Ebook: The Playboy Interview

What has been called “the command performance of American journalism” began in the spring of 1962, when a writer named Alex Haley returned from an assignment to profile jazz great Miles Davis and emptied a briefcase full of tapes at Playboy’s editorial office in Chicago. The transcribed conversations were shaped and stitched together to form the first Playboy Interview, a feature as memorable in its own way as the centerfold.

In the nearly two decades since then, through assassinations, the civil rights movement, the sexual revolution, the Vietnam war, the women’s movement, rock and roll, drugs, the television explosion, and years of tumultuous change, the Playboy Interview has provided revealing portraits of those who most profoundly affect our society. It is one forum where prominent people discuss them¬ selves and their ideas in unusual depth and with surprising frankness.

As presidents and poets, artists and athletes, saints and scoundrels have found, Playboy interviews are exhausting. That’s be¬ cause the idea has always been to push harder, to probe more deeply, to ask and ask questions until the interviewer, the editor, and the subject agree that something like the definitive interview has been obtained.

Whatever the field of endeavor or the notoriety of the accomplishments, the Playboy interview presents people as they really speak, sometimes lucidly and eloquently, other times profanely and angrily. Perhaps its because interviewers are instructed to raise topics not normally discussed for publication—childhood traumas, failed marriages, moments of rage, and yes, when it is appropriate, sexual experiences.

This book contains 31 of the most memorable interviews, together with commentary on how the interviews were obtained and what some of the reactions were upon publication. For the general reader, the interviews make fascinating and provocative reading, with many moments of nostalgia and poignancy. The student of journalism will find insights into a unique journalistic form.

G. Barry Golson, editor of the book, is Playboy's executive editor. Since 1974 he has been in charge of the interview feature and has himself participated in some of the interviews in recent years.