Editor’s Note: This lecture has been rescheduled due to the weather. Lorraine Ali will now speak at 7 p.m. Feb. 24 in the Great Hall of the Memorial Union.

In the world of music journalism, there aren’t many names more well-known than Lorraine Ali. Currently you can find her work in Newsweek, but Ali was also a senior critic at Rolling Stone and a contributor to the Los Angeles Times and GQ. She was also voted 1997’s Music Journalist of the Year. Ali recently took time from her busy schedule to talk to the Daily about her life and career.

Trevor Fisher: People seem to have a certain perception of music critics — that it’s just a fun job and not work. Do you get that a lot?

Lorraine Ali: Yeah, people are like, “You have such a great job,” and in certain ways I do. I mean, I can’t complain, but I’m going to anyway. It is work, though — it’s really hard work. I’ll be working [at Newsweek] some weeks four nights a week from 9 in the morning until 1 in the morning. You are still reporting on the news when something happens with R. Kelly and some 12-year-old or something. Still, you are a journalist, it’s not just sitting there listening to records and waxing about the MC5. It’s like any other job — there are the ups and downs of it. When you are sitting there waiting for three hours for the Wu-Tang Clan to show up, it sucks.

TF: Who were some of the best musicians to talk to and why?

LA: Well, Courtney [Love] is great, she was great, but it’s hard to get to her now. There is no edit button and she is incredibly smart no matter what you think of her. It was a fascinating interview. Obviously Ike Turner because of the history with Tina Turner, a man so steeped in denial and listening to him sort of explain away these lost years of cocaine and wife abuse — that was fascinating.

TF: Who have been some of the most difficult artists to talk to?

LA: [Britpop band] Blur. Just assuming that you are going to be a stupid American journalist, basically with those interviews about 10 minutes into it, I’m just like, “OK, I think I got what I needed.” And then they know you aren’t going to run it.

Nick Cave scared me early on. I interviewed him at a Lollapalooza and saw three journalists go ahead of me and he just shredded them. I got in there and it took five minutes of me proving myself to him, and then I got beautiful quotes.

One of the stupider people was Justin Timberlake. The guy’s got, like, one brain cell. Literally, I tried the question at five different angles and he was like, “I don’t know, I just like to dance.”

TF: Cobain was known for his attitude toward the media. What were your experiences with him like?

LA: At first it was difficult because he was very quiet. Eventually he started opening up and talking and it was great. Sometimes the most difficult people are the most rewarding.

TF: Your name has popped up a lot in regards to his diaries. You want to tell me how you got involved and what your take is?

LA: Newsweek found out the diaries were going to be printed in a book and we started negotiating for the rights to reprint some of the diary pieces, and I was a little uneasy about it. I thought, “This is a private thing, and this is someone who was intensely private.” We got the excerpts and I ended up writing a piece more about Kurt and the whole Nirvana thing, and still felt a little uncomfortable about printing them. On the other hand, I do have to admit, if you loved him or loved his music, it does give you a lot of insight into what he was going through. It was kind of a bittersweet thing.

TF: What happens when you write a bad review about a band and run into them a week later?

LA: That happened with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and it was really funny. It’s not when you shred someone, it’s when you say something that is mildly critical. That’s when I get it, which is so weird. I said something mildly critical about a Nine Inch Nails show and the rest of the review was really good. I saw him in a hotel lobby a couple days later and he was so mad at me, he wouldn’t even talk to me. He sent his manager in to go off on me, and I was like, “You know, send ‘Mr. Spooky Latex Guy’ in here yourself.”

TF: The Iraq war hits closer to home for you because you are half Iraqi and still have relatives there. What is the your attitude toward the looming war?

LA: I can tell you, for the Iraqi-Americans it is just heart breaking. We don’t particularly like Saddam either, but America has punished the people just as much at this point. It’s not like you’ve got people living in mud huts there — you’ve got educated people who have lived fairly good lives but now have been reduced to squalor partly because of Saddam, but largely in the last 10 years due to [U.S.] sanctions. I can’t say they are going to feel like America is the great savior, because we’re bombing them again. It just seems ridiculous at this point.

Personally, it has just been awful and really hard. My whole family still lives there and like I said in a piece I wrote, the streets of Baghdad are where my cousin shops and my uncle has a shoe shop, and it is a place where people live and do everything you do each day. I don’t think a lot of people see it like that, but they are human beings and they are suffering

Who: Lorraine Ali: “Music & The World Outside of MTV”

Where: Sun Room, Memorial Union

When: 8 p.m. Monday

Cost: Free