Rocking Reads

[rockingreads]

Ted Libbey: The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection (1999)

Whatever petty prejudices we may harbor against the compact disc today, one can't dispute that no music format has been better suited to presenting the classical music genre.

Indeed, when Sony and Philips were jointly developing CD technology in the 1980s, one of their primary goals was ensuring that most major classical works should fit on a single disc without interruption, and Beethoven's 9th Symphony -- typically running 74 minutes -- was eventually chosen as the benchmark.

Fast-forward to 1999, when Ted Libbey published The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection, and CDs were enjoying their commercial and cultural apex apex.

The only problem, if you can call it that, for classical music fans was navigating the huge volume of available recordings, after a decade of intense label reissue programs.

Enter Libbey with this definitive primer for the final, golden (or should I say silver?) age of physical media; recommending the best recordings and performances of history's greatest composers, conductors, and symphonies, notably without the academic stuffiness common to the form.

Not unlike an NPR broadcast, Libbey's writing is clear and vivid: capturing the emotional core of a piece as well as its interpretation, performer chemistry, sound engineering, and even the hall's or studio's acoustics, without drowning the reader in musicological jargon.

Also, rather than covering these works chronologically, Libbey came up with a highly functional architecture -- grouping symphonies, concertos, chamber music, keyboard works, opera -- designed to guide listeners of all stripes, from novice to connoisseur.

And while I myself didn't read the book from start to finish (maybe I should?), it has taught me almost everything I know about Western classical music and saved me from making an ignorant arse of myself when I've dared to review classical LPs in my VinylSpinning blog.

For that I am eternally grateful, and I only wish I had a few more lifetimes to properly immerse myself in this rich musical tradition (and countless others from around the world) to the extent encouraged by Ted.

The only drawback I can think of is that this guide was written for a world that no longer exists; a world in which you could walk into your local Tower Records with a physical checklist and pick up CDs that now are no longer in print, let alone easily found offline.

Oh well, nothing lasts forever ... except great music.

Featured Records:

Holst/Dutoit/Montreal Symphony: The Planets (1916/1987)

Stravinsky/Columbia Symphony: The Firebird (1910/1962)

Wagner/Barenboim/Paris Symphony: Der Ring Des Nibelungen (1874/1984)

Shostakovich/Ormandy/Philadelphia Orchestra: Symphony No. 4 (1936/1963)

Buy from: Biblio

[rockingreads]

Richard Bunton: AC/DC: Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be (1982)

Malcolm Dome: AC/DC: The Kerrang! Files! The Definitive History (1995)

Anthony Bozza: Why AC/DC Matters (2009)

Murray Engleheart & Arnaud Durieux: Maximum Rock & Roll: The Ultimate Story of the World’s Greatest Rock-and-Roll Band (2006)

Mick Wall: AC/DC: Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be (2013)

Wait, I can explain!

I have over a dozen books about AC/DC stacked up on my shelves, but I grouped these five together because, to one degree or another, they provide general historical overviews of the band's career -- at least up to their publication dates -- instead of personal accounts.

The earliest, by far, being Richard Bunton's Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be (1982), which arrived on the heels of AC/DC's career breakthrough with Back in Black, and provides a slim overview of their ascent from Australian pub band to global superstars, as well as the resilience that carried them through the transition from Bon Scott to Brian Johnson.

Much meatier, albeit also limited by its 1995 pub date, legendary rock journalist Malcolm Dome's The Kerrang! Files! The Definitive History curates a treasure trove of articles, reviews, and interviews from the pages of the long-running U.K. magazine.

Launched in June of 1981 with Angus Young gracing its cover, Kerrang! was the closest thing to a heavy metal bible, so it had a front-row seat to provide an ongoing, often prickly, press-centric perspective of the band's struggles later in the decade and their early '90s revival.

Now let's skip ahead to Anthony Bozza's pocket-sized Why AC/DC Matters, which combines personal fandom with journalistic analysis to celebrate how AC/DC's simple, uncompromising, brilliant formula has had a universal influence on modern music and pop culture.

It may not be the ultimate AC/DC companion -- not by a long shot -- but I dig the concept of carrying the band's "rock 'n' roll life lessons" around at all times, as one might carry an almanac or spiritual guide, for constant reference and, uh, reflection.

Now to the big boys, starting with veteran journalist Murray Engleheart and dedicated archivist Arnaud Durieux's (owner the world's largest private collection of AC/DC memorabilia) Maximum Rock & Roll, which was first published in Australia in 2006 before receiving an international release two years later.

Here you have maybe the definitive, large-scale historical record of the band and their music (over 500 pages!), drawing on hundreds of interviews with AC/DC insiders to document the sweat, sacrifice, and business savvy that built the Young brothers' empire.

It includes extensive analysis of each album's recording process, every grueling tour, valuable new evidence to debunk long-standing myths about Bon Scott's tragic death, and fascinating insights contrasting AC/DC's wild, rebellious public image and the Youngs' disciplined private lives and unshakeable working-class ethic.

So leave it to one of the U.K.'s most polarizing and fearless rock critics, Mick Wall, to take that theme a few steps further with his unauthorized biography, also titled Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be, which arrived in 2013, just before Malcolm Young's retirement due to encroaching dementia.

Refreshingly unburdened by the band's infamously strict PR filter, Wall balances an authoritative career history with more tales of the Youngs' paranoid distrust of outsiders and often ruthless replacement of managers, producers, and musicians in order to protect "the brand."

I can only imagine how Wall would have addressed the subsequent treatment of Brian Johnson, when serious hearing issues sidelined him mid-tour and prompted the quick, efficient, and unsentimental recruitment of Axl Rose to temporarily replace him so the show could go on.

Wall's harsher opinions may feel a tad strong, even borderline scurrilous to fans who haven't already read a dozen AC/DC books (ahem!), IF these weren't balanced by his ample direct access over the years (often while writing for Kerrang!) and evident respect for the music of the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band.

So take your pick ... there are obviously plenty of AC/DC books out there (and on my shelves, just awaiting their turn on this blog), fit to satisfy any level of fandom, from the merely curious to the clinically obsessed like yours truly.

Let there be rock!

Featured Records:

AC/DC: T.N.T. (1975)

AC/DC: Who Made Who (1986)

AC/DC: Black Ice (2008)

Buy from: eBay / Thriftbooks / Amazon / Abe Books / World of Books

[rockingreads]

Doug Brod: They Just Seem a Little Weird: How Kiss, Cheap Trick, Aerosmith, and Starz Remade Rock and Roll (2020)

I'll tell you what else is a little weird ...

Ask anyone to name the four most important and influential American hard rock bands of the 1970s, and they'll undoubtedly cite Kiss and Aerosmith, probably Cheap Trick, and then Van Halen -- so what if the latter enjoyed continued and even greater success into the 1980s?

But not former Spin editor and revisionist historian Doug Brod, who instead placed the comparably obscure Starz alongside three Rock and Roll Hall of Fame giants in 2020's They Just Seem a Little Weird: How Kiss, Cheap Trick, Aerosmith, and Starz Remade Rock and Roll.

Fake news? At first glance, it certainly feels like it.

As someone who routinely champions underrated, underachieving hard rock hopefuls from the late '70s -- Moxy, Riot, Ram Jam, Teaze, Legs Diamond, the Randy Rhoads version of Quiet Riot, and, yes, even Starz -- I'd never dream of elevating any of them among the hard rock firmament.

That would be downright irresponsible!

But, to be fair, a plausible argument for Starz's seemingly arbitrary inclusion here is that they shared professional ties with the other three groups Van Halen simply did not, such as manager Bill Aucoin (Kiss and Starz) and producer Jack Douglas (Aerosmith and Cheap Trick).

Another was that, from a musicological standpoint, these four bands experienced intertwined trajectories in '70s arena rock and then collectively struggled to adapt to the flashy visuals and guitar heroics adopted by the '80s hair metal bands, largely inspired by Van Halen.

And a third argument was that Brod intentionally included Starz in order to illustrate how different bands can succeed or fail, attain immortality or oblivion, despite sharing many of the same musical ingredients, support team, and other professional alliances behind the scenes.

If nothing else, I too will agree that, by inserting a forgotten cult band into the narratives of three popular ones, Brod transformed what might have been a predictable retread through well-documented band histories into a compelling genealogical study of the classic rock canon.

With all this in mind, I'll argue that Brod and his publishers could have probably avoided some controversy and confusion if they'd altered the book's title to: They Just Seem a Little Weird: How Kiss, Cheap Trick, and Aerosmith (With a Little Help from Starz) Remade Rock and Roll.

Featured Records:

Kiss: Hotter than Hell (1974)

Cheap Trick: In Color (1977)

Aerosmith: Live! Bootleg (1978)

Starz: Starz (1976)

Buy from: Better World Books

[rockingreads]

Michael J. Moynihan & Didrik Søderlind: Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground (1998)

Heavy metal fans and musicians are used to doing all the shocking, so when we ourselves are left astonished and aghast by appalling behavior amongst our own, you had better get ready for some truly troubling and terrifying shit.

Arson, theft, vandalism, grave desecration, murder: these were some of the heinous crimes committed in the early '90s by a tight-knit cabal of radicalized Norwegian youths, known forever after as the "Black Metal Inner Circle."

First reported to the world at large by Kerrang! Magazine in 1993 (who dubbed them "Satanic Terrorists"), their outlandish story was elaborated on some five years later in one of the most fascinating but controversial books ever written about heavy metal: Lords of Chaos.

Co-authored by American journalist Michael J. Moynihan and Norwegian music critic Didrik Søderlind, the book covers a three-year period marked by the interconnected rise of black metal's 'Second Wave' and over 50 crimes, culminating in the 1993 murder of Mayhem guitarist Øystein 'Euronymous' Aarseth by Burzum's Varg 'Count Grishnackh' Vikernes.

Unfortunately, initial, widespread praise for this gripping, exhaustively researched exploration of a shadowy subculture few people understood later faced serious criticism from other researchers and some of the very musicians profiled in its pages amid allegations of Moynihan's far-right political leanings.

Others have accused Moynihan of glorifying these violent incidents as mystical manifestations of Norway's Odinist heritage and generally sensationalizing the acts of a small group of bored, confused, unstable kids as a representation of the overall heavy metal community.

Obviously, nothing could be further from the truth, but like any example of ideological, political, or religious extremism, be it on the right or on the left (I've often said that the only good extreme is extreme metal), the Inner Circle's reprehensible actions remain a cautionary tale worth heeding.

And because untold numbers of innocent musicians contributed to the Second Wave's enduring musical legacy, even a polarizing, complicated text like Lords of Chaos -- and the dark chapter in music history it documents -- can still warn us of the dangers of letting dark fantasies manifest in real life.

Those who would dismiss all Norwegian black metal musicians as Satanic Terrorists are the same who would brand all Muslims terrorists or all Americans fascist, racist, imperialist child molesters. 

Featured Records:

Mayhem: Deathcrush EP (1987)

Darkthrone: Transilvanian Hunger (1994)

Emperor: Emperor EP (1993)

Buy from: Abe Books

[rockingreads]

Chuck Panozzo (w/ Michele Skettino): The Grand Illusion: Love, Lies, and My Life With Styx (2007)

Next to forceful personalities like vocalist/keyboardist Dennis DeYoung, vocalist/guitarists Tommy Shaw and James 'JY' Young, and, to a lesser degree, his twin brother, drummer John, bassist Chuck Panozzo was always the quiet man of pomp rockers Styx.

In part because he was hiding a terrible secret: Chuck was (is) gay.

So, his 2007 memoir, The Grand Illusion (co-written with Michele Skettino and obviously named after one of the band's signature albums), gives us another opportunity to celebrate and support Pride Month 2026 and all our friends in the LGBTQIA+ community.

From his strict Catholic upbringing on the South Side of Chicago to headlining arenas across America with Styx, Panozzo lived a double life: sneaking out to gay bars while putting on a heterosexual rocker facade to the public at large and even his own bandmates.

Anyone who's also read the first- or second-hand accounts of other closeted superstars of the 1970s, like Freddie Mercury or Rob Halford, will recognize Panozzo's plight.

Along the way, Chuck shares a wealth of personal and professional reminisces about Styx's early history, rise to fame, fall from grace, and (mostly) triumphant reunion, up to their terminal fracture with DeYoung.

But if you're looking for a proper deep dive into the band's long history and extensive musical canon, may I suggest Sterling Whitaker's The Grand Delusion?

Panozzo also writes movingly about the heartbreak and helplessness of watching his fraternal twin, John, battle severe alcoholism until his untimely death in 1996, in what amounted to a completely different kind of "double life" that also received neither compassion nor understanding in the high-stakes world of rock 'n' roll.

And Chuck spares no details about his early '90s HIV diagnosis, which, after years of personal denial, progressed to full-blown AIDS (forcing a long-delayed admission to his band mates), before thankfully finding an effective, stabilizing antiretroviral drug treatment.

All in all, The Grand Illusion is a Styx book, second, because, first, it's an eye-opening chronicle of Panozzo's 50-year struggle to accept and finally reveal his sexual identity in a society that simply wasn't ready or willing to let him live his true self.

Featured Records:

Styx: The Grand Illusion (1977)

Styx: Styx II (1973)

Styx: Crystal Ball (1976)

Buy from: World of Books

[rockingreads]

Seymour Stein (w/ Gareth Murphy): Siren Song: My Life in Music (2018)

Like many people of his generation, Sire Records co-founder Seymour Stein didn't feel comfortable or safe admitting his homosexuality until the final years of his life (he passed in 2023 at age 80), but that's no reason not to celebrate his remarkable life during Pride Month.

Stein's near-seven-decades-long music industry career has few parallels, and while one would normally dismiss the book's subtitle -- 'The Autobiography of America's Greatest Living Record Man' -- as unit-shifting hyperbole, Seymour actually had a better case than most. 

Even I, who own relatively few Sire LPs, always marveled at the A&R "ears" responsible for either signing or licensing legends like the Ramones, Talking Heads, The Cure, The Smiths, The Replacements, Soft Cell, Depeche Mode, Madness, Ministry, Ice-T, K.D. Lang, and Madonna -- the latter famously while he lay in a hospital bed recovering from a heart infection!

But I didn't know about the born-and-raised New Yorker's apprenticeship under Syd Nathan at Cincinnati's King Records (home to James Brown), where he learned the trade while dealing with rack jobbers, promo men, and, of course, artists, in the cut-throat regional world of independent labels.

That independent experience and spirit wound up fueling Stein's lifelong search for unconventional artists and made him an early champion of new genres like punk, post-punk, new wave, and underground dance music, when other executives played it safe.

As Seymour explained it, Sire's talent scouting philosophy was based on his lack of formal musical skill, which forced him to listen like any other fan in the audience; never mind that most of his peers shared the same trait but still obeyed their wallets instead of their instincts.

The music business' eternal tension between art and commerce also emerges in Stein's battles against major label foes and partners, with Warner Bros. chief Mo Ostin, in particular, used as an example of the masterful corporate politician with no genuine love for music.

This book leaves little doubt that Seymour REALLY loved music.

And speaking of love, Stein also speaks frankly about the challenges of living as a closeted gay man in the hyper-masculine music industry, his marriage of convenience to late wife and business partner Linda, her violent 2007 murder, and the tragic loss of their eldest daughter to cancer.

So after or maybe even before you do your homework on higher-profile record men like Clive, Ahmet, Gordy, Geffen, Wexler, Yetnikoff, Bogart, or Blackwell, be sure not to sleep on perhaps the greatest of them all: Seymour Stein.

Featured Records:

Ramones: Ramones Mania! (1988)

The Cult: Electric (1987)

Echo & The Bunnymen: Ocean Rain (1984)

Buy from: Better World Books

[rockingreads]

Lesley-Ann Jones: Mercury: An Intimate Biography of Freddie Mercury (2012)

Matt Richards & Mark Langthorne: Somebody to Love: The Life, Death, and Legacy of Freddie Mercury (2018)

As most of you know, June is Pride Month, so consider this blog (and a few more that will follow in coming weeks) my modest show of support for all my friends in the LGBTQIA+ community ...

I've read lots of books about Queen, but none dedicated to Freddie Mercury himself, so I decided to make amends for that this year by doubling down with two biographies that come at one of the greatest rock singers of all time from totally different directions.

As a veteran Fleet Street journalist who interacted with Queen during their peak, Lesley-Ann Jones built her Intimate Biography around her own, first-hand observations and over a hundred interviews with Mercury's inner circle, including partners like Mary Austin and Jim Hutton.

That proximity allowed Jones to focus her efforts upon the extreme, deep-seated conflicts that distinguished the shy, Parsi boy born Farrokh Bulsara, on the island of Zanzibar, from the flamboyant, indomitable, world-renowned frontman reinvented as Freddie Mercury.

It also led Jones to consider the immense isolation that came with Freddie's fame and his necessarily undercover attempts to indulge in the gay club scenes of New York and Munich as a perpetual search for connection and companionship.

And while Jones' up-close, "in the room" narrative style draws the reader closer to her subject (as much as that's possible), it occasionally veers into tabloid-like drama, gossip and sensationalism, which tends to overshadow Mercury's and Queen's music.

Meanwhile, Somebody to Love co-authors, Matt Richards and Mark Langthorne took a unique angle by structuring their book into a panoramic review of Freddie's career in and out of Queen, split with a clinical timeline of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic, traced all the way back to the virus' early 20th Century origins in the Congo.

Their approach is simultaneously jarring to the story's flow and very educational; exposing how rampant societal homophobia fueled institutional neglect and devastated an entire generation of victims, from anonymous club-goers to high-profile figures like Rock Hudson.

I can still remember my mother's shocked reaction to the revelation of Hudson's secret and tragic death in 1985, as he had been such a hunk and heart-throb for teenage girls of her post-WWII generation.

Anyway, Richards and Langthorne's efforts result in a literary hybrid that's almost as much sociological document as rock biography, even though they rely on sourcing existing memoirs, public records, and medical histories, instead of direct access to Mercury.

Although, I will say that they still provide a surprisingly detailed and unsentimental look at Freddie and Queen's early career and each band member's combustible struggles for creative control, if not the same level of insight into their later works as other books.

Indeed, neither one of these biographies can compare with (and both obviously rely on material from) 1994's As it Began for a broad and comprehensive overview, but both expanded my understanding of Freddie's life and experience, his tragedy and triumph.

Mind you, both also have their flaws, and the fact of the matter is Mercury was such an intensely private person offstage, forced to hide his true self from a world that wasn't ready to accept or comprehend (still isn't, obviously), that we'll never truly get inside his mind, now that he's gone.

Featured Records:

Freddie Mercury: Mr. Bad Guy (1985)

Queen: The Miracle (1989)

Queen: Made in Heaven (1995)

Buy from: Thriftbooks / Abe Books

[rockingreads]

Pete Way (w/ Paul Rees): A Fast Ride Out of Here: Confessions of Rock's Most Dangerous Man (2018)

Pete Way's "fast ride" ended in 2020, when the 70-year-old former UFO bassist died after taking a fall in his home, but it probably should have ended much faster, given an appetite for wanton destruction that, like the title says, made him one of rock's most dangerous men.

And if you think that's just marketing hyperbole meant to sell a few more books (and it is), know that none other than Ozzy Osbourne supplied the quote that inspired that title: "They call me a madman but compared to Pete Way, I'm out of my league."

Lucky for fans, if not the countless victims of Way's careless, reckless disregard for himself and anyone who came into UFO's orbit (no pun intended), he left this 2018 catalogue of debauchery and devastation, co-written by longtime Kerrang! editor Paul Rees.

It traces Way's journey from model-train enthusiast in suburban London to iconic, spread-legged, striped-trousers-wearing bassist of space rockers-turned-hard rockers UFO, Fastway, Waysted, and, briefly, even Ozzy's band.

Or at least it attempts to, amidst the tales of Pete's parallel passion for chemical consumption, which he chronicles with riotous tales of alcohol-soaked tours, multi-million-dollar drug binges, and a decade-long heroin addiction.

The fact that Way acknowledges the wreckage caused by his selfish behavior and catastrophic personal choices can't make up for so many betrayed bandmates, six marriages, four divorces, two dead ex-wives, and long-term estrangement from his daughters.

And though he shares a few tasty nuggets about his interactions with control freak Phil Mogg and eternal enigma Michael Schenker, don't expect a lot of insight into UFO's musical milestones, which are often given just a paragraph to make room for another anecdote about blowing cash or scoring drugs.

By the time Pete hits his personal "Rock Bottom" during a brutal battle with prostate cancer and finally confronts his legacy and mortality, it's frankly too late for redemption, and the reader is faced with a character who is neither sympathetic nor inspiring, let alone worthy of idolatry.

But, yes, super fan Nikki Sixx, ripped off Pete's wardrobe.

Featured Records:

UFO: Obsession (1978)

UFO: UFO 1 (1970)

UFO: No Place to Run (1980)

Buy from: Better World Books

[rockingreads]

Steve Turner (w/ Adem Tepedelen): Mud Ride: A Messy Trip Through the Grunge Explosion (2023)

Not as messy as you might expect ...

Steve Turner always cut an unusual, incongruous figure as the nerdy, fuzz-pedal-stomping guitarist for grunge icons Mudhoney (and their germinal band Green River, before that) who rejected celebrity and most forms of rock star posturing.

As such, he and his longtime partner-in-crime Mark Arm in many ways epitomized the Seattle scene's apparent disregard, even discomfort, with fame -- certainly more so than platinum-selling peers like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains.

But, as Turner's 2023 memoir, Mud Ride (co-written with Decibel magazine regular Adem Tepedelen) reveals -- or reminds us -- some of that attitude reflected the equally paradoxical reality that grunge was anything but a blue-collar movement.

Instead, many of its participants, including Turner, Arm, and Stone Gossard (who wrote the foreword), didn't really need to make it big because they were privileged, private school-educated suburban white kids with generally supportive parents.

Turner exemplified this with his skateboarding obsession and naive negotiations with his doting parents ("give me two years and then I'll go back to college"), all of which afforded him the "luxury" of becoming one of the architects of the "Seattle Sound" instead of working a nine-to-five.

Must be nice ...

On the upside, this advantage gave Turner entry into the community, subculture, and influences that paved the way to Grunge in the pre-hype 1980s, which he documents here via underground hubs like the all-ages Metropolis club and the nascent, cash-strapped Sub-Pop Records.

He obviously also takes us through Mudhoney's 35-plus-year career as bemused grunge pioneers, dragged along by the unexpected tsunami, but what made them so refreshingly unimpressed by it all, also makes for a rather dull story, at least in Turner's and Tepedelen's telling.

If anything, Mud Ride succeeds as an "anti-rock star biography"; one that proves you don't have to be a desperate, damaged, degenerate willing to sell your soul for fame and fortune, to make a living through music -- with an emphasis on music, instead of the, uh, other stuff.

That being said, these soberly, prosaically delivered contradictions may seem a little uninspiring, coming from someone whose most famous song begged listeners to "Touch Me, I'm Sick."

Featured Records:

Mudhoney: Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge (1991)

Green River: Come On Down EP (1985)

Buy from: Better World Books

[rockingreads]

Peter Doggett: You Never Give Me Your Money: The Beatles After the Breakup (2010)

Just when we thought everything that could be written about The Beatles HAD been written, along came Peter Doggett (a veteran rock critic for Record Collector, Mojo, Q, and Beatles Monthly) with the novel idea of chronicling the Fab Four's exploits AFTER their break-up.

This book's first chapter alone, in which Doggett substantiates his expertise with uncannily acute descriptions of John, Paul, George, and Ringo's distinct talents, personalities, strengths, and weaknesses, is some of the greatest Beatles literature I've ever read.

Here's a taste:

Lennon was innately brilliant, acerbic, erratic, impulsive, inexplicably conflicted about his musical genius, and easily influenced by drugs, radical politics, and Yoko Ono, but fiercely protective of his autonomy.

McCartney could be as overbearing as he was amiable; rather desperate to revise his unfair fate as eternal second banana to Lennon, but undoubtedly possessed of the strongest creative drive and sharpest business instincts within the group.

Harrison was inevitably overshadowed by the incomparable Lennon/McCartney partnership and caught in a perpetual internal crisis between his spiritual enlightenment and massive material wealth.

And Ringo was the group's comparatively egoless, steady emotional anchor, whose post-break-up demons nevertheless led to a near-fatal battle with alcoholism and endless search for identity in the years that followed.

When Doggett dives into his narrative, beginning with Brian Epstein's death in 1967 and the rudderless confusion that followed the launch of Apple Corps, he sets the stage for the band's disintegration with forensic, objective, and often heartbreaking clarity.

In fact, Doggett's greatest strength is his egalitarian treatment of all four members, avoiding the common biographical trap of picking "heroes and villains" -- except for the truly villainous Allen Klein, whose sinister tactics forced McCartney to sue the other three in order to legally dissolve their partnership and rescue his earnings from Klein.

By the time John, George, and Ringo grudgingly admitted that Paul's distrust had been well founded, the damage was done, and, as Doggett shows, the former Fabs spent most of the '70s rebuilding their brotherhood in fits and starts, amid the odd collaboration and frequently traded barbs through lyrics in their solo works.

Doggett also addresses the immense, constant pressure to reunite The Beatles, and, after Lennon's murder in 1980 made that impossible, how the surviving members' (plus Yoko) found common ground fighting for their just-deserved earnings and protecting their legacy with, among other things, the Beatles Anthology project.

Ultimately, You Never Give Me Your Money will likely be a sobering, even depressing read for most Beatles fans, but it also elicits empathy and forgiveness by peeling back their music's technicolor myths to reveal the harsh economic machinery that tormented their lives but could never diminish their unified artistry.

And, since rock 'n' roll never produced anything quite like The Beatles, Doggett's book in some small way also helps us fans cope with our grief over what was lost and can never be had again.

Featured Records:

John Lennon: Imagine (1971)

Paul McCartney & Wings: Band On the Run (1973)

George Harrison: Somewhere in England (1981)

Ringo Starr: Ringo (1973)

Buy from: Better World Books

[rockingreads]

Jon Savage: England's Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond (1991)

John Lydon (w/ Keith & Kent Zimmerman): Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs (1994)

"Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"

Well, you won't get that feeling from these two excellent books: arguably the definitive chronicles of the U.K. punk rock apocalypse and their unwilling standard-bearers for bedlam, nihilism, and anarchy, the Sex Pistols.

Just as Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain's Please Kill Me is the first (and maybe last) book you need to read about the New York punk scene, Jon Savage's England's Dreaming should be your first (and almost last) stop for the complete, raging, puking, gobbing, mohawked, safety-pinned British story.

Unless, that is, you want to follow it with John Lydon's autobiography, Rotten, wherein the onetime Johnny Rotten -- arguably punk's single most iconic figurehead -- shares his personal viewpoint with typically biting sarcasm and, less expectedly, a touching sensitivity.

However, for a couple of books covering basically the same subject, they approach it from totally opposite ends of the telescope, with the first providing a panoramic musical and social autopsy, while the other takes us inside the eye of the storm itself.

Let's start with Savage's treatise (often praised as the 'Punk Rock Bible'), which frames the music' within England's depressing socio-political climate of the time, characterized by widespread social unrest, economic stagnation, a rekindling of extreme right politics, and plain artistic boredom.

Going even deeper, Savage also establishes an intersection between the avant-garde revolutionary group, Situationist International, the fashion world of Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, and the latter's publicity-seeking opportunism in exploiting the raw energy and anarchic danger of the Sex Pistols.

By contrast, Lydon's memoirs provide a sharp, caustic rebuttal, largely intended to discredit McLaren's Svengali role, to demystify the notion that punk was a coordinated intellectual movement, to and disrupt all further attempts to manipulate he and his fellow Pistols for history's benefit.

Lydon's reminisces of his impoverished childhood and surprising musical tastes (he loved everything from glam to prog and Krautrock, plus the jigs favored by his Irish immigrant parents), and the Pistols' short, destructive, and controversial existence are delivered with defensive defiance in a jagged, non-linear narrative style.

The tone fits him like a glove, and whether it's totally honest or to some degree performative in its own way, I dare say that it helped Lydon to reclaim "his truth" (as the kids would say today) from McLaren, Savage, and countless others who, for good or bad, commoditized the Sex Pistols' legacy.

But, since it takes multiple perspectives to paint a complete picture -- especially for a musical movement as important, enduring, and complicated as punk rock -- I think both of these books remain pretty much essential reading.

Indeed, along with the aforementioned Please Kill Me and possibly George Gimarc's Punk Diary, we're talking about the "Big Bang" of punk literature right here, although I'd love to hear it you have other classic works to recommend.

Fire away, I'll read them!

Featured Records:

Sex Pistols: Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols (1977)

Public Image Ltd: Public Image: First Issue (1978)

Buy from: World of Books / Thrift Books

[rockingreads]

Dave Marsh: Louie Louie: The History and Mythology of the World's Most Famous Rock 'n' Roll Song (1993)

What do The Kingsmen, The Sonics, Otis Redding, Iggy & The Stooges, Motörhead, Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention, Toots and The Maytals, Heavy Cruiser, Barry White, Black Flag, The Fat Boys, and even comic legend John Belushi, have in common?

They all recorded their own versions of Richard Berry's "Louie Louie": the most famous, or, maybe more fittingly, the most INFAMOUS, rock 'n' roll song of all time.

That's the thesis constructed by Dave Marsh: a founding editor of Creem magazine known for "harshing the buzz" for Lester Bangs and other Gonzo rock critics, before joining the 'Cult of Springsteen' and spending the past several decades suckling at Jon Landau's teat.

Now, I've got nothing against The Boss, but my primary beef with Marsh arose when I learned that he apparently didn't "get" the Ramones but felt that a similarly simple, dare I say lovably "moronic," song deserved its own book!

But that doesn't mean I wasn't impressed by Marsh's chutzpah and intrigued by his mission to propose that a single, misunderstood song could serve as a lens for him to examine the complex intersection of American culture, law, government, and music history.

And Marsh is nothing if not rigorous in his efforts, devoting almost too much time to the 31-month FBI investigation that cost taxpayers thousands of dollars in an attempt to decipher and censor the song's allegedly obscene, slurred lyrics, which were of course harmless.

Harmless but hardly irrelevant, since the same mystery and confusion fueled the mythology that turned The Kingsmen's raucous, 1963 cover of "Louie Louie" into a viral phenomenon that spread like Chlamydia across college campuses and suburban garages.

Marsh also sheds light on the song's nebulous origins as a modest, calypso-influenced R&B tune composed by the equally unheralded Richard Berry in 1956, as well as his lengthy battle to reclaim ownership to a number that experienced an almost incomparable, certainly unimaginable afterlife.

Here, again, we see Marsh's meticulous nature, as he documents every known version of "Louie Louie" released through to the book's 1993 publication to support his theory that it transcended those humble origins to become a bona fide folk artifact, inextricably intertwined in the public consciousness.

And while I'm not sure this status has carried over to Gen Z and Alpha, I know the song's legacy extended and grew at least as far as my generation, because I too worship every perfectly imperfect second of The Kingsmen's ramshackle "Louie Louie."

Finally, whatever my personal issues with Marsh, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and support much of its thesis, which is obviously illustrated by the eclectic assortment of records I was able to pluck from my own collection to illustrate "Louie Louie's" wide-ranging influence.

Featured Records:

The Kingsmen: "Louie Louie" / "Haunted Castle" (1963)

Motörhead: "Louie Louie" / "Tear You Down" (1978)

The Mothers of Invention: Uncle Meat (1969)

Various Artists: Animal House Soundtrack (1978)

Heavy Cruiser: Heavy Cruiser (1972)

Buy from: Thrift Books

[rockingreads]

Dunstan Prial: The Producer: John Hammond and the Soul of American Music (2006)

What do Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Robert Johnson, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, and Stevie Ray Vaughan have in common?

They were all discovered, mentored, championed, or produced by John Hammond.

In fact, although Dunstan Prial's 2006 biography is called The Producer, it could have just as easily been titled 'The Talent Scout,' 'The Jazz Critic,' 'The A&R Man,' 'The Band Wrangler,' and any number of other roles lived by this modern-day renaissance man.

Born into privilege in 1910, John Hammond was a scion of the aristocratic Vanderbilt family (shipping and railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt was his great-grandfather), who fell in love with the jazz and blues records played by the black household staff working in his family's Manhattan mansion.

As a teenager, Hammond began sneaking out to Harlem speakeasies to hear music that high society looked down upon, and his obsession led to a paradoxical life in which a man with immeasurable wealth chose to spend his nights in smoke-filled jazz clubs and gritty recording studios.

More importantly, Hammond viewed music as a powerful tool in the battle for civil rights, which he crusaded for through his writing, talent-scouting, concert promotion (he was among the first to push for integrated jazz groups), and direct activism.

Yes, Hammond used his wealth to support his "hobby" and Prial doesn't ignore his flaws, at one point describing him as a "haute WASP" who could be arrogant, opinionated, a shameless promoter of his own projects (without disclosing his involvement), and more emotionally committed to his artists than his own family.

But Hammond's knowledge and passion for black music and star-studded associations were undeniable -- as were landmark achievements like opening the integrated Café Society club, staging the legendary From Spirituals to Swing concerts at Carniegie Hall, and spending over 30 years on the NAACP board.

What's more, all this was just his first act; his second as a Columbia Records executive confirmed he had A&R man "ears" and unparalleled taste via the signings of Dylan, Aretha, Springsteen, and Stevie Ray, before his passing in 1987.

I believe it was Springsteen who is quoted here as saying that Hammond was a "protective figure in a business known for predators," and that's another personal quality that supports his iconic status in the annals of 20th Century music.

Ironically, although hardly unexpectedly, Hammond was buried in the Vanderbilt Family Cemetery on Staten Island and now rests among the same "blue blood" relatives from whose lifestyle he rebelled throughout his time on Earth.

Featured Records:

Billie Holiday: Strange Fruit (1972)

Bob Dylan: The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963)

Bruce Springsteen: Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ (1973)

Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble: Couldn’t Stand the Weather (1984)

Buy from: Thrift Books

[rockingreads]

Geddy Lee (w/ Daniel Richler): My Effin' Life: From Holocaust Roots to Rock and Roll Stardom (2023)

It was everything I hoped for ... and more!

That's something Rush fans grew accustomed to saying throughout the Canadian hard rock icons' long, historic, one-of-a-kind career, and it's not surprisingly something I said after closing bassist and vocalist Geddy Lee's magnificent autobiography for the last time.

Just like one of the band's gloriously bloated prog rock epics (say, "Xanadu"), My Effin' Life (co-written with veteran broadcaster Daniel Richler) documents Geddy's personal and musical experiences, both in and out of Rush, in fastidious, extensive, almost exhaustive detail.

But while 500-plus pages might have felt like T.M.I. in the hands of most (ab)normal rock stars, Lee's sober candor, self-effacing humor, and priceless archive of never-before-seen photos was embraced by diehard Rush fans as eagerly as the 18-minute "Cygnus X-1 Book II" suite.

And that includes an entire chapter dedicated to Geddy's Holocaust-surviving parents' and their incredible odyssey from Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen to the Toronto suburbs, where their experiences and culture shaped the boy born Gary Lee (Gershon Eliezer) Weinrib.

Lee follows that up with an unprecedented insider's deep-dive into Rush's modest beginnings and eventual rise to fame, all couched in insights into his lifelong bond with guitarist Alex Lifeson and creative partnership with Lifeson and drummer Neil Peart.

Some might find the painstakingly catalogued album/tour cycles that follow over ensuing decades a tad much, but Geddy contrasts these with frank descriptions of his family life, marital troubles, and other challenges of balancing home life with rock stardom.

About which: while the book sees Geddy confessing to his fair share of immature behavior, partying, and drug use, he also emphasizes Rush's obsessive work ethic and their hobbies outside of music, including baseball, birdwatching, wine collecting, and reading -- lots of reading.

You know ... NERDS!

Finally, Geddy writes movingly about Peart's personal tragedies, personal rebound, and untimely demise, while welcoming fans into Rush's unique inner circle, with lots of glimpses into the irreverent sense of humor that gradually emerged from behind the band's serious musical facade.

Now I just hope that Lifeson -- Rush's resident comedian -- will gift us an autobiography of his own someday, to sit alongside Geddy's My Effin' Life and Neil's various motorcycle travelogues, like 2002's Ghost Rider.

Featured Records:

Rush: Fly by Night (1975)

Rush: Exit … Stage Left (1981)

Rush: Hold Your Fire (1987)

Buy from: Book Outlet

[rockingreads]

Michael D. Smith & Rahul Telang: Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment (2018)

Liz Pelly: Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist (2025)

I had to borrow some of my daughters' records for this blog ...

Not to get ahead of ourselves, but the streaming music era as we know it is bound to come to an end, even if we don't yet know how Gen Alpha will choose to replace Gen Z's dominant music consumption format, because change is simply inevitable.

And when a music format/user experience has been around long enough for well-informed books to be written about it, well, you can bet your old iPods or Walkmans that we're closer to the end than to the start, but enough with my prognostications.

Here are two excellent books that will educate, elucidate, and, to some degree, enrage anyone who's curious about the WHYs behind the WHAT in music history.

In Streaming, Sharing, Stealing, Carnegie Mellon professors Michael D. Smith and Rahul Telang examine how the digital revolution stripped traditional media gatekeepers -- major labels and studios, superstar managers and agents, radio and MTV programmers, etc. -- of their power.

Enabled by much larger budgets and game-changing technologies for media consumption, digital giants like Amazon, Apple, and Netflix, bypassed those gatekeepers by gaining unprecedented access to, and control of, consumer data.

As a result, they also transformed the decision-making process long responsible for defining the value of "art" from hunches to analytics, replacing a system where executives and creatives made decisions based on intuition with cold hard behavioral data.

Finally, the book also considers the recurring piracy problem (positing that it fluctuates based on availability, reasonable prices, and convenience) and new phenomenons like the long tail and niche content, which now generate slow but significant revenues over time.

By contrast, Liz Pelly's Mood Machine characterizes the rise of streaming, not as a new age of efficiency and opportunity, but as a "muzak-ification" of art and erosion musicians' livelihood, while casting Spotify in the leading role as the modern music industry's biggest savior and antichrist.

Based on her diligent research into Spotify's investment in "wallpaper music," designed to be ignored rather than enjoyed, Pelly argues that the streaming giant converted art into utility by prioritizing "mood" over music genres or musicians.

She also claims the algorithms that have steadily replaced human curation don't serve the listener so much as gate-keep and limit their exposure to new sounds and artists, while pressuring the latter to game the system with generic production, shorter songs, hooks within the first 30 seconds to avoid skips.

Most damning of all, Pelly exposes Spotify's covert investment in stock music and fake artist farms to churn out low-cost material; then turning around and forcing human performers to accept lower royalties via algorithmic "payola" products like Discovery Mode.

Sound depressing?

Well, it is, but it's nothing new, and so the eternal battle between art and commerce, passion and convenience, humans vs. machines rages on ...

Who knows what the next chapter will bring, but I'm putting my money on a deeper integration of music with both gaming and AI, as the first streaming-native generation, Gen Z, matures into adulthood, and Gen Alpha defines and adopts the next model for music consumption.

Featured Records:

Sabrina Carpenter: Short n' Sweet (2024)

Ashe: Willson (2024)

Miranda Lambert: Wildcard (2019)

Buy from: Better World Books / World of Books

[rockingreads]

Nick Kent:

The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993 (1994)

Apathy for the Devil: A 1970s Memoir (2010)

If you weren't around before the Internet, you just don't understand ...

There once was a day when magazines provided the ultimate lifeline between fans and the music they loved, and rock critics like Nick Kent could become almost as famous as the rock stars they covered, and, in Nick's case, almost emulated unto his ultimate destruction.

He wasn't called the 'Dark Prince of the British Music Press' for nothing.

Along with his peers and rivals, Charles Shaar Murray and Ian MacDonald, Kent formed the NME's 'Holy Trinity' of '70s writers; they transformed music journalism into a blood sport, replacing PR puff-pieces with a high-energy blend of gonzo prose, intellectual rigor, and sheer hyperbole.

No one does HYPE like the U.K. music press, and you can expect all this and more from both of these books (I believe he's since written more), although they are structured in very different ways ...

As its title suggests, The Dark Stuff curates a series of essays and character studies from Kent's '70s glory days, with a focus on doomed, complex, or controversial rock figures like Syd Barrett, Brian Wilson, Lou Reed, Captain Beefheart, Neil Young, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Elvis Costello, and Jerry Lee Lewis.

Fusing sophisticated prose and investigative depth with caustic cynicism, Kent approached rock journalism with the gravity of high literature and the lawless energy of gonzo reporting, simultaneously admiring and eviscerating his subjects for their preternatural talents and the subsequent use -- or abuse -- thereof.

I can relate, and to me this was proof of Kent's genuine fandom, because when you put your idols on a pedestal and then discover they're not only human (often shitty humans at that), you temper your worship with equally high, if unrealistic expectations.

Written many years later, Apathy for the Devil shifts the lens onto Kent himself, chronicling his coming-of-age as an erudite music nut, his rise to NME prominence, and his subsequent descent into the London underground highlighted by a volatile relationship with the Sex Pistols, and drug-tainted proximity to The Rolling Stones.

It was here that the fine line between journalist and hanger-on began to blur for Kent, who even fancied himself a budding artist for a brief, heroin-distorted period, before exiting the "game" and relocating to Paris in order to detox and save himself.

Essentially, Kent's tone on Apathy ... is far more personal, reflective, and self-deprecating than on The Dark Stuff, as Kent strips away the romanticism of the perceived rock critic's existence while de-mythologizing both the artists he covered and the dishonestly exalted '70s rock scene they inhabited.

Both books are highly recommended,

p.s. -- Kent had a hand in helping to release the first pressing of Iggy and the Stooges' Metallic K.O., so I had to include it among these LPs reflecting some of his other favorite artists.

Featured Records:

Iggy and The Stooges: Metallic K.O. (1976)

David Bowie: Young Americans (1975)

Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band: Safe as Milk (1967)

Elvis Costello and The Attractions: Imperial Bedroom (1982)

Jerry Lee Lewis: "Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On" (1957)

Buy from: AbeBooks, Awesome Books.

[rockingreads]

Michael Hahn: Denim and Leather: The Rise and Fall of the New Waver of British Heavy Metal (2021)

Unless mankind suddenly develops better taste in music (or, even more unlikely, A.I. somehow comes to the rescue), it's hard to imagine that any book will ever best Malc MacMillan's N.W.O.B.H.M. Encyclopedia for granular and compendious thoroughness.

But Michael Hahn, a former editor with The Guardian, deserves recognition for authoring the second most valuable tome about one of my all-time-favorite musical "scenes," the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, with his aptly named Denim and Leather.

You know the words: "Denim and leather ... brought us all together."

Named after the Saxon's zeitgeist-capturing fourth LP (seen above alongside other genre classics), as well as my aspirational daily wardrobe, this is an oral history in the grand tradition of Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain's Please Kill Me and Mark Yarm's Everybody Loves Our Town.

And that means Hahn leans on his editorial experience to largely hover in the background and let the musicians, fans, journalists, DJs, and other assorted participants who lived through the intoxicating period between 1979 and '83 tell the story in their own words.

Core topics include the D.I.Y. mentality borrowed from punk that inspired bands to release their own singles and spawned regional independents like Neat Records, until major labels and mainstream pressures chipped away at the movement's original, working-class grit.

The book also delves into the now-seemingly archaic media channels -- radio's The Friday Rock Show, Kerrang! magazine (and, before it, Sounds), as well as London's legendary Soundhouse club -- that supported the N.W.O.B.H.M. and gave fans something to rally around.

And Hahn's hundreds of interviews provide a forum, not just for the smaller, oft-forgotten groups, but for the less commendable, sordid forces of the time, such as the rampant misogyny experienced by pioneering all-female bands like Girlschool and Rock Goddess.

Speaking of the bands, it's wonderful to see the voices of so many secondary players (Samson, Raven, Demon, Blitzkrieg, Vardis, Tank, Fist, Sledgehammer, Holocaust, Praying Mantis, Persian Risk, Tokyo Blade, White Spirit, Angel Witch, Witchfynde, Witchfinder General, the Tygers of Pan Tang, I could go on and on) represented here.

Of course, like all oral histories, Denim and Leather's roll call of contributors is as conspicuous for its absentees (none more so than the N.W.O.B.H.M.'s signature band, Iron Maiden) as for those present (Def Leppard, who previously went out of their way to disassociate themselves).

But until someone else takes up the challenge, Hahn's interviews provide the most complete and satisfying deep-dive into the careers of Diamond Head (who at one point looked like the next Led Zeppelin) and black metal's outrageous, blasphemous godfathers, Venom.

In sum: Denim and Leather will never please everyone (myself included) who still loves, worships, and, to some degree, owes their life (or at their life's choices, including the aforementioned wardrobe choices) to the N.W.O.B.H.M., but it will surely renew the faith of everyone who took these lyrics to heart and set the spirit free:

"Where were you in '79 when the dam began to burst? Did you check us out down at the local show? Were you wearing denim, wearing leather? Did you run down to the front? Did you queue for your ticket through the ice and snow? Did you read the music paper from the back and to the front? Did you find out where to see your favorite band? Did you listen to the radio every Friday night? Did you hang around your local record store? Do you dream of playing guitar or smashing up the drums? Maybe you can learn to play the bass ... You can always be a singer like me and front the band. Well, on the stage we wait at your command!

Denim and Leather ... Brought us all together; It was you that set the spirit free."

Featured Records:

Venom: Welcome to Hell (1981)

Praying mantis: Time Tells No Lies (1981)

Diamond Head: (Living On) Borrowed Time (1982)

Saxon: Denim and Leather (1981)

White Spirit: White Spirit (1980)

Def Leppard: On Through the Night (1980)

Buy from: Bazillion Points