Telling Rock’s Truth: Jaan Uhelszki

“Everything I do, I always look at it as a mystery I am going to solve—like there is a painting beneath the painting. That’s how I look at rock journalism,” says Jaan Uhelszki. A fearless music journalist and co-founder of Creem magazine, she continues to peel back the layers of stardom and reveal human stories underneath.

A series of events inspired Uhelszki to become the renowned journalist that she is today. “I always wanted to be a writer, ever since I was in kindergarten. Detroit was a big sports town, so I thought, ‘I’ll just be a sports writer—maybe then my dad will like me more,’” Uhelszki joked. 

The moment she first heard the Beatles, something clicked. “I watched the Hard Day’s Night documentary last night, and I remember being fascinated by the Beatles. Were they real people? Could you touch them? Beneath the surface, were they just like you or me? I had no idea why twelve-year-old me thought that was important to know. I’ve never said that before—because I never really thought about it,” she said.

A few years later, during a spring break trip to New York at age fifteen, she picked up a copy of The Village Voice—and everything changed. “In 1966, people were writing about music —and they were doing it in such an interesting, non-traditional, poetic, messy way. I thought, ‘Okay, there’s my job,’” she recalled.

Uhelszki often uses first-person narrative in her feature writing, demonstrating how her identity shapes each interview she conducts. When asked what inspired her to pursue this style of storytelling, she points to her early experiences working as a Coca-Cola girl at the Grande Ballroom at 15—an environment that immersed her in music culture. “I had to go take folks to the Velvet Underground or to Janis Joplin, and all these big bands, and I got to see them as regular people,” Uhelszki says. “I had the silent butler kind of role, so I could just observe them, and I found that so much more fascinating.” 

This experience inspired her to want to see the mind, soul, and emotions behind the creation of music. “I write from a fan perspective because I am such a music fan and still am. Every fan just wants to know what their favorite color is or what they think about when they can’t sleep,” she says. 

Uhelszki never wanted to just write about rock stars —she wanted to understand them. “I like to see the humans behind the makeup. Behind the tight pants and the beautiful faces and fame,” she says. That curiosity led her to some unlikely places, like backstage with KISS, where she found herself in full costume, getting her makeup applied by the band themselves. 

As she recalls her experience interviewing and spending time with the band for her now-infamous story titled, “I Dreamed I was Onstage with KISS in My Maidenform Bra,” Uhelszki says she felt “ridiculously fearless and ridiculously anxious at the same time.” She felt as though in the moment, if she didn’t do it, she would torture herself. “It was kind of like a hold your nose and jump into the water experience,” she says. 

She decided to call KISS’s record company with this unique proposition. At the time, the band hadn’t yet become a big deal. “Ironically, the night that I had performed with them, they had just recorded their breakout album live in Detroit—before we were in Pennsylvania,” she recounts. During that period, she remembers the band doing whatever it took to get noticed—holding kissing contests, buying people expensive dinners, and sending out presents. KISS, sure enough, agreed to the story idea under the stipulation that they are not called a glam band.

She described the surreal experience of first seeing KISS, saying, “The weird part was, after they said yes, I went to their sound check in Detroit—where I lived—to see the band,” she says. “I met them before I was the KISS editor at Creem, because nobody liked them, and I had to push the magazine to cover them. They didn’t even know I was going to perform with them—no one told them.”

Despite the unexpected circumstances, she was welcomed into the crew. “They were really nice to me,” she said. “They never called me by my first name —always ‘Uhelszki’—and they treated me like one of the guys.” She described the atmosphere as frat-like, with the band members applying her makeup and teasing her for not knowing how to do it herself. That night offered her more than just a performance credit—it gave her an immersive look into the inner world of a band, something very few music journalists get to experience. 

Throughout her career as a journalist, she has found that many artists don’t enjoy being asked questions—they’re often media-trained to stick to a script. She believes it’s important to find ways to break through that script by asking unique questions and matching the interviewee’s energy. One of her most memorable experiences doing this came during her 1975 interview with Lynyrd Skynyrd. “I went to a hotel in Detroit, and they made fun of me for being female…it was awkward, and I felt like it was five people against one,” she recalls. Eventually, she was able to sit one-on-one with lead singer Ronnie Van Zant. “He started telling me his life story, and maybe an hour into it, he said, ‘I have the Janis Joplin disease…I’m not going to live very long.’” Uhelszki debated whether to include that quote in the story—but ultimately, she did. In October 1977, three members of the band, including Van Zant, died in a fatal plane crash. “I was so shocked he had said that, and I struggled with putting it in the story,” she says. When it happened, it felt as though a prophecy had unfolded in real time. 

As one of the first women in rock journalism, she reflects on how her gender differentiated her experience working in the field. “Later on, it was not much of an issue because people who emailed me always thought I was a man—I got so many assignments because they thought I was a Scandinavian,” she said with a laugh. 

In the early 1970s, however, she felt as though the most difficult part was that musicians never expected a woman to show up to an interview. “The thing that is really true— and is still true— is that they think you don’t know anything about music,” she said. She remembers working on a documentary about Creem with artist Shepherd Fairey, who doubted her knowledge of who was featured on Nirvana’s album Bleach.  “They never think a woman is right about music,” she said. “Even my male friends want to always play Trivial Pursuit with me and ask me questions they think I can’t answer.” 

Uhelszki remembers one of her most uncomfortable interviews as a woman: a conversation with Rick Wakeman, the keyboard player for the band Yes. “He answered the door in a towel, and he wouldn’t put clothes on,” she said. “He eventually did when his manager came, but he was sitting in an orange towel on the couch in a hotel. I didn’t know what to do or where to look.” She believes that in these bizarre situations, you can either ignore the behavior or make fun of it. Looking back, she believes this kind of scenario would likely never happen today, but in 1973, it was deeply unnerving.

“I’ve always asked hard questions—sometimes even borderline awkward ones—and when they don’t want to answer, they flirt instead, “she said. Another dismissive comment Uhelszki recalls came from the editor of Guitar World who told her she “writes like a girl.” She still isn’t sure what that meant. “I don’t even know what that means,” she said. 

Looking at the current landscape of music journalism, Uhelszki admires writers such as Amanda Petrusich and Heather Fortune. She also enjoys Strawberry Saroyan and Pagan Kennedy’s journalistic work. “I like women who see a lot in their writing—what they notice when they walk into a room,” she said. 

Uhelszki is a firm believer in choosing unexpected and unusual words when describing a setting. “Creem used to call me their forensic journalist…because objects hold clues. Who the person is always lies in their objects. You can use that to explain them—and often their songs,” she explained. “Lyrics are the other place where the truth is revealed. Musicians never lie about their lyrics—that is the secret code to rockstars.”

For Uhelszki, rock and roll was never just about the music. It was about reading into the clues, lyrics, and the silences. Her resilience in a male-dominated field and unique ability to include her voice in each story is what makes each piece feel so alive and personal. In an industry that once told her she “writes like a girl,” Uhelszki wrote like no one else—and rock journalism will never be the same.