CR 040: Adem Tepedelen on Music, Memoirs, and Writing ‘A Fabulous Disaster’

The journalist and author discusses his latest memoir, co-written with thrash metal icon Gary Holt.

Adem Tepedelen

Adem Tepedelen has worked in and around the music industry for more than 30 years—as a musician (playing guitar for the ’90s rock band Stymie), editor (of the biweekly music magazine The Rocket), and writer (contributing to Mojo, Seattle Weekly, Revolver, and Decibel, among others). A full-time freelancer since 2002, Tepedelen continues to work in the magazine world, though in recent years he’s put most of his focus on co-writing memoirs with rock stars.

His first experience co-authoring a memoir was 2023’s Mud Ride: A Messy Trip Through the Grunge Explosion, which he wrote with Steve Turner of Seattle’s legendary grunge band Mudhoney. It was, he says now, a pivotal learning experience. “I’d never written a memoir,” Tepedelen says. “I didn’t really know how to write a memoir. I just winged it. The editors seemed happy enough. They offered some input as to how to improve things, as editors do. But generally, I think it went pretty well. When I realized that there was an en…