Wesley Britton's Blog - Posts Tagged "rock-and-roll"

Lou Reed: A life
Anthony DeCurtis
Hardcover:768 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (October 10, 2017)
ISBN-10:0316552429
ISBN-13:978-0316552424
https://www.amazon.com/Lou-Reed-Life-...


Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton

Take a walk on the wild side.

Yes, the line above was the title of Lou Reed’s 1972 hit single, certainly his most famous, most popular song. The sentence can also serve as a succinct summation of the life of the singer/songwriter/ guitarist who spent many years immersed in New York’s wild side, especially during the 1970s. The line can also serve as a summary of rock critic and Reed confidante Anthony DeCurtis’s 2017 biography of a figure DeCurtis knew well for many years.

Speaking of many years, I’m happy to admit Reed got on my radar screen all the way back in 1967 when The Velvet Underground and Nico was released. I was apparently one of the 30,000 listeners who had a copy of the LP with the original Andy Warhol peel-off banana skin cover. Through the ‘70s, I was aware of Reed’s connections with the “glam rock” and punk-rock circles including David Bowie and Mick Ronson, of Reed’s close association with hard drugs, and his very public intimacy with the gender-benders of New York’s gay and trans-sexual populations. But I had only a surface awareness of these aspects of Reed’s public and private life, nothing like the detailed depths revealed in DeCurtis’s very surprising journalism.

While I owned some of Reed’s 20 solo albums released between 1972 and 2009, Rock and Roll Animal being my absolute favorite, I never had the depth of knowledge or insight into Reed’s music DeCurtis demonstrates on nearly every page of his biography. That’s because DeCurtis’s focus is on Reed’s musical legacy and much of his book is critical analysis of all those albums with a special emphasis on the more important songs, Reed’s musical development over the years, and the unique up and down pattern of Reed sometimes fighting commercial success, sometimes courting it.

I wasn’t really aware of Reed’s rejection of all the drug and sexual trappings in his life inspired by his second wife, Sylvia Morales, in the 1980s. That relationship is but one of many DeCurtis analyzes to show how both musical collaborators and personal friends and lovers could be close to Reed one minute and then exiled from his confidence the next whenever the thorny musician felt he had been slighted or misused. In some cases, it was simple pride or paranoia or insecurity that precluded Reed from accomplishing some goals, such as his insistence he be seen as the main motor of the Velvet Underground during the failed reunion attempts in the 1990s.

Gratefully, Anthony DeCurtis gives us a multi-dimensional portrait of Lou Reed, warts and all, as the expression goes. Wild warts, in this case. If you’re like me, after reading this book, you might be inspired to track down some of Reed’s work you didn’t explore before. Most music fans likely know about the mostly unsuccessful collaboration between Reed and Metallica and/or the romance between Reed and performance artist Laurie Anderson. I didn’t know about Reed’s staging of some of his earlier albums in the 21st century, his latter-day interest in martial arts and meditation, or his interest in sonic technology and photography. I didn’t know about the soft-skinned Reed many people saw when they met Reed during his final days with Anderson until his death in 2013.

Clearly, any reader picking up this title will be a fan wanting to learn more about Reed, the Velvet Underground, or the sub-genres of rock Reed contributed to or influenced. All such readers will be handsomely rewarded. Drawing from his own past experiences with Reed, interviews with Reed intimates, and more basic research, Anthony DeCurtis has given us what will certainly be the definitive retrospective of a significant figure in rock history.

This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on March 7, 2018:
http://1clickurls.com/ihc8kYx

BEYOND THE BEATS: Rock & Roll’s Greatest Drummers Speak!
Jake Brown
Hardcover:352 pages
Publisher:Music Square Media; 1 edition (March 13, 2018)
ISBN-10:0983471673
ISBN-13:978-0983471677
https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Beats-R...

Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton

Being a longtime drummer myself, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to review this book when I saw its title. Once I scanned the table of contents, I realized author Jake Brown is a tad younger than me. I was part of the generation where young drummers venerated the likes of rockers Keith Moon, Ginger Baker, Mitch Mitchell, John Bonham, and jazzers like Elvin Jones, Gene Krupa, and Buddy Rich. The only stick-man from those times Brown interviewed was Doug “Cosmo” Clifford from Creedence Clearwater Revival. Many of the drummers Brown interviewed, it soon turned out, also admired the same drummers I did.

Brown interviewed an profiled the likes of Lars Ulrich(Metallica), Joey Kramer (Aerosmith), Tommy Lee (Mottley Crew), Taylor Hawkins (The Foo Fighters), Chad Smith (The Red Hot Chili Peppers), Tico Torres (Bon Jovi), Matt Sorum (Guns N Roses), Jimmy Chamberlin (The Smashing Pumpkins), Kenny Aronoff (John Meellencamp/ John Fogerty), Stephen Perkins (Jane’s Addiction), and Steve Smith (Journey).

Drummers are certainly going to be the most appreciative audience for these interviews as we are given detailed analysis of many of the beats for some of rock’s biggest hits. We get other insights as well such as Tommy Lee’s revelations about how he incorporated showmanship into his on-stage presentations. These performers share their perspectives on how to stay on top, decade after decade. They offer advice for future drummers, compare live with studio drumming, discuss the usefulness of click-tracks, and praise their mentors. They talk about the interaction between their roles with other musicians, engineers, and producers. Drummers will appreciate their notes on the types of instruments and equipment they like.

But fellow drummers shouldn’t be the only readers to enjoy the stories of drumming creativity and how these musicians became the stars they are. If you’re a fan of one or more of the bands covered, the price of admission will fit just fine. If you’re a devotee of hard rock and metal, this is a must-have volume, whether or not you’re a stick-man. Or stick-woman.

(Beyond the Beats will have an audiobook release on May 15, 2018 featuring bonus content like audio excerpts from each of the drummers interviewed in the book.)


This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on April 2, 2018:
https://waa.ai/zLJR

David Bowie: A Life
Dylan Jones
Hardcover: 544 pages
Publisher: Crown Archetype (September 12, 2017)
ISBN-10:045149783X
ISBN-13:978-0451497833
https://www.amazon.com/David-Bowie-Li...

Reviewed by: Dr. Wesley Britton


When Prince died on April 21, 2016, just four months after the passing of David Bowie on January 10, there were immediate and numerous comparisons made between the two giants of music in terms of importance and influence. I well recall one TV commentator certain Prince was the more influential of the two.

Huh?

I can’t figure out that reasoning at all. For one matter, by the time of Prince’s first successes in 1979, Bowie had already made a decade-long cultural impact difficult to match. As some of the interviewees in Dylan Jones oral history of the life of David Bowie opined, Ziggy Stardust was where the ‘60s ended and the ‘70s began. A large number of British acts from U2 to Duran Duran acknowledge Bowie as an important influence. Not to mention acts like Mott the Hoople, Iggy Pop, Lulu, and Lu Reed who all benefited from Bowie’s career-saving hand. Later, Madonna and Lady Gaga also pointed to Bowie as a seminal influence on their careers. And all this before Prince set foot into a recording studio.

And, judging from the countless verbal snapshots in Dylan Jones oral history, Bowie’s impact on the many people who knew or simply met him was profound on many levels. For one matter, he was a figure with a deep well of interest from music to the visual arts to theatre and film to fashion to literature. Because of his shifting guises throughout his career, he worked with a wide range of collaborators, producers, musicians, and business advisors. Depending on your point of view, Bowie was simply following his vision or was callous in his leaving some of his associates behind as he changed directions throughout his career.

While painting a “warts and all” portrait of Bowie in the words of hundreds of personal interviews, Dylan Jones presents a more than rounded portrait of an artistic giant worthy of the many accolades Bowie received before and after his death, but certainly he was no saint. In his personal life, he enjoyed a wide range of sexual experiences. Many of them, by 2018 standards, could be considered child molestation. During the ‘70s, Bowie did a bit too much coke. And during the ‘80s, his artistic vision let him down when he crafted some admittedly substandard albums.

But, in the main, most commentators on Bowie in Dylan Jones’ biography remember Bowie in a very favorable light, from his private personal life to his work in the studio to his interactions with, well, seemingly everyone he ever met. From start to finish, Bowie is seen as an innovative artist with drive, talent, a special physical presence as well as intellectual abilities and curiosity. It’s such a personal book that those looking for insights into Bowie’s creative process may feel slighted, but there are no shortage of other books that explore such aspects of Bowie’s output.

I’ve always shied away from using the term “definitive” for any biography as many are comprehensive but usually lack in one aspect or another. Dylan Jones A Life comes close as he actually wrote very little but instead compiled a year-by-year history of Bowie and his circles using the voices of so many observers. It might not be the one and only book you should read about Bowie, but I can’t imagine any other tome out there that touches so many bases. Maybe not definitive, but certainly indispensable.


This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Aug. 20, 2018:
https://waa.ai/aHKm

New Book on Woodstock’s 50th Anniversary Offers Front-Row Seat to Greatest Concert in History

STEVENS POINT, WI – The year was 1969. Richard Nixon was in the White House. Neil Armstrong was on the Moon. And revolution was in the air. In that backdrop, 500,000 young people gathered on a mid-August weekend in upstate New York for the promise of three days of peace and music. What they experienced at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was
something far greater.

Celebrating “the greatest peaceful event in history,” Woodstock 50th Anniversary: Back to Yasgur’s Farm (Krause Publications) offers a dazzling and compelling front-row seat to the most important concert in rock history, an implausible happening filled with trials and triumphs that defined a generation.

Author and Woodstock attendee Mike Greenblatt brilliantly captures the power of music’s greatest performers such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker, Santana and the Who, while sharing stories both personal and audacious from the crowd of a half million strong who embraced not only the music but each other.

The book features a Foreword by Country Joe McDonald, whose rousing solo acoustic version of “The Fish Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag” was one of the most memorable performances at Woodstock. Readers will enjoy interviews with such rock icons as Graham Nash, Carlos Santana, Joe Cocker, Richie Havens, Country Joe McDonald, Edgar Winter, members of Jefferson Airplane, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Sly & The Family Stone, Canned Heat, Sha Na Na, co-host Chip Monck, fans and countless others. In addition, all 32 performances at the festival are showcased.
Equal parts circus and surreal, Woodstock 50th Anniversary: Back to Yasgur’s Farm tells a transcendent tale of a musical and mythical moment in time.

Advance Praise for Woodstock 50th Anniversary

“Straight from a long-haired hippie who experienced all that Woodstock had to offer — the beauty, the mud, the music and the cultural eccentricities — Mike Greenblatt has carried Woodstock deep within his soul ever since. Fifty years later, he writes with charming alacrity about that weekend, his memory on fire, lighting up the personal details of what occurred at this once-in-a-lifetime communal concert event.

— Pat Prince, editor, Goldmine magazine

“Mike Greenblatt’s long-awaited debut book on Woodstock— filled with his own hilarious memories and impressive interviews and research— is fascinating and dazzling. It’s definitely the definitive book on the wild festival fifty years ago that rocked America.”

— Susan Shapiro, New York Times bestselling author of Lighting Up, Unhooked and The Byline Bible


About The Author
All Mike Greenblatt has done in life is listen to music and tell people about it, be it as a New York City publicist, editor or freelance journalist. It’s been five decades of chronicling rock ’n’ roll in all of its permutations. Whether sitting front row at Woodstock, flying with Hank Williams, Jr. in his private jet, driving around the Jersey Shore with Bruce Springsteen, getting angrily thrown against a backstage wall by Meat Loaf, or being locked in a dressing room with Jerry Lee Lewis threatening to kill him, Greenblatt’s voice has sung the praises of rock loud and long.

Greenblatt has interviewed Elton John, the Eagles (where he extemporaneously interviewed Joe Walsh at side-by-side urinals deep within the bowels of Giants Stadium), Paul McCartney, Blondie, The Allman Brothers, Waylon Jennings and hundreds of others.

He lives in Easton, Penn., with his music-teacher wife and their two rescue beagles.


Woodstock 50th Anniversary: Back to Yasgur’s Farm
By Mike Greenblatt

8 x 8, hardcover, 224 pages
300-plus photographs
ISBN-13: 9781440248900
List Price: $24.99
Krause Publications

Available in July wherever good books are sold

For more information contact author Mike Greenblatt: Mikeg101@ptd.net;
610.253.9324; or contact Editorial Director Paul Kennedy at paul.kennedy@fwmedia.com/715.318.0372

Woodstock 50th Anniversary: Back to Yasgur's Farm
Mike Greenblatt
Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Krause Publications (July 16, 2019)
ISBN-10: 1440248907
ISBN-13: 978-1440248900

https://www.amazon.com/Woodstock-50th...

Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton

After all these years and all the books, documentaries, interviews etc.etc., do we really need another book on Woodstock? At first glance, the answer might seem to be a resounding "no" because the mud and music has been well-trodden for five decades now. On the other hand, the 50th anniversary may well be the Woodstock generation's last hurrah, at least in terms of creating events and issuing publications commemorating the major milestone in pop culture while many of the original participants are still alive and able to stroll down their various memory lanes. Just look over the line-up of performers scheduled for the official Golden Anniversary weekend--most of the musicians weren't even born back in '69. Yikes!

For me, the value in books like Greenblatt's is learning things I didn't know before or being refreshed on things I may have heard before but forgotten. For example, I've heard of performers like Sweetwater, the Incredible String Band, the Keef Hartly band, and Quill who played at Woodstock. I've never heard a note by any of them except for a few tunes by Sweetwater. As many have pointed out over the years, not appearing in the 1970 Michael Wadleigh documentary ended up being a lost career boost. Other acts like Janis Joplin, The Band, Creedence Clearwater, or the Grateful Dead didn't need the boost but wouldn't be folded into public awareness about their Woodstock appearances until they were included in later Wadleigh collector's editions when he released previously unseen footage. Then there were the acts who were there but didn't get filmed and then there were those who turned down the gig and didn't come to the party. At the time, they had good reasons to pass on the opportunity--no one knew what the Woodstock festival would mean.

The performers were the ones on stage, but the stories of the organizers and audience members were and are equally as much a part of Woodstock lore. In particular, just how close Woodstock came to becoming a disaster many times over, it seems to me, is well worth remembering. We really were the peace and love generation no matter how fleeting that moment flickered in time. That, it seems to me, is the reason to keep commemorating what was essentially a three day rock and roll concert that became a mythologized hippie highpoint thanks in large part to the film that reached an audience able to enjoy the concert in more comfortable theatre settings. Now, we get a different appreciation when folks like Greenblatt, who was there, share their experiences with those of us who think we wish we had been in the crowd.

In terms of Greenblatt's book, I hadn't seen the set lists of all the acts before and found them a real 50th anniversary treat. I had heard many of the musicians' anecdotes before, but not all of them collected here. Not by a long shot. I hadn't heard of the shunning Max Yasgur suffered by his unhappy neighbors after the concert was over.

In fact, I think it's fair to say Mike Greenblatt may have assembled the best one-stop Woodstock book for readers who might want one, just one, hardcover exploration of the concert and how it became the phenomena it did. It's a good companion piece to all the DVDs and CDs being issued to keep the music alive. Oh, of course, it's chock-full of colorful photos. Yep, a very good memento of an August weekend only a small slice of my generation got to experience first-hand. Like Michael Greenblatt.


This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on June 25, 2019:
https://waa.ai/XZ2r

JOHN LENNON 1980 PLAYLIST
TIM ENGLISH
Publication Date : September 23, 2020
Kindle Unlimited
ASIN : B08JYHM2V1

https://www.amazon.com/John-Lennon-Pl...


Reviewed by: Dr. Wesley Britton

Forty years after his murder, I thought there wouldn't be much new ground to unearth regarding the last days of John Lennon. On that point, I've been proved wrong twice this week. On Friday, Oct. 16, ABC's 2020 aired "John Lennon: His Life, Legacy, and Last Days" featuring new interviews with friends and associates of the influential musician.

At the same time, this week I read Tim English's new John Lennon 1980 Playlist, an analytical history lesson with many surprises for me, a lifetime Lennon aficionado. The book made me remember what I was doing and how I felt on December 8, 1980 and the days and nights that followed. Forty years later, I'm surprised at the emotional impact of revisiting those times.

Part of that emotional resonance I felt while reading Playlist is due to how English captures the musical and cultural times of 1979 and 1980, focusing, of course, on what impacted and influenced John Lennon to come out of retirement and work on Double Fantasy. I wasn't surprised to hear of his interest in New Wave music by The Clash, Blondie, Dave Edmunds, Nick Lowe, and Elvis Costello. I was interested to learn how Lennon responded to "Rock Lobster" by the B52s. He was delighted to hear singer Kate Pierson's stylings clearly based on the warbling vocals of Yoko Ono. This sort of appreciation for his wife was a major kick-starter for his own musical revival.

I admit discovering there was music I missed back in the day--I never heard of The Vapors "Turning Japanese." The title alone tells me why Lennon would have responded favorably to that hit. I hadn't known that "Coming Up" from his ex-partner Paul McCartney ignited Lennon's competitive juices.

I already knew of Lennon's interest in the growing importance of Bob Marley and reggae, but I would never have guessed that he liked disco in general, and Donna Summer in particular. Wanting to get Yoko Ono's music on the disco floor had much to do with his work on her "Walking on Thin Ice" dance number. Christopher Cross and the soft pop of the era was never my cup of tea, but I could understand Lennon's love of "Sailing" as that song had special meaning for a man who had just been sailing to Bermuda where his musical torch was relit.


To be fair, Playlist is more than a recital of popular tunes and which songs were on Lennon's personal jukebox. English offers many anecdotes about the origins of many tunes Lennon had liked back in his formative years like Sanford Clark's 1956 rockabilly hit, "The Fool." Lennon had a well-known fondness for straightforward, old style rock 'n roll and the styles being revitalized as in Queen's 1979 "Crazy Little Thing Called Love." No surprise that "(Just Like) Starting Over" had obvious nods to Elvis Presley and the rockabilly era.

So, even if you think you know it all, odds are 1980 Playlist should provide knowledgeable readers with fresh revelations into the process of how Double Fantasy and it's follow-up, Milk and Honey, came to be. I love this sort of stuff and found Playlist to be a fast and engaging read. It took me back to a place of wonderful memories before the December 8 crash in so many lives. It's no spoiler to reveal the abrupt last two sentences of the book:

"Perhaps John would have sung "Liverpool Lou” to Sean that Monday night. If only he’d made it home."


This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Oct. 19, 2020:

https://waa.ai/uPke

The Boys Next Door: A novel about the Beatles
Dan Greenberger
Publisher : Appian Way Press (July 18, 2020)
ISBN: 979-865570
ASIN : B08D7YMWVP
https://www.amazon.com/Boys-Next-Door...


Reviewed by: Dr. Wesley Britton

It’s been a very long time since I’ve had so much fun reading a book, and this time around that happened for a variety of reasons.

First was the setting of Hamburg, Germany in 1960 when the Beatles—then John, Paul, George, Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best—were in residence at Bruno Koschmider’s rough and hard-edged nightclub, the Kaiserkeller. Any Beatle fan will recognize the cornucopia of the details of Beatle lore Greenberger incorporates into his fictional autobiography of Columbia University student and poet Alan Levy after he takes up quarters in the room next to the Beatles above the gritty Bambi Kino theatre.

At first, levy dislikes the musicians next door as they are loud and keep him awake while he is a guest student at a Hamburg university. He doesn’t like rock and roll. He’s an intellectual snob who becomes beguiled by photographer Astrid Kirchherr who slowly draws Levy into the Beatles orbit as he fantasizes about her while she is moving closer and closer to a relationship with Stuart Sutcliffe, much to Levy’s distress.

The main storyline of the tale is Levy’s journey of self-discovery in a city that gives his New York innocence a serious trouncing. The seedy Reeperbahn is a lively district largely populated by Strippers, transvestites, prostitutes, thugs, and a few arty types like Astrid Kirchherr. One of the strengths of the book is Greenberger’s gift for description as he vividly takes readers to the city and the KaiserKeller while painting the spirit of the times and the flavor of the distinctive Reeperbahn.

Another entertaining element to The Boys Next Door is Greenberger’s clever slices of humor that will get you laughing out loud. Two examples: early on, Levey spends time in a library where he finds the sounds of popping gum from someone in the next cubicle a welcome relief from hours of listening to the Beatles pounding out “Money.” Later on, he masturbates to a photo of himself taken by Kirchherr. Throughout, we get tiny bits of Beatle humor when Greenberger tosses in little bits like a refrain of “You have found her, now go and get her,” referring to the alluring photographer but all readers are likely to know how that line would later play in Beatle history. Or when Levy takes up the guitar and jams with the group on a rooftop which ends with Levy saying, “I hope I passed the audition.” Again, what Beatle fan wouldn’t know how this foreshadows the rooftop concert in Let It Be.

Yes, we get enough character development of each of the Beatles to see them as the historical figures we all know and love. We meet the musicians just as Levy does through the interactions between Levy and the band members which are doled out in bits and pieces as the story progresses, layering in the group, their live performances, their Hamburg circle, their changing relationships, especially regarding Sutcliffe and Best, and more and more, the cranky neighbor living next door.

Putting the band aside, the transformation of Alan Levy takes many surprising twists and turns and makes this more than a typical coming-of-age tale. To say more would verge on providing spoilers; suffice it to say, you won’t expect what happens and, for the most part, you’ll be happy to see a would-be poet’s growing depth as a person and an artist.

In short, you don’t have to be a Beatle fan to enjoy The Boys Next Door and might find yourself hoping Greenberger will provide us further adventures of Alan Levy, Beatles in his future or no. I give this book six stars out of five . . .

This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on May 3, 2021:


https://waa.ai/mq2u