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| Ten Thousand Motels |
http://www.earvolution.com/2006/07/ten-greatest-books-about-rock-and-roll.asp |
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| Dan |
I never read any of those books. So I would have to recommend Chuck Berry's autobiography and On The Road With The Ramones by Monte Melnick and Frank Meyer. |
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| FrankiePeppers |
How about "The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones" by Stanley Booth?
[Edited by FrankiePeppers] |
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| Twostoned |
quote:
Dan wrote:
I never read any of those books. So I would have to recommend Chuck Berry's autobiography
I just got Chuck Berry autobiography at the lirary the other day. Rock n Roll Babylon ain't bad. |
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| not bound to please |
quote:
FrankiePeppers wrote:
How about "The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones" by Stanley Booth?
[Edited by FrankiePeppers]
Excellent choice.
I'd add Ian Whitcomb's Rock Odyssey and the follow up, as well as (I think) Dave Marsh's Before I Get Old. And Up and Down - true or not - it's more of a classic than that book about the stupid bloated Doors poseur guy.
Stonesworld, RO, Keno's and Maxy's are the heirs to Lester Bangs....
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| not bound to please |
Oh - and there is this really good feminist book about the genre - I forgot the name. She Rat - you may remember - I'm pretty certain you picked it up after I recommended it. Good article on Mick. |
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| Paranoid_Android |
PLEASE KILL ME- An Unscensored Oral History of Punk
By Legs McNeil
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| M.O.W.A.T. |
Ready Steady Go: The Smashing Rise and Giddy Fall of Swinging London. Not all about music (which pretty much centers on the Stones) but also fashion, art, films...
I really enjoyed this book. |
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| JuanTCB |
The Dark Stuff, by Nick Kent, is incredible. Great article on the Goat's Head Soup tour as well.
Peter Guralnick's two-volume Elvis bio is top-notch.
Britpop! Cool Brittania And The Spectacular Demise Of English Rock by John Harris is one of the newer good ones that springs to mind, as well.
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| MrPleasant |
"Five fingers and one giant asshole"
Portrait of Keith Richards.
"Yes, we can read"
Led Zepellin exposed.
"100 recipes with ham, spam, jam and fried butter"
By Brian Wilson.
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| Paranoid_Android |
I With The Band...Pamala DeBarres |
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| Twostoned |
Take A Walk On the Dark Side by R. Gary Patterson
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| Twostoned |
quote:
Paranoid_Android wrote:
PLEASE KILL ME- An Unscensored Oral History of Punk
By Legs McNeil
I was going to post this! What a wonderful book. |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
NONFICTION
The rock 'n' roll aura of Laurel Canyon
By CHRISTOPHER SCHOBERT
News Book Reviewer
7/9/2006
Laurel Canyon
The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's Legendary Neighborhood
By Michael Walker
Faber and Faber, 304 pages, $25
California's Laurel Canyon area has seen it all. Raging fires, bloody homicides, a lot of drugs, a lot more sex and the creation of some of the most beloved music of the 20th century from the likes of the Byrds, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Joni Mitchell, the Mamas and the Papas and oodles more.
All are on display in various states of genius and idiocy in Michael Walker's "Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's Legendary Neighborhood," which is likely the definitive account of this locale and its impact on pop music and culture.
Walker lives in the heart of the canyon, but doesn't allow his residency to sway his writing. While he justifiably raves about "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" and "California Dreamin'," he is quick to point out the flaws of the canyon crew and their fractured personal lives. That's why even if one could care less about Jackson Browne or the insufferable Eagles, "Laurel Canyon" is a fun, dishy read.
The author, a veteran music writer, spends an appropriate time demonstrating how many of the era's classic tunes were inspired by the relaxed, eucalyptus-scented enclave nestled in the Hollywood Hills. Reading about Graham Nash, Stephen Stills and David Crosby singing together for the first time in Mitchell's living room is fascinating and a rare window into a time that seems as distant as the Renaissance. Perhaps the canyon is the only place in which these songs could ever have come to be.
As Michael Des Barres, a member of '70s glam band Silverhead puts it, "Laurel Canyon is a consciousness, rather than a physical place - [it] transcends geographics."
True, but it also brought forth music and lifestyles that were irresponsibly naive, way too incestuous (as Graham Nash puts it, sharing lovers was "part of that Laurel Canyon thing") and, more often then not, formed in a drug-induced stupor. That so many of the songs were classics is a testament to just how talented the canyon's denizens were.
Various figures pass in and out of Walker's sometimes jumpy text; in his introduction he states that "it quickly became apparent to me that it would be impossible to place (events) in their proper context within a rigidly chronological format," and he's right. We leap from a 19-year-old Chris Hillman, "healed" by the Beatles, joining with Jim McGuinn (yet to change his name to Roger), Gene Clark, Michael Clarke, and the ubiquitous David Crosby to form the Byrds, to the unwashed-and-slightly-dazed likes of Frank Zappa and Jim Morrison.
In fact, spotting the "names" wandering through the book is part of the fun. There's "Mama" Cass Elliot making lunch for Crosby, just out of the pool! And there's Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithful helping remove a splinter from Zappa's foot! Why, there's that bearded upstart Charlie Manson holding court at an L.A. party! Ooh, wait. That's one of the bad memories - sometimes these things kind of run together, don't they?
This dichotomy of happy and sad, good and evil, is apparent throughout Walker's book. Even in times of excitement and success, bad vibes were just around the corner. And while the chaos of Altamont and the horror of the Manson murders are oft-told, it is important that they are present here.
The Manson murders, in fact, represent something of a breaking point in the story. "Once people found out that hippies were killing people, it was a whole different thing," says Paul Brody, a doorman at the famed Troubadour.
"A kind of lurking dread developed," adds photographer David Strick.
While it's a cliche to label this as the "dream is over" moment, it certainly seems accurate. What followed was more great music, nostrils blown to smithereens by cocaine, more sexual hijinks, younger and younger groupies, and an even greater prevalence of visiting, elegantly wasted British rock royalty.
Zeppelin takes the cake in this department - "In the summer of 1972, Led Zepeplin returned to L.A., and the groupies went on high alert," writes Walker.
But even ex-Beatles got in on the act. John Lennon spent some of his infamous "lost weekend" in and around the canyon. He'd hit bottom, and, accompanied by partner-in-crime Harry Nilsson, drank, emerged from bathrooms with Kotex stuck to his forehead and heckled the Smothers Brothers (so, it wasn't a total loss). Years later, John humorously explained his antics thusly: "It was my first night on Brandy Alexanders and my last." (By the way, Keith Moon makes a typical cameo, turned away from the Troubador for arriving in full Nazi regalia).
It's dullsville for awhile, as the Eagles, whom Walker appropriately calls "the cocaine cowboys," take over the scene with almost unprecedented record sales and narcissism. But finally, the gale-force, sexually charged winds of glam and the confrontational tornado that was punk rock blow through the canyon, and the scene would never be the same. While glam, with its pan-sexuality and embrace of the ambiguous, proved a clarion call for the misfits left out of the hippie aesthetic, it was punk that served notice to the Laurel Canyon elite that their heyday of relevancy was at risk.
Des Barres says his life was forever changed watching the Sex Pistols play their final true concert (let's not count the reunion tours) in San Francisco in 1978. "The rock-and-roll gods would dictate that I would see John Lydon in all his Clockwork Orange brilliance," he says, aided by Walker, that "the Pistols' signature broadsides at the corpulent ruling class in England, and by extension, the ruling class of rock and roll as represented by bands such as Led Zeppelin and the canyon's singer-songwriter elite "so needed to be said.' Three years after glam peaked, the Pistols served notice that the party - and a lot else - was over."
Indeed it was. Laurel Canyon and California's music scene at large never quite recovered. Disco stormed the charts, Los Angeles gave birth to punk saviors such as the Germs and X, and coming down the pike were thunderous hip-hop groups such as NWA and a new generation of California rock, represented by the likes of Guns N' Roses, Jane's Addiction and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
And so, the tale of Laurel Canyon comes to a close. Although, Walker says, "the tribe" is still gathered there, somewhat. A- and B-list celebrities still putter about, tales are still rehashed and, likely, the address hasn't lost its hip factor.
But will it ever give rise to true greatness again? So many musical birthplaces continue to churn out stars - Manchester, London, even Montreal. What of the canyon? "Laurel Canyon will probably never again witness the perfect cultural storm that formed over it in the mid-'60s and raged through most of the '70s," writes Walker. There's no doubt that he's right. What's interesting is that what saved the canyon from truly bottoming out was the appearance of artists from across the pond - most obviously, Bowie and the Pistols. Just as Beatlemania kick-started the whole canyon scene, so, too, did the English bring it to a close. How fitting.
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
BIOGRAPHY EXPOSES SINATRA SUICIDE ATTEMPT
Movie & Entertainment News provided by World Entertainment News Network (www.wenn.com)
2006-07-09 18:49:12 -
FRANK SINATRA once attempted suicide when his wife AVA GARDNER left him, according to an explosive new expose.
Biographer LEE SERVER claims the late crooner's tempestuous romance with the movie legend was doomed from the start in his new book AVA GARDNER: LOVE IS NOTHING, but Sinatra still had a hard time accepting it was over when she walked out on him.
In the tome Server tells US news show Extra, "This drove him crazy, even to the point of attempting suicide." The writer claims he researched the split intensely and discovered from sources that Sinatra considered shooting himself and slashing his wrists.
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| stonedinaustralia |
one the great rock and roll books and easily the best book on jimi hendrix (although it's so much more than that- it's really a rock and roll history with jimi at the epi-centre)
cross town traffic by charles shaar murray |
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| not bound to please |
quote:
stonedinaustralia wrote:
one the great rock and roll books and easily the best book on jimi hendrix (although it's so much more than that- it's really a rock and roll history with jimi at the epi-centre)
cross town traffic by charles shaar murray
Hey SA - how are you? One of the great gentlemen here.
I have to agree with the Nick Kent one posted further up - but it's been eons since I've read any music books...
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| stonedinaustralia |
hey nbtp and thank you
great to see you back here - i am good - thanks for asking and you are as well i trust
yes the Dark Stuff is good - although Nick's rep around here is a little tarnished for making stuff up - keith punching ronnie apparently never happened - still i enjoy kent - he has a nice way with words
a question - i've previously been a bit of a fan of camille paglia - the other day tho sherat dissed her which gave me cause to reconsider my assessment
how does she stand with you?? |
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| texile |
quote:
Paranoid_Android wrote:
I With The Band...Pamala DeBarres
one of my favorites - funny as shit. |
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| not bound to please |
quote:
stonedinaustralia wrote:
hey nbtp and thank you
great to see you back here - i am good - thanks for asking and you are as well i trust
yes the Dark Stuff is good - although Nick's rep around here is a little tarnished for making stuff up - keith punching ronnie apparently never happened - still i enjoy kent - he has a nice way with words
a question - i've previously been a bit of a fan of camille paglia - the other day tho sherat dissed her which gave me cause to reconsider my assessment
how does she stand with you??
Hmmm...I like Camille. What did sherat say?
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| stonedinaustralia |
wish i could remember the thread
from memory she thought camille was a bit full of herself as she,apparently,referred to herself as the "keith richards of words"
you there sherat?? - can you elaborate
i've always enjoyed her work too (what i have read of it anyway) |
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| not bound to please |
quote:
stonedinaustralia wrote:
wish i could remember the thread
from memory she thought camille was a bit full of herself as she,apparently,referred to herself as the "keith richards of words"
you there sherat?? - can you elaborate
i've always enjoyed her work too (what i have read of it anyway)
Camille has been saying that for years - yo sherat...where are you...
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
BOYD SIGNS MILLION DOLLAR BOOK DEAL
ERIC CLAPTON's ex-wife PATTI BOYD is following the legendary guitarist into writing after signing a lucrative $1.7 million (GBP950,000) book deal for her memoirs. The 1960's style icon married Clapton in 1979 after her relationship with former BEATLE GEORGE HARRISON broke down, and inspired his classic hit LAYLA. Now her amazing life story will be traced with the help of British royal PRINCE CHARLES' biographer PENNY JUNIOR, as part of a deal with publishers Hodder Headline. Clapton announced his book deal last autumn (05).
10/07/2006 17:26 |
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