'There Was No Stopping Him': Alan Light, Former Spin Editor-in-Chief, Remembers the Late Marc Spitz

From the language in his scathingly honest, very funny memoir, Poseur, Marc thought I was a bit of a stiff (which, compared to him, I absolutely was). But he won me over with a dirty secret that he shared with most of the rock gods he idolized: He worked his ass off. Soon after I started at Spin, Axl Rose got arrested in a Phoenix airport, which suddenly added more urgency to the question of what the hell he'd been doing during years of isolation. Marc raised his hand for a news story, originally planned as a half-page, which he then began reporting relentlessly. Every day or two, he would swing by with word of new sources he had reached who had contact with Axl -- Tommy Stinson, Moby -- and we bumped the piece up to two pages, then to a full feature.

When he excitedly told me that he had spoken to Shaquille O'Neal, who had rapped in the studio with Axl, we knew we were onto something. My editors and I decided to make the Axl story a cover -- on the condition that Marc get a quote from Slash (which, of course, he did). Axl flipped out, calling me at home in the middle of the night when he heard our plans. With a glorious shot of a young Axl Rose (from a photographer who requested that we not give him a credit, for fear of antagonizing the subject) and the words "What the World Needs Now is Axl Rose," the issue sold like crazy, and Marc had his first cover story. After that, there was no stopping him.

His limitless faith in the music seeped through every page of his biographies and novels, every second of the dozen plays he wrote, every line of his journalism. For years, he tried to talk me into working on a history of rock criticism with him; I was squirrelly about taking on something so self-referential, which I think was exactly what he liked about the idea.

I suppose I have to choose a last dance for Marc. He would hate that my first thought was "Don't Stop Believin'" -- though he would appreciate the Sopranos reference, as he was working on a book about rock and film at the time of his death. But let's give the final word to his beloved Smiths: The spirit of Marc Spitz is a light that never goes out.