Tall Tales
STUART ROSS INTERVIEWS TREVOR STRONG
Trevor Strong secured his first job in the arts as Eddie the Bear in a Belleville shopping mall. In 1988, he helped form the musical comedy troupe the Arrogant Worms. As a Worm, he has sold over 130,000 albums, toured extensively and appeared in a televised concert with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. Trevor recently published his first book, Get Stupid!, and hopes to publish his next, Very Grimm Fairy Tales, “sometime before I die, or not too long after.” He lives in Toronto. This Magazine Fiction & Poetry Editor Stuart Ross wormed a few answers out of him.
You’re a successful Arrogant Worm. Where did the literary ambitions come from?
I’ve always written. I used to dictate stories in pre-school, the most successful being “The Football Players of Knockingham.” Sadly, my parents lost the only manuscript. The Arrogant Worms was a way for me and some friends to get some of the stuff we were writing out there. I’ve always written other things—stories, “normal” songs—as well. But I guess the real source of my literary ambitions is my need to be the lord and creator of a world full of beings who exist by my whim.
Why the fairy-tale form?
When I first read the Grimm fairy tales, it was a real eye-opener. Up until then, I’d only seen the sanitized revisions. But to discover that one of Cinderella’s stepsisters cut off a toe to fit in the slipper, and that both stepsisters had their eyes plucked out by cute little birds to punish them for their wickedness, was truly inspiring. The old fairy tales don’t dick around. They tell a simple, in-your-face story. There’s no character development, little explanation. Things just happen. Sometimes there’s a moral, sometimes there’s not, but there’s always death, murder and mayhem. This appealed to me.
You’ve been selling your self-help book Get Stupid! off the stage at your gigs. Are wormheads accepting the leap from musical comedy to the written word?
Well, it’s a very small leap. More like getting off a footstool. The tone of Get Stupid! is similar to the Worm stuff, just a little more nasty. But it’s only 100 pages, and the chapters are very short, so it’s much like listening to an album a song at a time. My goal, like that of all great writers, was to create something that could be easily read while sitting on the toilet. And Wormheads accept that.
Is it a relief writing something you don’t have to perform?
I enjoy performing, but the problem with performing is that you have to physically move your body from place to place to reach a new audience. Travel is occasionally exciting, but mostly tedious. So it’s nice to make something that people can experience without you being present. That said, if my Very Grimm Fairy Tales ever got published, I’d probably promote it by reading the stories around the country. Fortunately, this is unlikely to happen, given the repeated good judgment of publishers everywhere. This Magazine excluded.
