Peter Knobler is an American writer living in New York City. He has collaborated on several national best sellers and was the editor-in-chief of Crawdaddy

Crawdaddy!

Crawdaddy! was the first U.S. magazine of rock and roll music criticism. Created in 1966 by college student Paul Williams in response to the increasing sophistication and cultural influence of popular music, Crawdaddy! was self-described as "the first magazine to take rock and roll...

 magazine from 1972 to 1979.

Writing

Peter Knobler specializes in collaboration, having written best-selling books with James Carville

James Carville

Chester James Carville, Jr. is an American political consultant, commentator, educator, actor, attorney, media personality, and prominent liberal pundit. Carville gained national attention for his work as the lead strategist of the successful presidential campaign of then-Arkansas governor Bill...

 and Mary Matalin

Mary Matalin

Mary Joe Matalin is an American political consultant, well known for her work with the Republican Party. She was an assistant to President George W. Bush and counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney until 2003. Matalin has been chief editor of Threshold Editions, a conservative publishing imprint...

, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a retired American professional basketball player. He is the NBA's all-time leading scorer, with 38,387 points. During his career with the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers from 1969 to 1989, Abdul-Jabbar won six NBA championships and a record six regular season...

, William Bratton, Texas Governor Ann Richards

Ann Richards

Dorothy Ann Willis Richards was an American politician from Texas. She first came to national attention as the state treasurer of Texas, when she delivered the keynote address at the 1988 Democratic National Convention. Richards served as the 45th Governor of Texas from 1991 to 1995 and was...

, Thomas "Hollywood" Henderson, Hakeem Olajuwon

Hakeem Olajuwon

Hakeem Abdul Olajuwon is a retired Nigerian-American professional basketball player. From 1984 to 2002, he played the center position in the National Basketball Association for the Houston Rockets and Toronto Raptors. He led the Rockets to back-to-back NBA championships in 1994 and 1995. In 2008,...

, and Sumner Redstone

Sumner Redstone

Sumner Murray Redstone is an American media magnate. He is the majority owner and Chairman of the Board of the National Amusements theater chain...

, among others. He is currently working with former New York City Mayor David Dinkins

David Dinkins

David Norman Dinkins is a former politician from New York City. He was the Mayor of New York City from 1990 through 1993; he was the first and is, to date, the only African American to hold that office.-Early life:...

.

His magazine work has appeared in Sports Illustrated

Sports Illustrated

Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...

, More

More (magazine)

More, launched in September 1998, is a women's lifestyle magazine published once a month by the Meredith Corporation with a rate base of 1.3 million and a circulation of 1.5 million...

, Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

, and The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

 sports and Op Ed pages.

Knobler has co-written songs with Chris Hillman

Chris Hillman

Christopher Hillman was one of the original members of The Byrds which in 1965 included Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, David Crosby, and Michael Clarke....

, Steve Miller

Steve Miller

Steve or Steven Miller may refer to:*Steve Miller , President and CEO of the Professional Bowlers Association*Steve Miller , CEO of Delphi Corporation*Steven L...

, Freedy Johnston

Freedy Johnston

Freedy Johnston is a New York City-based singer-songwriter originally from Kinsley, Kansas.Having scored several minor hits since the early 1990s, Johnston's songs are often about troubled loners, and cover topics like heartbreak, alienation and disappointment...

, and the E Street Band's Garry Tallent

Garry Tallent

Garry Wayne Tallent , sometimes billed as Garry W. Tallent, is an American musician and record producer, best known for being the longtime bass player in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band....

. His songs have been recorded on Chris Hillman's solo albums, and by McGuinn, Clark & Hillman and the Desert Rose Band

Desert Rose Band

The Desert Rose Band is a US country music band from California founded by Chris Hillman along with Herb Pedersen and John Jorgenson in 1985. Rounding out the original lineup were Bill Bryson on bass guitar, Jay Dee Maness on pedal steel guitar, and Steve Duncan on drums...

. The title song of the Oak Ridge Boys Step on Out

Step on Out

Step On Out is the 12th album from American country music quartet The Oak Ridge Boys. The album, released in 1985, contains the group's number-one singles "Touch a Hand " and "Little Things", as well as the number-three single "Come On In "...

 album was a Hillman-Knobler composition.

Knobler received a 2008-2009 Sports Emmy nomination for his work on the program Baseball's Golden Age

Baseball's Golden Age

Baseball's Golden Age is a television program that chronicles the history of baseball focusing mainly on the 1920s through the 1960s. It is broadcast on Fox Sports Net Sunday nights at 8 p.m. and is produced by Flagstaff Films. Thirteen 30-minute episodes have been produced...

 He has written championship films for the National Basketball Association

National Basketball Association

The National Basketball Association is the pre-eminent men's professional basketball league in North America. It consists of thirty franchised member clubs, of which twenty-nine are located in the United States and one in Canada...

 and the United States Tennis Association

United States Tennis Association

The United States Tennis Association is the national governing body for the sport of tennis in the United States. A not-for-profit organization with more than 700,000 members, it invests 100% of its proceeds to promote and develop the growth of tennis, from the grass-roots to the professional levels...

.

Crawdaddy

Knobler first wrote for Crawdaddy!

Crawdaddy!

Crawdaddy! was the first U.S. magazine of rock and roll music criticism. Created in 1966 by college student Paul Williams in response to the increasing sophistication and cultural influence of popular music, Crawdaddy! was self-described as "the first magazine to take rock and roll...

 under its original editor Paul Williams

Paul Williams (Crawdaddy! creator)

Paul Williams is an American music journalist and writer. Williams created the first national US magazine of rock music criticism :Crawdaddy! in January 1966 on the campus of Swarthmore College with the help of some of his fellow science fiction fans...

 in 1968. He became editor-in-chief in 1972. Under Knobler the magazine included contributions from Joseph Heller

Joseph Heller

Joseph Heller was a US satirical novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His best known work is Catch-22, a novel about US servicemen during World War II...

, John Lennon

John Lennon

John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...

, Tim O'Brien

Tim O'Brien (author)

Tim O'Brien is an American novelist who often writes about his experiences in the Vietnam War and the impact the war had on the American servicemen who fought there...

, Michael Herr

Michael Herr

Michael Herr is a writer and former war correspondent, best known as the author of Dispatches , a memoir of his time as a correspondent for Esquire magazine during the Vietnam War...

, Gilda Radner

Gilda Radner

Gilda Susan Radner was an American comedian and actress, best known as one of the original cast members of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, for which she won an Emmy Award in 1978.-Early life:...

, Dan Aykroyd

Dan Aykroyd

Daniel Edward "Dan" Aykroyd, CM is a Canadian comedian, actor, screenwriter, musician, winemaker and ufologist. He was an original cast member of Saturday Night Live, an originator of The Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters and has had a long career as a film actor and screenwriter.-Early...

, P.J. O'Rourke and Cameron Crowe

Cameron Crowe

Cameron Bruce Crowe is an American screenwriter and film director. Before moving into the film industry, Crowe was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine, for which he still frequently writes....

, plus a roster of columnists including at times William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs

William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...

, Paul Krassner

Paul Krassner

Paul Krassner is an author, journalist, stand-up comedian, and the founder, editor and a frequent contributor to the freethought magazine The Realist, first published in 1958...

, the Firesign Theater, and sometimes Paul Williams himself. While on the run from the law, Abbie Hoffman

Abbie Hoffman

Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman was a political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party ....

 was Crawdaddy 's travel editor.

In December 1972, after seeing the performer play at Sing Sing prison and Kenny's Castaways, Knobler wrote the first interview/profile of Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen , nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter who records and tours with the E Street Band...

, with special assistance from Greg Mitchell

Greg Mitchell

Greg Mitchell is the author of twelve books and currently blogs on the media and politics, and of late especially on WikiLeaks, for The Nation...

. "He sings with a freshness and urgency I haven't heard since I was rocked by 'Like a Rolling Stone

Like a Rolling Stone

"Like a Rolling Stone" is a 1965 song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. Its confrontational lyrics originate in an extended piece of verse Dylan wrote in June 1965, when he returned exhausted from a grueling tour of England...

,'" Knobler wrote. Knobler's Crawdaddy discovered Springsteen in the rock press and was his earliest champion. Springsteen and the E Street Band acknowledged by giving a private performance at the Crawdaddy 10th Anniversary Party in New York City in June 1976.

Crawdaddy was a generational magazine known for its profiles particularly of musicians, but also actors, athletes and other celebrities prominent in 1970s popular culture. Knobler's profiles included Sly Stone

Sly Stone

Sly Stone is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer, most famous for his role as frontman for Sly & the Family Stone, a band which played a critical role in the development of soul, funk and psychedelia in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1993, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of...

, Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks is an American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. He began his career as a stand-up comic and as a writer for the early TV variety show Your Show of Shows...

, Muddy Waters

Muddy Waters

McKinley Morganfield , known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician, generally considered the "father of modern Chicago blues"...

, Linda Ronstadt

Linda Ronstadt

Linda Ronstadt is an American popular music recording artist. She has earned eleven Grammy Awards, two Academy of Country Music awards, an Emmy Award, an ALMA Award, numerous United States and internationally certified gold, platinum and multiplatinum albums, in addition to Tony Award and Golden...

, Sylvester Stallone

Sylvester Stallone

Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone , commonly known as Sylvester Stallone, and nicknamed Sly Stallone, is an American actor, filmmaker, screenwriter, film director and occasional painter. Stallone is known for his machismo and Hollywood action roles. Two of the notable characters he has portrayed...

, Loudon Wainwright III

Loudon Wainwright III

Loudon Snowden Wainwright III is a Grammy Award-winning American songwriter, folk singer, humorist, and actor. He is the father of musicians Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright and Lucy Wainwright Roche, brother of Sloan Wainwright, and the former husband of the late folk singer Kate McGarrigle.To...

, the Souther Hillman Furay Band, Stephen Stills

Stephen Stills

Stephen Arthur Stills is an American guitarist and singer/songwriter best known for his work with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash . He has performed on a professional level in several other bands as well as maintaining a solo career at the same time...

. Under Knobler, Crawdaddys editors often assigned artists to write about other artists; Al Kooper

Al Kooper

Al Kooper is an American songwriter, record producer and musician, known for organizing Blood, Sweat & Tears , providing studio support for Bob Dylan when he went electric in 1965, and also bringing together guitarists Mike Bloomfield and Stephen Stills to...

 profiled Steve Martin

Steve Martin

Stephen Glenn "Steve" Martin is an American actor, comedian, writer, playwright, producer, musician and composer....

, Martin Mull

Martin Mull

Martin Mull is an American actor who has starred in his own television sitcom and acted in prominent films. He is also a comedian, painter, and recording artist...

 interviewed Woody Allen

Woody Allen

Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...

, William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs

William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...

 talked magic and mysticism with Jimmy Page

Jimmy Page

James Patrick "Jimmy" Page, OBE is an English multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and record producer. He began his career as a studio session guitarist in London and was subsequently a member of The Yardbirds from 1966 to 1968, after which he founded the English rock band Led Zeppelin.Jimmy Page...

.

The record reviews section, driven by editors John Swenson and Noe Goldwasser, had an iconoclastic reputation - well-known and respected by the music industry for its fierce independence. Crawdaddys features section regularly covered scenes from New Orleans funk to Austin, Texas' cosmic cowboys to Scientology

Scientology

Scientology is a body of beliefs and related practices created by science fiction and fantasy author L. Ron Hubbard , starting in 1952, as a successor to his earlier self-help system, Dianetics...

, est

EST

-Places:* Est , a town in Gelderland* Estonia, a nation in northern Europe** Estonian language, the Estonian language in ISO 639.2 or ISO 639–3 language codes* Est Region , one of Burkina Faso's 13 administrative regions...

 and disco

Disco

Disco is a genre of dance music. Disco acts charted high during the mid-1970s, and the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic, and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and...

. Its renowned sense of humor produced the Crawdoodah Gazette, The Whole Earth Conspiracy Catalogue and "The Assassination Please Almanac".

Knobler and Mitchell collected a wide range of the magazine's articles in the book Very Seventies: A Cultural History of the 1970s from the pages of Crawdaddy, published in 1995.

Biography

Peter Knobler was born and raised in New York City. He graduated in 1968 with a degree in English literature from Middlebury College

Middlebury College

Middlebury College is a private liberal arts college located in Middlebury, Vermont, USA. Founded in 1800, it is one of the oldest liberal arts colleges in the United States. Drawing 2,400 undergraduates from all 50 United States and over 70 countries, Middlebury offers 44 majors in the arts,...

. He sang bass in that school's acapella group, the Dissipated Eight

Dissipated Eight

Middlebury's Dissipated Eight, also known as the D8, is the oldest a cappella group at Middlebury College. The group performs both nationally and internationally, at private venues, colleges, and high schools alike. Over the years, the group has arranged numerous contemporary and modern pieces, and...

. He has written for the college's alumni magazine. He attended the Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 School of the Arts, Creative Writing Division.

Knobler briefly managed the career of saxophonist and E Street Band

E Street Band

The E Street Band has been rock musician Bruce Springsteen's primary backing band since 1972.The band has also recorded with a wide range of other artists including Bob Dylan, Meat Loaf, Bonnie Tyler, Air Supply, Dire Straits, David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Stevie Nicks, Tom Morello, Sting, Ian...

 member Clarence Clemons

Clarence Clemons

Clarence Anicholas Clemons, Jr. , also known as The Big Man, was an American musician and actor. From 1972 until his death, he was a prominent member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, playing the tenor saxophone. He released several solo albums and in 1985, had a hit single with "You're a...

in the 1980s.

Peter Knobler is the father of Daniel Knobler, producer/songwriter/guitarist in the bands Captain Coconut and Flearoy and co-founder of the audio/visual production company and creative collective Mason Jar Music.

Books

• Often Wrong, Never in Doubt: Unleash the Business Rebel Within, Donny Deutsch with Peter Knobler (2005), Harper Collins, ISBN 0060567198
• Fairy Tales Can Come True: How a Driven Woman Changed Her Destiny, Rikki Klieman with Peter Knobler (2003), Harper Collins, ISBN 0060524014
• A Passion to Win, Sumner Redstone with Peter Knobler (2001), Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0684862247
• Triumph of Justice: The Final Judgment on the Simpson Saga, Daniel Petrocelli with Peter Knobler (1998), Random House, ISBN 0609601709
• Turnaround: How America's Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic, William Bratton with Peter Knobler (1998) Random House, ISBN 0679452516
• Living the Dream: My Life and Basketball, Hakeem Olajuwon with Peter Knobler (1996), Little, Brown ISBN 0316094277
• Very Seventies: A Cultural History of the 1970s from the pages of Crawdaddy, Peter Knobler and Greg Mitchell (1995), Fireside/Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0020220057
• All's Fair: Love, War, and Running for President, James Carville and Mary Matalin with Peter Knobler (1994), Random House, ISBN 0679431039
• A Matter of Honor: One Cop's Lifelong Pursuit of John Gotti and the Mob, Remo Franceschini (1993), Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0671739476
• Forgotten: A Sister's Struggle to Save Her Brother, America's Longest Held Hostage, Peggy Say with Peter Knobler (1991), Simon & Schuster, ISBN 067170155X
• Straight from the Heart: My Life in Politics & Other Places, Ann Richards with Peter Knobler (1989), Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0671680730
• Out of Control: Confessions of an NFL Casualty, Thomas "Hollywood" Henderson with Peter Knobler (1987), Bantam, ISBN 0399132643
• Giant Steps, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar with Peter Knobler (1983) Bantam, ISBN 0553271474