July 10, 2006 – 8:18 am
Every fledgling rock and roll fan goes through the same phase. Whether passed down from an older sibling, a hipper friend or simply found on one’s own, some time after getting your first real dose of classic rock, copies of No One Here Gets Out Alive, the lurid Jim Morrison biography; ‘Scuse Me While I Kiss The Sky, a tell-all about the legendary Jimi Hendrix and Legend, Tim White’s well researched biography of Bob Marley, inevitably make their way into your hands. However, as Bon Jovi once said, "it’s all the same, only the names have changed." The same decadent tales contained in the Led Zeppelin memoir Hammer Of The Gods are echoed in Danny Sugerman’s Appetite For Destruction: The Days Of Guns N’ Roses only to be retold in the chronicles of Motley Crue compiled in The Dirt: Confessions Of The World’s Most Notorious Rock Band.
By: David Schultz
While there will always be an allure to tales of sex, drugs and rock and roll, especially amongst the high school set, stories of Satanism, sharks and groupies only present a small albeit colorful aspect of rock and roll. While any one of those "unauthorized" tomes of "literature," may give a sense of the artist’s origins and human failings, they rarely provide any perspective on the larger world of rock and roll.
What follows is a list, in no particular order, of the ten greatest books ever written about rock and roll. As you will see, it doesn’t always have to be non-fiction to delve into the psyche of rock music, grasp the artistic essence of a generation or provide insight into the music that probably plays too large a role in some of our lives. It’s only rock and roll, but we like it.
Chronicles: Volume 1 - Bob Dylan (2004)
Only a handful of musicians have ever been as socially relevant as Bob Dylan. Even fewer have been as puzzling and enigmatic about their own music and concomitant celebrity as the mercurial folk singer from Minnesota. In Chronicles: Volume 1 (which gives hope that there will be more volumes forthcoming), Dylan makes no effort to tell his story in chronological order; picking and choosing select points from his illustrious career on which to finally offer his definitive insights. Inspired by the writing style found in Douglas Brinkley’s compilation of Hunter S. Thompson’s correspondence, Dylan’s discourses are practically streams of consciousness. Although his story starts at the beginning - covering his travels to New York, his formative years in the folk clubs on the Lower East Side and the influence of Dave Van Ronk - he soon bounces around to various points of his storied legacy. Anyone looking for a narrative tale on the genesis of "Blowin’ In The Wind" or the making of Blonde On Blonde will be deeply disappointed by Chronicles: Volume 1; Dylan apparently doesn’t find these stories interesting. Assuming that you already know who he is and what he’s done, Dylan tells his story the way he wishes to tell it: with disjointed eloquence. During the lengthy section devoted to the recording of Oh Mercy under Daniel Lanois’ supervision, he not once mentions the name of the album. The most fascinating revelations in the book come early on: having unwillingly become the voice of his generation, Dylan’s unease at the attempts to position him as the leader of a revolution in which he had no interest only adds another level of depth to an already complicated persona.
FM: The Rise And Fall Of Rock Radio - Richard Neer (2001)
In telling the story about the rise and fall of 102.7 WNEW, New York City’s greatest FM classic rock station, Richard Neer, who served as a DJ as well as the station’s program director, also tells the tale of the shift from DJ oriented free-form radio shows to playlists dictated by programming directors. Throughout the book, Neer relates anecdotes of the heyday of New York classic rock radio when DJs like Scott Muni and The Nightbird Allison Steele were given free reign to play the music that spoke to them, effectively becoming the link between artists and their audience. In relating WNEW’s history, Neer mourns the bygone days when a DJ and a radio station had a bond with their listeners and could be responsible, through the simple act of playing a song, make a star. Of course, with such responsibility comes corruption; Neer doesn’t shy away from that aspect of the business, confronting the payola issue head on and showing its effect on the creation, development and eventual dominance of the position of the program director. Having been at WNEW through the best and worst of times, Neer shares his excitement of broadcasting young Bruce Springsteen’s legendary concerts from The Bottom Line, his shock over John Lennon’s murder and the difficulties of remaining on the air and of course, the emergence of Howard Stern and the industry-changing effect his success had on non-talk radio. Neer revels in the fertile times in which radio played a vital role in the rock and roll community, offering a eulogy for what has been lost in the commercialization and homogenization of the industry. If anything, Neer gets bonus points for telling the true life story that inspired WKRP In Cincinnati’s classic episode involving the Thanksgiving Day turkey drop that inspired the classic line, "As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly."
The Commitments - Roddy Doyle (1987)
Better known to most from Alan Parker’s fantastic cinematic adaptation, The Commitments originally came to life in the first novel of Roddy Doyle’s Barrytown Trilogy (the only one to focus on the would-be manager Jimmy Rabbitte). Doyle’s basic story of a remarkably talented soul troupe that comes together in the ghettoes of Dublin, Ireland, only to burn out brightly instead of fading away, remains substantially untouched in Parker’s film, only some of the particulars are changed. While the story of The Commitments may be universal, oft-told tale, it is one that has multiple fictional and non-fictional variations. While Doyle’s narrative style wouldn’t put the book on this list, his description of the music does. Most novels with music at the thematic core fail to captivate the reader because the writer lacks the skill to have the music sing on the page. In describing the music played by The Commitments, especially James Brown’s "Night Train," Doyle’s syntax, grammar and wordplay reproduce on paper the exact notes heard in the concert hall. To enjoy The Commitments, you don’t need to have ever heard any of the songs in order to hear them in your mind; not an easy task under any circumstances. If you have heard the songs, Doyle’s literary accomplishment in making the audio component of music vibrant on the page becomes abundantly clear.
The Mansion On The Hill: Dylan, Young, Geffen and Springsteen and the Head-On Collision Of Rock and Commerce - Fred Goodman (1997)
In the late sixties and early seventies, major record companies sensed the tremendous amount of money to be made from rock and roll. With The Beatles and The Rolling Stones paving the way, the earning potential of major superstar acts was just being tapped. In this era, music became an industry. Fred Goodman’s book tells the story of how rock and roll moved from a communal experience between the artist and their fans to a business full of management agreements and onerous one-sided record deals. In turning grass roots, populist sensations into mainstream superstar attractions, the square peg that was rock and roll got crammed, kicking and screaming, into the round hole of corporate America. The Mansion On The Hill tells the major stories of this time, beginning with the inculcation of the iconoclastic Bob Dylan into the corporate sphere. The erosion of the manager/musician relationship gets full treatment; best typified by the irreconcilable differences between Bruce Springsteen and his original manager, Mike Appel that delayed the release of Born To Run for years and helped give birth to the modern day management agreement. Through Neil Young and Don Henley, Goodman tackles the thorny issues of art-for-hire: examining the conflict between the artist wanting to create music that appeals to them and the label’s potentially competing desire for a marketable "product" to sell. All of the contractual conventions prevalent between managers, record labels and the artists evolved slowly, arising from the natural conflict that exists between art and commerce. Goodman’s book covers the maturation of the music industry with a detached but well-informed interest, making The Mansion On The Hill required reading for anyone with an interest in finding a career in the music industry.
Death Of A Rebel - The Phil Ochs Story - Marc Eliot (1989)
Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan get the lion’s share of the credit for nurturing the rebellious spirit of folk music. Phil Ochs, one of the greatest voices of the sixties, rarely gets the accolades lauded on his Greenwich Village peers even though he played an extraordinarily significant role in giving folk music its politically perceptive outspokenness. Possessed with a caustic and unwavering belief in his ideals, Ochs antagonized an older generation’s beliefs and challenged the morality of the Vietnam War with timeless anti-war songs like "I Ain’t Marching Anymore" and "Cops Of The World." Evidencing Ochs’ timeless breadth, his Vietnam era protest songs still resonate and find relevance in today’s political climate. Ochs also trained his penetrating intellect on social issues, skewering racist attitudes in "Here’s To The State Of Mississippi" and outing the public’s apathy to events like the Kitty Genovese murder in "Outside Of A Small Circle Of Friends." Unfortunately, Ochs’ forthrightness and candor had a price: quickly targeted as a subversive by the FBI, Ochs descended into the depths of debilitating paranoia and depression. In his well-researched biography Death Of A Rebel, Marc Eliot delves into Ochs’ life, describing the events and circumstances that fueled his confrontational nature as well as documenting their effects on Ochs’ state of mind. Death Of A Rebel doesn’t shy away from Ochs’ shortcomings, unhappiness or mental illness, which caused him to develop an alternative personality. The toll on Ochs’ mental state ultimately proved too dear; he committed suicide in 1976, hanging himself in his sister’s bathroom. Ochs’ influence on the defiant nature of folk music can’t be understated and Eliot’s book places Ochs’ life, music and the public and political reactions to it into the proper historical context.
The Ground Beneath Her Feet - Salman Rushdie (1999)
Rushdie’s retelling of the myth of Orpheus focuses on Ormus Cama and his wife Vina Aspara - think Ike & Tina Turner without the spousal abuse - that possesses the same hold on a marginally alternative reality’s music scene as The Beatles do in ours. Cama’s muse, giving him visions of music long before the rest of the world, makes this story one of rock and roll. As a child in India, Cama hears Elvis Presley’s music in his head long before the world would fall under the sway of "The King." After recognizing his muse’s genius, he rises to stardom with Aspara by his side. Along the way, Cama gets a visit from Brian Epstein. After hearing Cama play some of his new songs in a café, Epstein informs Cama that his charges are in seclusion recording their new album and that none of the new music has been heard outside of the studio. That being so, Epstein doesn’t know where Cama heard "Yesterday" or how he learned it so quickly but if he ever hears Cama play it in public again, he’ll have his legs broken. Anyone who solely knows Rushdie from his battle with Islam over The Satanic Verses will be astounded by the author’s grasp of popular music. Although it should not be that surprising: after all, he did write a U2 song with Bono. The emotional scars Cama and Aspara inflict upon each other as well as their inability to live happily apart come right out of the memoirs of any real life couple joined by love and rock and roll. Of all the books on this list, The Ground Beneath Her Feet focuses on music the least but Rushdie’s phenomenal writing and other meditations won’t starve your intellect.
Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey In Rural North Dakota - Chuck Klosterman (2001)
Klosterman begins Fargo Rock City intent on explaining and defending his fascination with heavy metal, especially hair metal. Acknowledging that his love of Motley Crue and KISS often bring puzzled, disappointed looks to his friends’ faces, Klosterman refuses to apologize or retreat from the music he unabashedly loves. In addressing the arguments of the genre’s detractors head-on, Klosterman focuses on the inclusiveness of the themes found in heavy metal, contrasting them to the exclusive, "we’re cooler than you" motif present in other genres. Klosterman disproves, or at least rationalizes in fascinating detail, the misconceptions about male chauvinism and Satanism always attributed to the genre, taking delight in pointing out the fallacies or logical missteps in the contrarian views. In defining why this music spoke to him as a teenager in rural North Dakota and explaining why it still does, Klosterman steps into the role of everyman; stretching beyond the singular, Klosterman explains the appeal of the genre in such simple, easy-to-understand terms, you’ll find yourself tempted to purchase Shout At The Devil based solely on his love for his favorite Crue album. Klosterman, a pop culture maven, doesn’t limit his discussion to bands like Van Halen, Guns N’ Roses, Skid Row and Warrant; he discusses practically every relevant or remotely popular band from the eighties to the present. By the end of Fargo Rock City, Klosterman has gone beyond explaining his love of metal and written a treatise of why we like the music we like. In answering the question of why we are attracted to certain music, Klosterman may very well have written the best book ever about rock and roll.
Psychotic Reactions And Carburetor Dung - Lester Bangs (1988)
One of the preeminent music critics of his era, Lester Bangs will probably be known to most casual music fans through Philip Seymour Hoffman’s portrayal of the socially dysfunctional writer in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous. Between 1973 and 1982, Bangs, who is credited with coining the term "punk rock," worked as a freelance writer, appearing in publications like Rolling Stone, Creem, The Village Voice and New Music Express. Bangs wrote with an earthy but earnest eloquence usually reserved for poets and playwrights. Bangs not only captured the aura of the artist or the substance of the music but also its importance and relevance. Bangs possessed the ability to write about music in a way with which music fanatics could immediately identify and casual fans could understand. Bangs wrote with a sense of urgency; he believed that music could be vital to one’s existential well-being. Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung is a compilation of some of Bangs’ finer articles, containing the best of his album reviews, interviews and screeds. Of course, no Bangs reader would be complete without a couple dissertations on the genius of Lou Reed. The review of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks that opens the book is not only a fine example of Bangs’ scholarly manic writing but one of the most intelligently crafted, insightful album reviews ever written. Where Klosterman succeeds in explaining why music matters to us as individuals, Bangs goes further: explaining why music matters to us as a society.
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe (1968)
Tom Wolfe’s iconic book about the LSD tests conducted around the country by Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters encapsulated the anti-establishment undercurrent of the sixties. Where Buffalo Springfield described the sentiment as one of "battle lines being drawn," Wolfe gave the prevailing belief much more considered treatment, ultimately describing the feelings of the times with the salvo, "you’re either on the bus or off the bus." The phrase stemmed from Furthur, the Day-Glo painted bus that carted the Pranksters around the country. This attitude inspired much of the early classic rock from the sixties and seventies that endures today and Wolfe shows how the rebelliousness and experimentation of the sixties mixed with the acid tests to create the perfect, less visceral, mixture of sex, drugs and rock and roll. Amongst the characters populating Wolfe’s tale: Jack Kerouac inspiration Neal Cassady, Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, The Hells Angels and The Warlocks, who after their first set of high-profile gigs at the Acid Tests became the Grateful Dead. Within Wolfe’s insightful, descriptive pages lies the intellectual inspiration for the "acid rock" genre.
Parental Advisory: Music Censorship In America - Eric Nuzum (2001)
Ice-T’s "Cop Killer" and Bob Marley/Eric Clapton’s "I Shot The Sheriff" both described and celebrated the killing of law enforcement authorities: one became a lightning rod for censorship in music; the other became a #1 hit. Noting that censorship has less to do with defining appropriate expression than it does with defining appropriate people, Eric Nuzum boils all censorship movements down to their basic ingredients: racism, classism and elitism. In his treatise, Nuzum covers the multitude of censorship movements that have beset rock and roll since the mid-fifties, giving extensive treatment to Tipper Gore’s poorly devised and conceived Parents Music Resource Council and the congressional hearings that made Frank Zappa and Dee Snider First Amendment poster boys. Nuzum also addresses the "Suicide Solution" and Judas Priest lawsuits that threatened to chill free expression in rock music. In a daring venture that goes hand in hand with a discussion of the various efforts to censor Marilyn Manson in the aftermath of the Columbine Shootings, Nuzum delivers an interesting aside on the Alistair Crowley’s Church of Satan that dispels some of the more popularly held myths about the institution. More than just fascinating anecdotes, Nuzum explores censorship’s root causes showing how the sociological conditions that have given rise to battles against the First Amendment in the past will continue to persist into the future.
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