disappointment received good reviews. Booklist wrote that “Edison's memoir about his troubled relationship with his straitlaced dad is a work of humor and pathos.” The Star-Ledger called You Are a Complete Disappointment “a total delight,” adding that “Edison knows what he's doing on the page, is skilled at engaging the reader and is a likeable guy as he lays bare his insecurities, pain and loves.”
Sympathy for the Drummer In 2019, Edison released Sympathy for the Drummer: Why Charlie Watts Matters, (Backbeat Books), a biography and appreciation of The Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts. The book has been described as “both a gonzo rush—capturing the bristling energy of the Rolling Stones and the times in which they lived—and a wide-eyed reflection on why the Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band in the World needed the world's greatest rock 'n' roll drummer.”