The 35 million Mitch Albom fans you meet in heaven

Mitch Albom is that rare writer who straddles about four different areas of expertise: initially a songwriter musician and, he became a sportswriter (for the Detroit Free Press, for which he still writes weekly) before evolving into a writer of spiritual books, starting with Tuesdays With Morrie in 1997, then crossing over into fiction, such as his latest novel, The First Phone Call From Heaven.

Not many writers would attempt this, let alone do it so well. Underpinning a life of writing and observing is a strong spiritual drive, something that finds expression in Albom’s charitable work — he’s plugged into the Detroit community and its charity organizations, still lives there with his wife Janine, and helps run a mission in Haiti after the massive 2010 earthquake there.

And now he’s in the Philippines, which makes sense because Filipinos make up his second biggest fan base in the world, right after Americans (“I think because there was a Filipino character in The Five People You Meet in Heaven, and something in the book took place there”); but mainly because he was moved by the effects of Typhoon Yolanda. Not just the immediate effects, but the neglect that occurs after people fall into “donor fatigue” and move on to the next disaster. “I see what happens in a country when there’s a disaster,” Albom says, “and I see what happens when the disaster is forgotten about, and the latter is almost as bad as the former.”

To redraw attention to Tacloban, Albom will visit there tomorrow. He’s launching a new library, stocking it not only with signed copies of his own books, but those of his literary friends and occasional band mates (more on that later). He’s also made a personal donation to the Yellow Boat of Hope Foundation, and through the efforts of National Book Store, we find him in his Raffles Hotel suite, youthful looking at 55, more than willing to talk. As Albom tucks into some lunch after a string of interviews the day after his arrival (“This is the first food I’m having since the plane”), you find that he’s as easy to talk to as his books are a pleasure to read.

PHILIPPINE STAR: Tuesdays with Morrie set you in a certain direction as a writer. What other directions might you have taken otherwise?

MITCH ALBOM: I don’t think I would have taken any of them, I would have probably just stayed in sports. Because it wasn’t just the book and the professional opportunities, it was the change in my frame of mind, to be honest. It really was Tuesdays with Morrie that opened the door for writing a novel, or about meaning-of-life kinds of stuff, instead of just what the score was. I wouldn’t have been given the chance to do that, or have the interest internally. I haven’t written a sports book since Tuesdays. My whole focus in life changed after that, whereas before that, that’s all I did. So it changed me more than I would have changed it, I think.  

You still cover sports for the Detroit Free Press (where he’s an award-winning, nationally- syndicated columnist). Is it because of your fans there, or is it in your genes to cover sports?

A little of both. You know, Tuesdays with Morrie wasn’t supposed to be a success, it was a tiny book that was meant to pay Morrie (Schwartz)’s medical bills. I never anticipated something like this happening. I was supposed to just go back to sports writing.

And so when it took off and became this other thing, I always felt the Free Press and Detroit, they gave me a chance at a high-profile position at a young age, so to leave would be — unfair isn’t the right word. It would be… haughty.

You still play with the Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock band of writers that includes Stephen King, Amy Tan and Dave Barry. What’s that like?

Well, we’re terrible, first of all. We use the word “band” very loosely. Dave Barry says we play music as well as Metallica writes novels. That’s probably a fair assessment. The roster, at different times, includes Stephen King, Amy Tan, Dave Barry, Scott Turow, Greg Iles, James McBride and Ridley Pearson; Carl Hiaasen has played with us, Frank McCourt played with us for a long time till he passed away, Barbara Kingsolver. You name it, everybody’s jumped onstage with us at one time or another. We’ve also played with real musical artists: Bruce Springsteen, Darlene Love, Roger McGuinn, John Fogerty, Judy Collins, Warren Zevon used to tour with us regularly. We’re a novelty band, people just get a kick out of us, they don’t feel threatened by us.

Bruce Springsteen told us, “Don’t get any better, because if you do, you’ll just be another lousy band.”

You wrote the hockey song Hit Somebody with Warren Zevon. Can you tell me more about that relationship?

Yeah, Warren and I were very good friends for years. Warren was one of the most well-read guys I’ve seen, his place in LA was wall-to-wall books. He didn’t have a piano that I was aware of, but Warren could talk to you about Russian literature; he was brilliant. He called me up one time and said (in gruff Warren Zevon voice): “Mitch, I want you to write me a song about a sport that’s never been written before. I don’t care what, as long as it hasn’t been written about before.” So I wrote this song about a hockey goon, and he said, “Yeah, great,” so I sent him the lyrics. Then I went out there one time, we wrote the music, he sat down at the piano, we came up with the melody. So we made this song, I thought we were just doing it as an exercise. And a couple months later, Janine and I were somewhere far away, like Tahiti, and my phone rings and it’s Warren — I don’t know how he found me — and he says “Yeah, I’m in the studio and I wanted to know if I can change a few words of what we did.” I said, “Where are you?” He said, “I’m in New York with Dave and Paul and the guys, we’re doing Letterman.” And he had them all in the studio, they were recording this song. I said “You’re recording this thing?” He said (gruff voice), “Well, why do you think I got you to write it for?” He ended up performing it on Letterman, and it ended up becoming a minor hit in Canada. Where else, right?

Warren and I were very close, and of course he died (of cancer in 2003), and that was tough. We had a lot of discussions while he was sick. His biggest fear was that he’d told so many people he was gonna die, that he was afraid he would live too long, and he was gonna bore them. He said “I thought I was supposed to be dead by now, so now what do I do?” So I said, “Warren, don’t ever be embarrassed for living.” A bunch of his friends did an album of tribute songs to him, and he felt like it was just because he was dying. What a weird thing! That’s when you know you’re living your life on a public stage too much, when you’re worrying about stuff like that. He was a sweet guy, and not at all like his music, nowhere near as angry. Just a lovely guy.

From your perspective, when people pass on, how do they stay in your life?

Because they’re in your heart. If they made memories with you while they were here, enough of them, real ones, then they’re never really gone, in my opinion. You relive it by reliving those memories. Just by telling you that story, doing that (Warren) voice, “Hey, Mitch…”

You discuss your Uncle Mike, and his death when you were 22, in Tuesdays with Morrie. How did it affect you?

I think the truth is the effects of something like that sprinkle themselves out over the course of your life as you go along, it’s not always the first 24-hour period. I didn’t cry until four, five months later. One morning, I hadn’t cried at the funeral, and I cried for an hour. It just…

Hit you?

Yeah, I have no idea why, if I had a dream about him, whatever. I know that it affected me in that I became extraordinarily ambitious after that. Because I kind of figured, I was born on his birthday, he named me, I was like him in so many ways, I figured I was probably going to die the same age, so I thought I’ve basically got 20 years to live. It was one of the reasons I got out of the music business and got into journalism, I said “I can’t sit around waiting for a band to hit it big.” I think it affected me that way a lot: I started going 100 miles an hour. So even before Morrie, death had had a big effect on me, but ironically the effect that it had set me up for the effect that Morrie had on me, which was to almost undo a lot of the stuff that happened as a result of my uncle’s death.

What are your writing habits?

It’s always in the morning, first thing. I’m pretty much a creature of habit. I’ll grab a cup of coffee, I’ll pray a little bit, then my wife is up, she’ll do the same, then I’ll go downstairs, no Internet, no radio, no phone calls. And I’ll write for the first two and a half, three hours of the day. Three and a half would be a record. Then I stop. That’s all I generally have. Doesn’t matter if I sat there the rest of the day, nothing else would come out. Then I’ll come up, answer the phone, stuff like that. Until then, no interference of any kind, seven days a week. It doesn’t stop. Everybody I know who’s done it well approaches writing like a job; they don’t sit around and wait for the muse to hit them. I do follow something maybe Hemingway said, not to leave your work when it’s going badly; always leave it when it’s going well. Because that way when you wake up in the morning, you want to come back to it. Whereas if you say “Aw, I’ll come back to it tomorrow,” you’re just facing the same problem.

For Tuesdays, I wrote in a basement, no light, with a drum set in the corner. I can write anywhere. There was a picture someone took of me for a magazine years ago, and I was in an airport, leaning against a wall, with my computer on my lap, and I looked like if a bomb could go off, I wouldn’t notice. That’s how I get. It doesn’t really matter. I can write on anything, I can write on a yellow pad, I can write on someone else’s computer, I’m not one of those people if I don’t have my Olivetti I can’t write. None of that matters; what matters is the words.

Do you think we miss out on the essential, what’s “hidden in plain sight” all around us, because it’s so hard to stay aware these days?

It’s clearly true. I think screens are going to be the death of that. I tell my nieces and nephews and all the younger-generation people I deal with, I’m glad I was the last generation to straddle the world before screens and after screens. Because they don’t know before screens; they grew up like this (simulates fingers scrolling through a gadget). I think when we start living on our screens, we stop living in the real world. Whether it’s paying attention to air, water, sounds, nature, or just being aware of your loved ones, there are so many interfering elements that want your attention, because the commodity the world is being reduced to is eyeballs. This is the new business; it’s the business of eyeballs. We’re in a world where, if you can get somebody’s eyeballs, then you have currency in your business. Yahoo, Facebook — what’s any of that but eyeballs? They don’t make anything, they just provide a service to get people to go somewhere else. It’s how many people you can get under a tent. So if your eyes are all focused on one place, they can sell you something while you’re looking at it. The new currency is people’s attention. It’s not money, it’s not gold, it’s not even labor; it’s attention. So where does that leave people in terms of paying attention to their own personal world?

You’re traveling with your wife, Janine. What’s your family life like?

We got married late, so we weren’t blessed with our own children, but we all come from pretty large families, we have 17 nieces and nephews who are an integral part of our lives, who are always at our house. And now we have six grandnieces and -nephews. And then there are the 40-some-odd kids in Haiti who have become a part of our life. So we sort of feel very surrounded by children. It’s a big part of my life and her life, even if they’re not our own. And it’s been an interesting lesson in how deeply you can care for young ones even when they’re not carrying your DNA. I think God has sent us a lot of children in a lot of other ways.
Does travel still inspire you?

Yes, I was always a traveler. I was a musician when I was younger, traveled quite a bit in Europe, I was this piano player in Crete, Greece, I’ve been in every country in Europe, covered the Olympics in the Iron Curtain days, seen a lot of countries in Asia — Japan, Korea, China, Singapore, here — a couple in Africa, a handful in South America, every American state, and I still feel like I’ve seen nothing. Which is really the mark that you like to travel a lot, when you realize you haven’t seen anything. I just want to live long enough.

How important is story in our lives?

It’s an essential ingredient in life. It’s the way we have learned our lessons, from the Bible on down. The Bible doesn’t begin with “You should do this, you should do that.” It begins with the story of creation, the story of man. It’s all stories. Even the earliest authors understood the way to get a point across is story. So no matter how much our lives change, whether we live on our screens or telepathic communication — whatever the future holds — stories are the way we impart the human experience.

Why do you think some books connect with millions of readers, and others do not?

When you’re talking about massive bestsellers, it’s generally because there’s something in the book that the reader wants. This is why literary novels — really high-end, beautifully written books — don’t have massive audiences. Not everyone can appreciate a highly complex literary novel, and there’s not necessarily anything in it for them.

So you end up with a smaller audience of very appreciative literary readers. But in numbers they’re not going to be huge. What happens with huge numbers, there’s something there the readers want or need, and it strikes a chord. With Tuesdays with Morrie, I believe I ended up receiving the audience it did, not because I wrote it so brilliantly; I don’t think it was writing or anything I did. I think Morrie’s lessons and the things he said resonated with people’s lives, and people want that, they need that, they want to pass that on to their children and people they know who are ill. It serves a purpose in their lives.

As for fiction, to me, it’s because it tells a story that is universal. Never mind what critics said, I understand why people took to Bridges of Madison County: almost everyone has a story in their lives of unrequited love, of somebody that got away. So it struck that chord. Harry Potter, before it became a cottage industry, at its core was about a kid who didn’t fit in, and he found a new home and he had great abilities and he was a hero within. That’s also a tale as old as time. It’s like Bruce Springsteen said about rock ‘n’ roll, you know, it was always for awkward kids first, the people who didn’t fit in, they gravitated to it because you could find yourself in rock ‘n’ roll; you didn’t have to be the most handsome guy, you don’t have to be erudite to appreciate it. We’re all kind of misfits, but we find ourselves in rock ‘n’ roll. And I think there’s an element of that in writing.

I understand your next book will be about a musician?

I’m still developing it, the most I can tell you is it follows a musician over the course of 50 years of American popular music from the ‘50s to the turn of the century. He’s got some unique ability to affect every band he’s been in, and it has to do with his guitar and something in his personality. One of its themes is that we all join bands throughout the course of our lives — we have our schoolmates, our college mates, the family we marry into, our family unit once we have kids, the people at work. All of these groups are like bands, everybody plays a role, an instrument, in these groups. And we all play different parts at times: sometimes you’re the singer, sometimes you play lead guitar, sometimes you play rhythm guitar. So this guy affects every one of his groups, and the book starts at the end of his life, at his funeral. That’s as much as I can tell you right now!

I’ve waited my whole life to do something about music. It’s always been my passion. I won’t write anything else this year, for it to come out in November 2015. I want to put my whole heart and soul into it. I think there are a lot of lessons about music, a lot of beauty that really transfers to life.