News & Features Feedback
New This WeekAround TownMusicFilmArtTheaterNews & FeaturesFood & DrinkAstrology
  HOME
NEW THIS WEEK
EDITORS' PICKS
LISTINGS
NEWS & FEATURES
MUSIC
FILM
ART
BOOKS
THEATER
DANCE
TELEVISION
FOOD & DRINK
ARCHIVES
LETTERS
PERSONALS
CLASSIFIEDS
ADULT
ASTROLOGY
PHOENIX FORUM DOWNLOAD MP3s

  E-Mail This Article to a Friend
Blow pop
Like an all-day sucker, upstart rock mag Lollipop keeps on going. Crack the hardcore surface, and you’ll find publisher Scott Hefflon at the not-so-soft center.
BY CAMILLE DODERO

WHEN SCOTT HEFFLON strolls into Davis Square’s Joshua Tree at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon, he hasn’t slept in 36 hours. Clutching a can of Rockstar Energy Drink — a fitting prop for the editor and publisher of a rock ’n’ roll magazine — he takes a seat at the bar, the only spot in the joint where he can smoke. He orders a shot of Jim Beam, but quickly changes his mind. "Can you make that a double?" he mutters to the bartender. "It’ll save you a trip."

Hefflon, 34, is the head honcho of Lollipop magazine, a feisty little rag he runs out of the front room of his Somerville apartment. Right now, though, dressed in a sweaty black T-shirt and rumpled black pants, he resembles the sort of grimy grease ball you’d imagine loitering around a highway truck stop or shooting rats at the dump. His long mane is unkempt, his black boots are cracked, and puffy crescents underscore his beady eyes. A slighter version of Silent Bob with Jay’s paint-peeling gutter mouth and Andrew WK’s hygiene habits, the hirsute Hefflon hasn’t showered today — or maybe even yesterday; he can’t seem to remember — and he smells like it.

The immediate reason for the stink and sleeplessness is that Hefflon has spent the last day and a half ingesting three pots of coffee, inhaling countless cigarettes, and proofreading Lollipop’s 10th-anniversary issue so he can deliver the finalized files to the New Hampshire printer today, two or three weeks behind schedule. Hefflon is always running late with Lollipop — it’s supposed to be a bimonthly, but usually falls so far behind that it ends up being more like a quarterly. No matter; deadlines are relatively pliable for Hefflon, since there are no names higher on Lollipop’s masthead than his own. And, to put it mildly, that’s how he likes it.

"Dictatorships are very functional," he opines, sucking on a Camel. "Democracies really don’t work fuckin’ well. Meetings and shit like that? They take too long." This is Hefflon’s delicate way of saying that he’s not only the brute force behind Lollipop, but the only reason that the piss-and-vinegar publication is still kicking and screaming after 10 years. It’s also his way of acknowledging that he’s alienated a lot of people with his managerial megalomania, but that’s the approach he feels is necessary to keep a small music mag with a national circulation of 15,000 chugging along in an era of media consolidation, print decline, and a slumping music industry.

Otherwise, Hefflon can’t articulate what’s kept his "crappy little magazine" alive. "I have no fuckin’ idea," he says when asked how Lollipop has managed to survive a decade. "I make it up as it goes along."

TO THE CASUAL observer, Lollipop is cocksure about raucous rock and its many splintered subgenres: from Cannibal Corpse’s death metal to Skeleton Key’s indie rock to Millions of Dead Cops’ early-’80s hardcore punk. Its collective voice is casual, resolute, and profane — the kind of sloppy, esoteric bickering you might overhear late night at a rock club among besotted music snobs. It’s also about the "underground," and it prides itself on riding the cusp of things that are gritty and cool — a tricky task for a glossy that comes out four times a year, but not an entirely impossible one. Lollipop gushed about blood-spitting guitar shredder Great Kat before she went nuts on a cub reporter from Spin magazine, and interviewed alt-porn entrepreneurs before the likes of Punk Planet and the Stranger caught on to these Internet peepshows. And Lollipop expects its readers to be nearly as conversant with the counterculture. Q&A-style interviews aren’t always prefaced by introductory background information, on the theory that if you’re too lame to recognize funny-bone-tickling transvestite Eddie Izzard or the fine foursome the Donnas, don’t bother reading.

But, really, Lollipop is about Scott Hefflon. "Lollipop doesn’t exist without me," he announces. "My fingerprint is on everything — every single fuckin’ aspect of the magazine."

"It’s a one-man show," agrees copy editor Laura Joyce, who’s been cleaning up other writers’ messes at Lollipop for the last 10 years. "It’s his thing."

Lollipop is all Hefflon does. Every day, he wakes up and starts working. He stays up until 4 or 5 a.m. working. He wakes up the next day and works some more. Typically, he puts in between 60 and 80 hours a week working on the magazine. And even though he has a couple of assistants and a handful of freelance writers, there’s always plenty to do, since he’s not only Lollipop’s chief money man and idea guy, but also the publication’s production staff, ad-sales team, and most prevalent contributor. In issue 61, there were 46 editorial pages; Hefflon’s credited writings appeared on 16. "I’ve written 30,000 words in one issue when other people write like 1000," he says. "But it’s not quite to the point that I write as much as everyone else put together."

Even the press release for Lollipop’s 10th-anniversary celebration, slated for this Saturday at T.T. the Bear’s Place, is a Hefflon showcase, complete with portraits of him paired with his favorite indulgences: cigarettes, liquor, and girls. In one, he’s posed menacingly in front of a row of whiskey bottles, lips clenching a smoke. In another, he’s seated in his Somerville office, flanked by fish-netted "assistants" fawning over their blotchy-faced, burnt-out-looking boss: one, a tattooed tart in a spaghetti-strap tank top, tilts a coffee pot toward Hefflon’s empty cup; another, an ashen, pigtailed vamp with kohl eyes, a pierced lip, and a Zippo lighter, leans over to spark Hefflon’s unlit smoke. Her shirt’s slogan, which is also Lollipop’s tag line, is an appropriate caption for both photos: FUCK SUBTLETY.

"People need a hero," Hefflon spits, rubbing out his fourth cigarette in an hour at the Joshua Tree. "They need a fuckin’ scapegoat and that’s me. I’m the one people buy drinks for, and I’m also the one who gets my fuckin’ ass kicked. People need to pass the buck, and the buck stops with me. And that is clearly okay."

Hefflon, whose friends call him Hugh Hefflon, knows that his heavy-metal-hesher exterior tends to repel people. But he doesn’t care. "I hate normal people," he scoffs. "They get in my fuckin’ way." He doesn’t seem to like his peers either. "Here’s a story for you. When I used to go to the Middle East [nightclub], people would always be like, ‘Hey dude, here’s my demo. Hey dude, good to see you,’" he says. "I went to the first Redneck Fest [at the Middle East] with this girl I was dating. I was like, ‘I don’t want to fuckin’ talk to anybody.’... So we stacked all the tables and chairs in front of us and sat up on a nice high perch and got a great view of the show. And a dozen people climbed over those tables to come over and say hi. I was like, ‘What the fuck don’t you get about leave me alone?’"

So it’s no surprise that when Hefflon’s asked about his vision for Lollipop’s future, his "canned response," as he calls his stock answers, has little to do with the actual magazine. "I have no vision of the future," he says smugly. "A lot of people can plot out their life and plot out their courses, but I’m really not kidding when I say that people said I’d be dead at 18. They said I’d be dead by 21. They said I’d be dead at 30." Now he’s 34. "I’ve been in a lot of trouble — and I’m really fuckin’ surprised I’m still alive, daily. So really, I can’t predict the future."

 

page 1  page 2 

Issue Date: July 4 - July 10, 2003
Back to the News & Features table of contents.
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend

home | feedback | about the phoenix | find the phoenix | advertising info | privacy policy | the masthead | work for us

 © 2003 Phoenix Media Communications Group