Susan Whitall

swhitall2@gmail.com

4128 S. Fulton Place / Royal Oak MI

Education: Michigan State, B.A. in English

Bio: I started at Michigan State just weeks after our 1970 graduation, and sometimes it feels as if I haven’t had time to breathe since then. At least I’ve been able to slow down a bit since I semi-retired from the Detroit News some four years ago, after 33 years.  

After graduating from MSU, I managed to get in at Creem Magazine, the rock mag then based in the Birmingham Theater building. It was lucky the office was just a mile away from my parent’s house (they lived on Westwood then), because the 1964 MG Midget my older brother had given me wasn’t up for a much longer commute. The hole on the floor on the passenger side made it a tough ride in the winter. 

Why and how did I get to Creem? My first love has always been literature, but I was pretty intense about music as well, going back to my first concert (the Beatles, 1964 at Olympia). 

It’s funny, I always knew I would be a writer, but I wasn’t sure what form it would take. I wasn’t thrilled with the school journalism I was exposed to, although I enjoyed helping cover the Dave Clark 5 press conference for the Derby Dateline, as a 14 year old (I think). (As a pack rat, I still have the press release from WKNR with instructions on how to get there.)  

But working on the Highlander? Nah (although I’ve gone back to talk to the staff). The State News at Michigan State? Nah. Too busy being an English major. I resisted the idea that there was one path to a writing career, that you had to do the newspaper internships, and major in journalism. Covering school board meetings did not appeal. 

Thinking back on when we first moved to Birmingham from Philadelphia, I always appreciated the quality of education, since I started at Harlan in 5th grade. But I was restless at Derby, and didn’t really start to blossom until junior year, when I joined Flex, at Seaholm. I loved the less rigid class setup, more of a junior college kind of thing. When I visited Seaholm recently, I really felt something when I was walking through that lower level where we used to have our Flex classes. 

I heard not long ago that one of my favorite Flex teachers, Mr. Horschak, is still alive and living in Maine. I think about some of my teachers often, and about some of the books we had to read. I’ve been trying to reread some. 

For the 7.5 years I spent at Creem I worked with Lester Bangs (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman in Cameron Crowe’s film “Almost Famous”). My personal best is probably that I met and/or interviewed three of the four Beatles. And Led Zeppelin, and the Stones, and Aretha and most of the Motown folks and Springsteen, and … yeah, it was fun.  

I helped work on a documentary about Creem that’s been on the film festival circuit for the past few years, and will be released in the theaters in August. (And it looks like movie theaters will be open then, even if I don’t feel comfortable going).  

I’m still writing – I do a bit of freelance, for the Detroit News (and received some awards for the stories I did on Aretha’s death), and I’ve had three books out; “Women of Motown,” an oral history of the Motown female artists; “Fever,” a biography of the Detroit-born R&B singer Little Willie John; and “Joni on Joni,” an anthology of interviews with Joni Mitchell over the years. I just helped Cameron Crowe and Joni with some Detroit research for a box set of her earliest, folk recordings (she lived just off Cass Ave. in the ‘60s with her husband Chuck Mitchell). 

I have another book project simmering, but I’m mostly enjoying the time I have now to reconnect with friends, take every yoga class I want, play erratic golf, fool around with master gardening, and spend as much time in nature as possible.  

I’m an active aunt, since my niece and nephew have only one living grandparent, and she’s in northern Michigan. They both go to Seaholm now, so it’s been fun for me to take in their concerts and watch them at Maple Field in the marching band.  

Here’s a fun coincidence: A few years ago, when I was still full-time at the News, I received an email from my senior year beau, Jim Jones. He wanted me to know that I’d met his son, award-winning WXYZ investigative reporter Ross Jones, at a recent party, but Ross had been too shy to reveal his link to my J-Hop date. And we’d talked for a bit! 

(p.s. My nephew claims they don’t call the spring prom J-Hop anymore. Sigh). 

When we do get to reunite, I hope we set up something where we can have brief meet-ups (and photos) at our various elementary schools and junior high schools, as well as Seaholm.

My photos:
Editing and on the phone at the Creem office in the B'ham Theater Building, about 1977 / Photographed by Free Press in Creem office, 1978 / Outside the Detroit News in 2010 / Receiving a Michigan Notable Book Award for my Little Willie John bio "Fever," with Willie's son Kevin John / My "Joni on Joni" book