THE TWANG DYNASTY

Too many good books and not enough time to read them all so occasionally I will be posting reviews by kindred spirits whose taste and judgement can be relied upon implicitly. This week Pete Frame reviews :

The Twang Dynasty by Deke Leonard (Northdown Publishing)

A cornerstone of the Man band, Deke Leonard toured himself to exhaustion but had an amazing time doing it – as the first two hilarious chunks of his autobiography attest. This, his third book, is thinly disguised as a treatise on guitarists – but as they are all seen through Deke’s finely focused prismatics, we get new slants and perspectives, and tons of insight.

   “Let me tell you about guitar players,” he starts. “We are driven by ego and vanity. We are shot through with avarice and cupidity. We have butterfly minds and vagabond hearts. We are petrified adolescents with insatiable appetites and unquenchable thirsts.”

   He explores Burton, Berry, Clapton, Zappa, Beck, Cooder, etc, but more interesting to me (being a jaded old git) are his fascinating memoirs on eccentric mates like Dave Edmunds, Micky Gee, Richard Treece and Trevor Burton. His account of recording an album with Larry Wallis, Pete Thomas and Big George Webley had me hooting – as did his recollection of seeing the worshipful Quicksilver Messenger Service captured and brought down by Dino Valenti.  “At centre stage stood a stocky man with dyed blue-black hair, wearing what appeared to be a black leather Babygro. He looked like a lady’s handbag.”

   Deke is living proof that lavish pot consumption doesn’t always impair the memory or the ability to write incisively. He’s something of an acquired taste, of course, but he’s passionate, entertaining, perceptive, knowledgeable, irreverent, quirky – a natural born writer in the way that he was a natural born guitarist.

   “I’ve heard it said by people who set great store by such things,” he writes, “that those born within the ambit of Sagittarius are predisposed toward playing the guitar. Jimi Hendrix was a Sagitarrian. So is Keith Richard. So am I. Do you think, maybe there’s something in the horoscopic mumbo-jumbo after all? Nah, I think the time of birth is determined by sperm counts, menstrual cycles, units of alcohol consumed, and bra-size. But that’s just the romantic in me.”

   Get his first two books as well . . . they’re indispensable: ‘Rhinos, Winos and Lunatics’ and ‘Maybe I Should’ve Stayed In Bed’.  

WAGING HEAVY PEACE

Since I wrote a review of Neil Young's book for Caught By The River - http://www.caughtbytheriver.net/2012/10/the-music-book-reader-bulletin-8/ I have been listening to the album - Psychedelic Pill - that he intimates throughout the book that he is about to make with Crazy Horse. Dope and alcohol-free for medical reasons, Young can't help but to betray a degree of paranoia about the fact that he hasn't written a song for over a year and can't really feel inspired to. Well I have to say that, sadly, he still hasn't written a proper song - not one that stands up to the best of his past work anyway. Most of Psychedelic Pill consists of rambling phrases that reference subjects he talks about in the book padded out with long, aimless, mostly unmemorable guitar passages. It pains me to say it but it's a horrible disappointment and I can't for the life of me understand how it's got such favourable reviews. I would never advocate a return to weed and wine if it meant endangering his life of course but it does fill me with trepidation that he might carry on making pointless records like this when he really doesn't have anything to say. Another take on the curious nature of the book is provided by Alec Wilkinson of The New Yorker - http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/10/the-vexing-simplicity-of-neil-young.html.

My Current Reading List

A long time between postings I'm afraid and I'm blaming it on moving house and coping with the gargantuan task of relocating three tons of records and books. Inevitably my reading time has suffered and the list of books to read lengthened considerably. I will catch up though. Promise. In the meantime here's a list of current and forthcoming recommendations (in no particular order) :

My Cross To Bear by Gregg Allman (William Morrow & Co)

The Ellington Century by David Schiff (University of California Press)

Fug You : An Informal History of The Peace Eye Bookstore, the Fuck You Press, the Fugs, and Counterculture in the Lower East Side by Ed Sanders (Da Capo Press)

Everything Is An Afterthought : The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson by Kevin Avery (Fantagraphics Books)

Kraftwerk Publikation by David Buckley (Omnibus Press)

The Fan Who Knew Too Much : Aretha Franklin, the Rise of the Soap Opera, Children of the Gospel Church and Other Meditations by Anthony Heilbut (Knopf Publishing Group)

How Music Works by David Byrne (Canongate)

Fairport by Fairport by Nigel Schofield (Rocket 88)

Black By Design : A 2-Tone Memoir by Pauline Black (Profile)

From The Back of the Bookcase

Michael Lydon - Rock Folk (Citadel Underground) pbk, 200pp, 1990.

Michael Lydon was the writer who explained The Grateful Dead to me in a sublime piece he wrote in Rolling Stone in August 1969. I'll never forget the thrill I felt after reading it - the feeling that I'd discovered something so life-changing and important, and also that I'd read an article about music that set new standards and gave would-be writers like myself something to aspire to. I read as much of Lydon's work as I could and he hardly ever disappointed. The only regrettable thing is that he didn't write more. Some of the best of what he did write is here in this collection - articles from Rolling Stone (including the aforementioned Dead piece), The New York Times, and Ramparts. His report on the Rolling Stones' 1969 U.S. tour that culminated in Altamont is here and is a valuable companion piece to Stanley Booth's sprawling, gonzo-like account of the same tour that was The True Adventures of The Rolling Stones (reviewed in my next Caught By The River column). Other subjects for Lydon's perceptive analysis include Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, B.B.King, Smokey Robinson, and Janis Joplin. All essential reading. As I write there are several used copies available via Amazon at well under £5. Snap them up. I have moved Rock Folk to the front of the bookcase where it belongs.

NEW & FORTHCOMING

Here's a list of new and forthcoming titles that should be of interest :

The True Adventures of The Rolling Stones by Stanley Booth (Canongate) Re-issue.

My Cross To Bear by Gregg Allman (William Morrow & Co)

The Ellington Century by David Schiff (University of California Press)

Who Is That Man : In Search of the Real Bob Dylan by David Dalton (Omnibus Press)

Everything Is An Afterthought : The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson by Kevin Avery (Fantagraphics)

Too High To Die : Meet the Meat Puppets by Greg Prato (Greg Prato)

Arcade Fire : Behind The Black Mirror by Mick Middles (Omnibus Press)

Black By Design : A 2-Tone Memoir by Pauline Black (Profile) 

Patti Smith : A Biography by Nick Johnstone (Omnibus Press)

The Life & Music of James Brown by R.J.Smith

Listen Whitey : The Sights & Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975 by Pat Thomas (Fantagraphics)

Looking Back At Me by Wilko Johnson with Zoe Howe

True North : A Life In the Music Business by Bernie Finkelstein (McClelland & Stewart) 

The Fan Who Knew Too Much : Aretha Franklin, the Rise of the Soap Opera, Children of the Gospel Church and Other Meditations by Anthony Heilbut (Knopf Publishing Group) 

Stone Free by Andrew Loog Oldham

My Song : A Memoir of Art, Race and Defiance by Harry Belafonte (Canongate)

Fug You : An Informal History of The Peace Eye Bookstore, the Fuck You Press, the Fugs, and Counterculture in the Lower East Side by Ed Sanders (Da Capo Press)

Woolgathering by Patti Smith (Bloomsbury)

Big Day Coming : Yo La Tengo and The Rise of Indie Rock by Jesse Jarnow (Gotham Books)

THE MUSIC BOOK READER BULLETIN Revisited

In case anyone's interested here's the first Music Book Reader Bulletin I wrote for Caught By The River. New column up soon (I hope).

FIRE AND RAIN :
The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY and the Lost Story of 1970
by David Browne
Da Capo Press 384pp hdbk.


For all of us of a certain age – cultural historians, economists, academics, old hippies, revolutionaries and music fans alike, the hoary old debate about exactly when the ‘Sixties’ actually began depends entirely of course on what your take on the sixties is and as such renders the question completely pointless. There is however, as this well-researched and perceptive book asserts, a good case for stating that any meaningful concept of the sixties well and truly ended in 1970. In retrospect the hippie/Woodstock idyll ended when the last person shut the gate on Max Yasgur’s farm in August of the previous year and the notion that a new generation of young idealists could change the world (and specifically the U.S.) was drastically revised in the wake of the Kent State University shootings in Ohio, the escalation of the Vietnam War, and the violence and mayhem perpetrated by the anti-government/capitalist Weathermen movement which contributed to the hardening of mainstream public opinion against any kind of revolutionary cause. Add to that an increasingly downbeat global economy, the Apollo 13 crisis which spelt the beginning of the end of the Apollo space programme, the deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, and the trial of Charles Manson, and the perception was that the world was becoming more troubled, unstable and difficult to predict and make sense of.
One of the ideas that David Browne suggests, but understandably doesn’t fully explore, in ‘Fire And Rain’ is that people generally had finally come to terms with the death of sixties idealism and, with their senses bludgeoned by a succession of turbulent and disturbing social and political events sought refuge in the music of artists who could provide an aural balm for the times. Hence the phenomenal success of ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ by Simon & Garfunkel, CSNY’s ‘Deja Vu’ , and James Taylor’s ‘Sweet Baby James’. This book plainly isn’t meant to be an overview of the state of popular music in 1970 as there was so much more going on that doesn’t get a mention here, but as a way of symbolising what was happening in the big picture then a snapshot view of the crisis-torn, insecure, tempestuous and self-centred careers of these particular artists, plus the break-up of The Beatles (perhaps the most momentous musical event of 1970) is both revealing and entertaining.
Very few of the protagonists emerge from Browne’s descriptions of this stage in their lives as being particularly likeable. James Taylor is depicted as chronically introverted, morose and drug-addled for most of the time, Paul Simon appears to have been an aloof, paranoid control freak and something of a martinet, CS&N (but not perhaps Young) had (and might still well have) egos, tempers, drug dependencies and sexual appetites of literally mind-numbing proportions, and The Beatles by then were just obviously completely fed up with being ‘loveable’ Beatles and were determined, individually, on being anything but. Even the saintly George Harrison was said by a Beatles associate to have “had a distinct way of making ‘Hare Krishna’ sound like ‘fuck you’”. If 1970 wasn’t exactly the year when these artists’ careers fell apart it was definitely a watershed and Browne weaves a lively, anecdotal, interconnecting tale of rampant egos, pathetic, juvenile behaviour and of course life-changing success.
Simon & Garfunkel released ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ which sold 1.7 millions copies within three weeks, topped the charts in the U.S. and was at No.1 in the album chart here for nearly half the year. That didn’t stop them breaking up acrimoniously though, Garfunkel to pursue the acting career that irritated Simon so much, and Simon himself, to his great credit, forging ahead with a solo career that has been both prolific and artistically rewarding. CS&N had seemingly lost the cosy, hippie vibe that smothered their debut album and with the addition of Neil Young had become embroiled in a near-comical war of egos and one-upmanship that had its origins in drugs, status and women. ‘Deja Vu’ was hardly a group effort but it cemented their reputation as a supergroup and sold accordingly. The in-fighting, cancelled shows and solo projects didn’t auger well for a long-term future for CSN&Y though. The fact that James Taylor actually managed to make a record, play shows, retain a coterie of friends and cultivate a huge following of (mostly female) admirers is a minor miracle if everything Browne relates here is true. His temperament, looks and general demeanour were obviously perfect for the time though and his album ‘Sweet Baby James’ and his subsequent career flourished. The Beatles’ tale of 1970 is messier and sadder. Their break-up was something of an inevitability after well-publicised spats between Lennon and McCartney and much political in-fighting, but their final album, ‘Let It Be’ spent three weeks at No.1 in the UK chart. McCartney has the final say on the year when, on Dec 31st he sues the other Beatles to dissolve their legal partnership.
Browne, author of highly-recommended books on Tim & Jeff Buckley and Sonic Youth, relates all of this in some detail without ever becoming bogged down in the potential tedium of it all. What emerges from his narrative is the realisation that, apart from the astounding fact that all of these artists save Lennon and Harrison are around today and seemingly thriving, their lives in 1970 had now become careers, the music business was fast becoming an industry, and artists’ egos had become too big to be reigned in by the conventional band format. 1970 was the year when solo albums became almost an artistic necessity – if you didn’t make one you couldn’t be taken seriously. Even Ringo Starr made solo albums. These safer, blander, more introspective artists were obviously hugely popular but they of course don’t tell the whole story. 1970 also saw the release of the MC5′s ‘Back In The USA’, Miles Davis’ ‘Bitches Brew’, ‘Loaded’ by The Velvet Underground, Spirit’s ’12 Dreams of Dr.Sardonicus’ and at least another twenty or so brilliant albums that were subsequently judged to be both influential and indespensible.
The most sobering fact that emerged from the book for me personally concerned the ongoing Vietnam War which was that “on June 24 1970 changes in the Selective Service System brought both good and damaging news. Instead of drawing from the large pool of eighteen-to twenty-six year-olds, the draft would limit its intake to nineteen-year-olds, those born in 1951”. The year I was born.

BOOK OF THE WEEK : How Soon Is Now? The Madmen and Mavericks who made Independent Music 1975-2005 by Richard King (Faber)

I'm a little late with this one as it's already been quite extensively and enthusiastically reviewed. And rightly so. King really captures the spirit in which the independent label scene was born and developed and of course with the characters involved it can't fail to be entertaining as well as informative. There is a real sense that this was a unique time for fearless people who were passionate about music to take the opportunity to create what amounted to a parallel music business alongside the long-established major labels and to find a different way of doing things that satisfied their ambitions, their predilection for taking risks, and their sheer enthusiasm. King interviewed all the important people at length, filtered and distilled their recollections and has produced a 600 page tome that will stand as an important chronicle of a seminal era in British music.

New James Brown book

There's a new book out on James Brown – The One : The Life and Music of James Brown by R.J.Smith. Review here in City Journal by Ian Penman.

SINGLE NOTES

An interesting new project from Rhino Records. You'll need a kindle or ipad though.

BOOK OF THE WEEK - The True Adventures of The Rolling Stones by Stanley Booth (Canongate)

I read this when it first came out in 1984 and, as everything else you've read about it will confirm, it's still the definitive book about The Rolling Stones. It's fitting that Canongate have re-issued it and entirely appropriate that Greil Marcus has written an introduction to the new edition that places it very firmly in the category of great writing about rock music. Apart from anything else it makes you realise how futile a genre like rock music fiction really is. How could you make up anything more dramatic, bizarre, outrageous and just plain fascinating than this? No-one's managed so far.

BOOK OF THE WEEK - The Baroness by Hannah Rothschild (Virago)

This is one of the strangest, most poignant and often amusing tales from the jazz world - one that has become fairly well-known in recent years via books, magazine articles, a film documentary and at least one radio programme that I know of. Basically it's the story of how a Rothschild baroness, Pannonica, a rebel and eccentric in the making, was so besotted on first hearing Thelonious Monk's Round Midnight that she sought him out and became his adviser, protector, close friend and benefactor. They were both married at the time and while Nica, as she was widely know, managed to co-exist with Monk and his wife Nellie, her husband, children and most of the Rothschild clan all but disowned her. Hannah Rothschild, her great-niece is in the advantageous position of having access to the surviving Rothschilds who knew Nica, and, one suspects, the luxury of being able to spend nearly twenty years piecing this story together. The first part of the book goes into the Rothschild's history and Nica's background in some depth in an effort to try and explain what could have shaped Nica's personality and compelled her to make such a life-changing decision to go off and live a bohemian existence in New York with a then-struggling black jazz musician who appeared to be totally dependent on the help of other people to live day-to-day. The book then introduces us to Monk, his background, and the New York jazz scene in the 50s and 60s. The story has a tragic inevitability about it but Hannah Rothschild does a very convincing job of reconciling the apparent incompatibility of their backgrounds and providing compelling reasons for why the story unfolds in the way it does. Highly recommended.

Andrew Loog Oldham

The new, music-themed issue of An Antidote To Indifference, the occasional but essential fanzine from Caught By The River (a proper fanzine printed on paper with wonky headings) features a brilliant two-page extract from the third volume of Andrew Loog Oldham's memoirs. His first two books, Stoned and 2Stoned, are required reading for anyone wanting to try and understand what went on in the 60s music business, and this new one, titled Stone Free and out soon on Escargot apparently, would appear to be just as indispensable. The Antidote extract deals with the birth of the legendary Immediate label. As soon as I have more details I will pass them on.

Ed Sanders - Fug You

Here's a book I definitely want to read, brought to my attention by Nigel Cross, a man of great taste and erudition. It's called Fug You and is Ed Sanders of The Fugs' informal history of the Peace Eye Bookstore, the Fuck You Press, The Fugs, and Counterculture in the Lower East Side. This is what Ben Ratliff had to say about it in The New York Times Book Review.

From the back of the shelf......

In the late 60s/early 70s just about the only place in London to find any sort of selection of music books that were mostly published in the U.S. was Compendium Books in Camden Town.  Nick Kimberley was the friendly, learned fellow there who knew everything there was to know about music writing and the underground press at the time and he was a huge help to me in two invaluable ways. He took copies of my fanzine Fat Angel to sell in Compendium and he introduced me to the very best in music writing from the U.S. Of course I still have all the books he persuaded me to buy and I treasure them even though some haven't stood the test of time very well. This one I think though just about has : ROCK AND ROLL WILL STAND - edited by Greil Marcus (Beacon Press, Boston, 182pp, pbk, 1969). It cost me £1.45 (there's currently a used copy available via Amazon for £49.99) and is a collection of topical, music-related essays by Bay Area writers who were probably all friends of Marcus and therefore operating on an intellectual level that at worst can be both intimidating and humbling and at best stimulate and enlighten. Rock music began to be taken seriously in 1967 and by 1969 a number of writers, inspired by Paul Williams and his groundbreaking Crawdaddy magazine, were trying to write important stuff about rock. Of course pretentiousness was rife and some hilarious prose resulted, but the best of these writers connected with an audience that wanted rock music to mean something. Marcus himself is of course the doyen of rock analysts and a master at explaining the meaning of it all and he has four essays here. Writers I probably should remember like Sandy Darlington, Steve Strauss and Stewart Kessler also contribute but sadly there is only one piece by Langdon Winner - one of the great writers from the era of Rolling Stone when its review section was the rock fan's bible. I've always thought that some of the best music writing I've ever read has been about talented writers coming up against the previously unknown and unfamiliar and trying to make sense of it. Even though its quality is patchy, this book is a good example of that. Don't pay £49.99 for it but perhaps it might be ripe for re-issue?

Up on the CAUGHT BY THE RIVER web-site today - my new Music Book Reader Bulletin -
http://www.caughtbytheriver.net/2012/05/the-music-book-reader-bulletin-5/#more-19356 

The Music Book Reader Bulletin at Caught By The River

As monthly as possible I post a column called The Music Book Reader Bulletin on the indispensable web-site Caught By The River. In the column I review a new and notable music book and mention other titles I think are worth attention plus news of forthcoming titles. A few months after I started writing it, it became apparent to me that there were more worthy books being published each month than I could give coverage to in the column and more scope for developing the idea of a resource and forum for people interested in music books than I had space for. Hence this blog which I hope will, in future, include contributions from kinded spirits. I'm particularly interested in featuring classic music book titles that are now out of print and deserving of re-issue. Let me know if you have any ideas! In the meantime my Caught By The River columns can be found at http://caughtbytheriver.net/?s=the+music+book+reader+bulletin. The column will hopefully be up on the site in the next few days featuring reviews of This Land Is Your Land : Woody Guthrie of an American Folk Song by Robert Santelli and A Perfect Haze : The Illustrated History of the Monterey International Pop Festival by Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik.

Woody Guthrie

Just finished reading Robert Santelli's excellent book This Land Is Your Land : Woody Guthrie and the Journey of an American Folk Song (Running Press, 256pp, hdbk). Guthrie's life has been well-documented, notably in Joe Klein's definitive biography Woody Guthrie : A Life, Guthrie's own Bound For Glory and the well-received film of the same name starring David Carradine. Santelli's book though has the evolution of Guthrie's most iconic song as the central thread in the story of his life and he firmly establishes it as the most important torch song for protest movements of all kinds through the ages. The book is beautifully produced and illustrated as well. Recommended.

Patti Smith

The Patti Smith memoir Woolgathering is the latest in a series of literary and photographic works illuminating her life and work. In case you missed it here is Luc Sante's assessment of this recent output in The New York Review of Books.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/feb/09/mother-courage-rock/?pagination=false

Astute and discerning publishers Canongate can always be relied on to deliver quality music titles. Last month they re-published Stanley Booth's definitive account of The Rolling Stones on tour - The True Adventures of The Rolling Stones - http://www.canongate.tv/the-true-adventures-of-the-rolling-stones.html - with an introduction by Greil Marcus .
Two other titles forthcoming from Canongate to look our for :
My Song : A Memoir of Art, Race & Defiance by Harry Belafonte (June 2012)
How Music Works by David Byrne (Oct 2012)
And in August they are re-issuing the great Richard Brautigan's Sombrero Fallout with an introduction by Jarvis Cocker.

Notable new books for May

Of the scores of new music books that are published every month about ten are worth serious investigation and of those perhaps one or two will be reviewed outside of the pages of The Wire or Record Collector. Here are six books, out this month, that we will hopefully return to in more detail :

Woolgathering by Patti Smith (Bloomsbury Publishing 96pp hdbk £10)
Patti Smith : A Biography by Nick Johnstone (Omnibus Press 320pp pbk £9.95)
Dick Clark and the History of Rock'n'Roll by the Editors of Life Magazine (Life 80pp hdbk £11.24)
No Regrets : Writings On Scott Walker : Collected Pieces by Rob Young (Orion 288pp hdbk £20)
Brit Wits : A History of British Rock Humor by Iain Ellis (Intellect 208pp pbk £16)
Bert : The Life & Times of A.L Lloyd by Dave Arthur (Pluto Press 456pp hdbk £24.99)

Two New Books From The U.S

The Singing Book Shelf, when it's fully-stacked, will be an extension of, and elaboration on, my monthly column - The Music Book Reader Bulletin – at Caught By The River.

One of the aims of these random notes will be to highlight notable reviews of music books that appear in the mainstream press. This week the TLS published Stephen Brown's review of The Ellington Century (336pp. University of California Press. £24.95) in which he makes the valid point that “music books are much more fun to read in the age of the internet. The author mentions a piece – you plug it into Google – up come performances on YouTube”. Here's a link to the full review.

Music book event of the week is U.S.author Pat Thomas' visit to these shores to publicize his new book Listen, Whitey! : The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975 (224pp. Fantagraphics. £28.99). Pat will be reading from his book and playing music from the accompanying CD at :

The Wire Salon, Cafe Oto, Dalston, London on Thurs May 10 from 8pm.

Rough Trade East on Fri May 11 from 6.30pm

Upstairs at The Ritzy, Brixton on Sat May 12 between 5pm and 6.30pm.