David Breskin’s biography, net worth, fact, career, awards and life story

Early life and education

Breskin was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. In college, as a student at Brown University, he wrote for the Village Voice. He graduated from Brown with a B.A. in 1980, magna cum laude, with a double-major in History and Semiotics.

Career

New York: 1980-1990

Journalism, Rolling Stone, We Are the World

Breskin moved to New York City following his graduation. He wrote for publications including Esquire, the Village Voice, GQ, Musician, LIFE, and Rolling Stone, where he was a contributing editor. Over the course of the decade, he conducted interviews with Bono, Willie Nelson, Steven Spielberg, and Wayne Shorter, among others, and wrote feature stories on people such as musician Miles Davis, comedian Martin Short, basketball player Michael Jordan and architect Helmut Jahn.

In 1984, Breskin wrote “Kids in the Dark,” a Rolling Stone article about a murdered teenager told almost completely in the words of the teens and young adults he interviewed. Following its publication, he co-wrote a play with Rick Cleveland, based on the story, also titled Kids In the Dark. Described by the Chicago Tribune as a “frequently gripping and deeply moving drama,” it premiered at Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theater in 1987. Breskin’s original article was included in the 1993 anthology The Best of Rolling Stone: 25 Years of Journalism on the Edge, and the play was nominated for a 1987 Joseph Jefferson Award for New Work.

Breskin also wrote “Leave It to Beaver,” an investigation into a group of high school vigilantes in Fort Worth, Texas, who called themselves the Legion of Doom. The Legion of Doom became the subject of a 1986 television movie called Brotherhood of Justice. His 1984 piece on teen suicide, “Dear Mom and Dad,” was a National Magazine Awards finalist.

In 1985, after he profiled record producer Quincy Jones for LIFE, Breskin was invited to be one of two journalists present for the recording of “We Are the World,” a song which benefited the charity USA For Africa. He wrote a cover story on the subject for LIFE and later wrote the book We Are The World: The Photos, Music and Inside Story of One of the Most Historic Events in American Popular Music. A detailed narrative of the sessions, it appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. Breskin donated all royalties from the book’s sales to USA for Africa.

The Real Life Diary of a Boomtown Girl

In 1989, Breskin’s novel, The Real Life Diary of a Boomtown Girl, was published by Viking Press. A “candid cultural chronicle of the modern American West” based on his unpublished short story Boomers, it was optioned by Jane Fonda’s film company, IPC Films.

Ronald Shannon Jackson, Bill Frisell, John Zorn

Active in New York’s avant-garde music scene since the early 80s, Breskin produced Ronald Shannon Jackson’s “milestone” albums Mandance and Barbeque Dog. He continued to produce avant-garde music throughout the decade, and became known for extensive pre-production discussion and planning and the presentation of materials such as packaging, liner notes, and videos which “engaged the visual and tactile sense to provide the best delivery of the album/concept.” Among other albums, Breskin produced Pulse, on which Jackson played solo drums, Smash and Scatteration, which paired Bill Frisell with pre-Living Colour Vernon Reid; Strange Meeting (with Jackson, Frisell, and Melvin Gibbs) and “Two-Lane Highway” featuring Albert Collins on John Zorn’s Spillane.

San Francisco: 1990 – present

Inner Views: Filmmakers in Conversation

Breskin moved to San Francisco in 1990. In 1992, longer versions of seven of his Rolling Stone interviews conducted with film directors Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, David Lynch, Oliver Stone, Spike Lee, David Cronenberg and Tim Burton were published by Faber and Faber as Inner Views: Filmmakers in Conversation. An eighth Q&A with Clint Eastwood was included in a later, expanded edition of the book under the same title, published by Da Capo Press in 1997.

Poetry, DIRTY BABY

A finalist for the National Poetry Series, Breskin’s first book of poetry, Fresh Kills, was published in 1997; his second, Escape Velocity, was released in 2004. It was followed in 2006 by SUPERMODEL, a one sentence epic poem told in two interwoven strands: one which follows the life of the unnamed supermodel of the title, the other which is composed of fragments of text found online.

In 2010, Delmonico Books / Prestel published Breskin’s multi-media book DIRTY BABY. It featured sixty-six paintings by American artist Ed Ruscha, original music by Nels Cline, and “beautiful, lush” poems by Breskin that employ the ancient Arabic poetic form, the ghazal. The book consists of two parts or “sides”: side A describes the rise of human civilization, and side B provides an account, in a variety of voices, of the second Iraq War.

RICHTER 858

For his multi-media book RICHTER 858, published by SFMOMA/D.A.P in 2002, Breskin commissioned twelve American poets, including Robert Hass, Michael Palmer, Jorie Graham, and Ann Lauterbach, to write poems inspired by the paintings of Gerhard Richter. Dave Hickey and Klaus Kertess contributed essays. He also commissioned Bill Frisell to compose new music for the project. Frisell formed the 858 Quartet with Jenny Scheinman on violin, Eyvind Kang on viola, and Hank Roberts on cello to perform the music for RICHTER 858. About the music Jazz Times wrote: “One might say that Richter sounds like Frisell; his broad lateral smears find their aural counterpart in Frisell’s wobbly yet hard nosed minimalism.” The 858 Quartet has toured and recorded extensively since then.

Joey Baron, Nels Cline, Mary Halvorson, Kris Davis

In the 90s, Breskin produced albums for Tim Berne,Herb Robertson, and Bobby Previte, in addition to three albums for Joey Baron + Barondown. Between 2010 and 2016, he produced albums by Mark Dresser, Ben Goldberg and Kris Davis, as well as Mary Halvorson’s “Away with You,” which the New York Times called “unflinching and full of grace…a standout jazz release of the year.” Breskin also worked extensively with Nels Cline, most recently on Cline’s “beautifully enigmatic” album Lovers.

Discography

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