Howard Stern is a great big, tangled ball of neuroses, said Neil Strauss in Rolling Stone. The shock jock, 57, says he owes his massive success to his obsessive need to please his mother. “The ability to interview people and read my subject comes from my mother being very demanding of me with one thing: that I should be able to read her mood and know what she wanted. I could look into my mother’s eyes and know everything. When she was sad, when she was angry.”
That relationship, he says, left him with a deeply neurotic need to please his audience. “There is a side of me that needs this connection desperately, and needs this acclaim and needs millions of people listening to me.’’ Success and praise just make it worse. “My OCD [obsessive-compulsive disorder] kicks in and my neuroses, and I go, ‘Oh my God, these people think I’m so good, and I’m going to have to get on the air Monday, and I’m not going to be able to do that for them again. And they’re going to hate me.’”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
China looms large over India and Pakistan’s latest violenceIN THE SPOTLIGHT Beijing may not have had troops on the ground. But as South Asia's two nuclear powers bared their teeth over Kashmir, China eyed opportunity in its own backyard
-
What's wrong with America's air traffic control systems?Today's Big Question The radios and radar keep going out at Newark International
-
8 splashy items to elevate any pool partyThe Week Recommends Fire up the snow cone machine, and turn on that outdoor movie projector
