ST. PETERSBURG, FL – St. Petersburg Press has published I Need to Know: The Lost Music Interviews, an anthology by longtime Florida journalist and author Bill DeYoung.

I Need to Know includes 23 revealing conversations with seminal music artists including Tom Petty (four lengthy interviews conducted between 1985 and 1993), Beatles producer Sir George Martin, Neil Young, Merle Haggard, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, Bo Diddley and others.

The majority of the in-depth interviews have never been published in their entirety. They were conducted for various newspaper stories – which utilized a few quotes here and there – or for the international music magazine Goldmine.

“These lost-and-found interviews don’t just form an important historical document; they’re also a trove of musical and personal insights into important artists of our time,” said John Capouya, author of the acclaimed Florida Soul: From Ray Charles to KC and the Sunshine Band. “DeYoung’s subjects – partners, really – clearly know and trust him, so they offer deeper and less guarded responses then we’re used to seeing in music journalism. Highly recommended.’’

April 21, 1985. Photo by John Siebenthaler/Siebenthaler Creative.

In I Need to Know, Petty talks in detail about the formation of the Traveling Wilburys, what he learned from Bob Dylan and the creation of the albums Southern Accents, Let Me Up I’ve Had Enough and Full Moon Fever; Martin reveals which songs he would have preferred the Beatles left off the White Album; Young explains his passion for Farm Aid, and his reasons for skipping Buffalo Springfield’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; Haggard explains what led him to pen the controversial “Okie from Muskogee.”

Ronstadt confesses her disdain for many of her biggest hits. “Sometimes,” she says, “they just flat out bored me until I was cross-eyed.”

As a bonus, the book includes never-before-published conversations with acting legends Gregory Peck and Robert Duvall.

A native of St. Petersburg, Bill DeYoung was Arts and Entertainment Editor of the Gainesville Sun for 20 years, before moving on to publications in South Florida and Savannah, Georgia. The author of the Florida-centric books Skyway: The True Story of Tampa Bay’s Signature Bridge and the Man Who Brought it Down and Phil Gernhard Record Man, he currently writes and edits the Culture section of the St. Pete Catalyst. DeYoung is one of the interview subjects in the forthcoming documentary film The Skyway Bridge Disaster.

I Need to Know includes conversations with:

Tom Petty, Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Seals & Crofts, George Martin, Mary Hopkin, Emmylou Harris, Merle Haggard, Dave Mason, Rodney Crowell, Rosanne Cash, Linda Ronstadt, the Bangles, Guy & Susanna Clark, Bo Diddley, Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson and Martin Barre, Robert Duvall, Gregory Peck.

Buy the book via Amazon here.