All Entries in the "Rock of Pages" Category
Clean ‘N’ Sober
Death is described as the great rock career move, but surviving serious drug addiction might be a better choice. Especially when, decades later and clean ‘n’ sober, you get to regale the public with tales of your sordid past in best-selling books. Among a raft of such having-one’s-cake-and-eating-it-too tomes by rockers touting their tales of [...]
Rock Accessories
I’d always thought that rock’s major accessory was sex. But a recently published book, Paul Grushkin’s lavishly illustrated coffee table tome Rockin’ Down The Highway (Voyageur), has given me second thoughts. Grushkin makes a convincing case that rock’s main accoutrement is the automobile.
Celebrity Helper
“You cannot make friends with the rock stars,” Lester Bangs insists, talking to the budding rock crit in Almost Famous. “They’ll buy you drinks, you’ll meet girls, they’ll try to fly you places for free, offer you drugs. But they are not your friends.”
‘Til The Broad Daylight
Timing is everything. Well maybe not everything, but it’s damned important – especially in music. Time seems to be the backbone of writing about music, too. Musician bios, for example, are presented in chronological order. One of the most fascinating of such lives is Dave Van Ronk’s in The Mayor Of MacDougal Street (DaCapo). Van [...]
Three Sides To Every Story
Getting a handle on any major rock band is at least as easy as herding cats. But that hasn’t stopped the production of books purporting to provide the “real story.” Three recent publications illustrate three very different ways of nabbing their elusive quarry. In Smoke On The Water: The Deep Purple Story (E.C.W.), Dave Thompson [...]
