Background and career
Kurt Loder (born May 5, 1945) is an American journalist, film critic, author, columnist and television personality. He spent nine years as a writer and editor at Rolling Stone, during a tenure that Reason later described as “legendary.” While at the magazine, he co-authored singer Tina Turner's 1986 autobiography, I, Tina. Loder later became one of the most recognizable figures associated with MTV News. Beginning in the late 1980s, he wrote and hosted the weekly music-news program The Week in Rock and worked as an MTV News anchor, correspondent and interviewer. He remained an on-air presence at the network through the 1990s and into the 2000s and also wrote movie reviews for MTV.com. He has contributed to publications including Reason, Esquire, Details, New York and Time. He has also appeared as himself in films and television programs. In 2016, he began hosting the SiriusXM interview program True Stories.
Loder was born in Miami, Florida. He lived in Peru during part of his childhood before his family settled in Ocean City, New Jersey. His father worked for an airline. Loder graduated from Ocean City High School in 1963. He subsequently attended Oklahoma City University and Temple University for a total of approximately two years, which he later said he “just hated.”
After leaving college, Loder joined the United States Army and served for three years. He was stationed in Bavaria, then part of West Germany, and later joked that he had spent his enlistment defending the United States in Bavarian beer halls, primarily from hostile drunkards. Loder attended an Army journalism school, which he has described as his only formal journalism education. In different accounts, he has recalled the course as lasting approximately four weeks or two months. He worked for an Army newspaper while stationed in Europe. Loder later recalled that his first writing assignments came through the newspaper and that the work taught him to report, compose articles and meet publication deadlines. Loder summarized his formal journalism training by saying:
My entire journalism background is four weeks. ... That's it. Nothing else. You can learn journalism in four weeks. It's not an overcomplicated thing. It's very simple. After completing his Army service, Loder remained in Europe for several years. He worked in journalism that he later characterized as “scandal sheet” or “yellow journalism.”
Loder has said that he “just fell into” journalism rather than deliberately pursuing it through college or a conventional professional training program. He returned to New Jersey at the end of 1972 and worked for a local newspaper. He later joined an Ocean City-based magazine operated by the sister of writer Gay Talese. In the summer of 1976, Loder left Ocean City to work for Good Times, a free rock-music weekly published on Long Island. He earned approximately $200 a week. At Good Times, Loder met fellow “music geek” David Fricke, who would also become a prominent music journalist. Loder later recalled:
The two of us began driving into Manhattan virtually every night to wallow in the flourishing punk rock scene at CBGB's, Max's, etc. This was, fortunately, cool with the wives. I mean, we'd still be sitting upright at four in the morning through fist fights, mass nod-outs, and sets by bands with names like Blinding Headache, played to audiences of three people, of which we'd be two-thirds. I don't think I can quite convey how great those days were. Fricke similarly recalled meeting Loder at Good Times near the end of 1977, living across the street from him and regularly accompanying him to clubs in New York City.
