Full disclosure: I was gifted this book whilst in Austin, Texas in late summer by one of its contributors, Mr. David Immerglück, a multi-instrumentalist for Counting Crows, the Monks of Doom, and other musical projects. A fellow lunatic music geek, it makes sense that the man we all affectionately call Immer would be included here with his essay about the obscurity of what he dubs “Welsh hippy rockers,” MAN, and their 1974 musical manifesto, Rhinos, Winos & Lunatics. But Immer is but one voice, and the MAN record, which I was gladly introduced to in this volume, is only the tip of the geek-dom iceberg. After just a few of these entrees, you will become a full-fledged member of The White Label Promo Preservation Society.
For newbies to this affliction, a “white label promo” is the vinyl hound’s most cherished find. Back in the day, these were unreleased-to-the-wider-public versions of records that would be shared only with reviewers and radio stations. I have more than a few in my humble collection, but it is only a wink and a nod to the converted, because this compendium casts a wider net. We are introduced by decades to dozens of hidden gems, lost classics, and otherwise bizarre oddities – all of which deserve the attention paid here. Thanks to the efforts of Sal Maída and Mitchell Cohen, who curated the book – as well as added their own essays – there is a place for forgotten worthiness to shine.
It is not just selections from fringe artists like Ars Nova, Zal Yanosky, Bunky & Jake, The Remains, and Milk ‘N’ Cookies, but significant names that released dismissed or plain missed classics; T Rex, The Drifters, Todd Rundgren, The Kinks, Fairport Convention, and much more. The care, excitement, and incredible research done on each and every album is beyond impressive. And now with streaming services and YouTube, readers can quickly try out these records and then join the fray in tracking them down on their original labels. The White Label Promo Preservation Society: 100 Flop Albums You Ought to Know is a record-lovers paradise, but also a lost period of pop music during its heyday that needs to be revisited and enjoyed by those who were not around to hear these “flops.”
John Massaro is not a contemporary of Bruce Springsteen, nor one of those starry-eyed true believers that oft times slather on the worship sauce normally associated with the famed singer-songwriter’s career and exploits. In fact, although a fan and one that sees a reflection of his own biography in Springsteen, the octogenarian author of Shades of Springsteen, a professor at SUNY Potsdam College in New York, was only introduced to his Jersey brethren’s work in the mid-1980s, when the Boss was already seated atop the music world. Recovering from clinical depression, as is Springsteen, the author was whisked away on The Boss’ musical tales of escape, evolution, and redemption. This book is a tribute to all of that.
Massaro’s thesis of connective tissue in the themes of the book’s subtitle Politics, Love, Sports and Masculinity that he artfully argues drive Springsteen’s canon and best explains the songwriter’s ability to overcome his own issues of depression, is solid. He digs deep, but with an entertaining flair, explaining how all of these themes comes through in nearly every stanza of Springsteen’s songs.
There is a fine needle Massaro threads here, but he does it with great care through stories of his own experiences in many of the places around New Jersey, specifically the Shore, of which Springsteen built into iconic symbols of the region. Despite being a generation removed from the songwriter, Massaro explored many of the same archetypes, long held by those from N.J. that Springsteen mined decades later.
Although, I do enjoy most of Springsteen’s music and have different periods and songs I cherish more than others, it is my experience growing up in Freehold, New Jersey during the early to late 1970s in the shadow of his immense influence of our burgeoning culture that resonates with me. I am further along the line of generations to Massaro, but feel, as he does through Springsteen’s lyrics, that the connective tissue of lasting art is what makes us want to listen to these songs over and over and take the time to read about them too.
This could have gone badly. As much as I adore and respect Sinéad O’Connor for her music, her socio-political stands, her commitment to her art and her causes, both real and imagined, she has been anything but a focused voice on any of them. Having battled mental and emotional illness most of her life while also displaying in her public persona a head-spinning level of mercurial behavior, when I heard she was penning a memoir I was as dubious as when Bob Dylan released what turned out to be a mostly fantasy-addled effort. However, my trepidations were happily proved unfounded. Unlike Dylan’s 2004 uneven Chronicles Vol 1,Rememberings is a brutally honest, and most importantly, consistent work. It reads like the imprint of a cruel world on the soul of a sensitive artist with just enough self-examination and personal epiphanies to induce awe.
Firstly, O’Connor is no writer, per sé. (To be fair, many of these rock and roll memoirs are hardly nods to literary devotion.) Still, there is a writer’s alacrity in the way O’Connor tells her story, bridging the gap between having spent decades burying the horrors of her childhood and her exploitation as a young singer-songwriter, and later MTV superstar in an age of shifting genres and interests, and her artistic integrity. All this transpired in a male-dominated industry that kicked her around for nothing more than its own willful ignorance and insecure self-preservation. O’Connor faces her demons and bravely shares the experience.
Parts of Rememberings is as poetic as its un-grammatical title. O’Connor uses her words and phrases to dig deeper into her psyche, allowing the reader a ringside seat. This is a frightening but rewarding endeavor that helps us understand that a portrait of a true artist is no walk in the park. Much of the myths and well-worn stories of her time under the looming control of her mentally ill mother or the nunnery for which she learned to use music to connect spiritually and psychologically with the world all the way to her weirdly framed wars with the Catholic Church, the U.S. government, and the music business are busted wide open.
There is a magical few seconds that transpires in the 1969 Rolling Stones track, “Monkey Man” in which the band falls out and it’s just guitarist Keith Richards and drummer Charlie Watts that, for me, defines the essence of rock and roll. It has the requisite infectious rhythm, boy does it ever, the raunch, the sexual fury, the defiant bloodletting, and funky groove dynamic that would come to underscore what the Stones meant to the genre. There are hundreds of examples from hundreds of songs that might get you there, but that few seconds, from 1:48 to about 2:08, when Charlie pulls you back into the song by laying into one of his signature rolls that is epic Stones. In fact, screw it, listen to the song from 1:48 until Mick Jagger starts yelping like a maniac and marvel at Charlie’s incredible accents and fills from there on out and you’ll be just fine. It is why those who love this music, dance to it, fuck to it, imbibe to it, drive to it, and study it, always come back to it and the Stones again and again.
Charlie Watts of The Rolling Stones during rehearsal, New York, May 1978. (Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images)
I use the word magical here because what happens with the Stones truly is. There is no viable explanation for Charlie Watts and Keith Richards, two disparate personalities inexorably linked – a perfectly balanced but oddly contorted element of what the right musicians can do when serendipitously tossed together in youth and purpose. A lot has been celebrated over the years about Mick and Keith. Rightly so. Songwriters. Icons. Pioneers. Sure. But for me, the Stones start with Keith and Charlie. I thought of Keith first when I heard Charlie died this week. Keith, of course, is the core of the Rolling Stones’ sound, beyond what the great and powerful, and dashing and famous – and honestly underrated – Mick Jagger could muster within this weird and wonderful construct, but Keith always said it was he and Charlie who fueled that engine. And it was always a strange engine that began with Keith setting the mean-streets groove and Charlie bringing it home. When Ron Wood, member of other outfits long before he joined the Stones in 1975, came aboard he marveled at how the Stones fed off the tempo of its rhythm guitarist and hung together on a tightrope by its drummer’s instincts. For awhile bassist Bill Wyman – also widely underrated in the annals of this classic outfit – held down the fort too, but it was always a dangerously haphazard ride that could only have been anchored by Charles Robert Watts.
(For a proper tribute to Messrs. Wyman and Watts please dig on “Miss You.” Right now. Go ahead. I’ll wait.)
Watts did things in the Stones so miraculous that it was mostly overlooked for nearly six decades. Not overlooked as much as ignored. When he passed, the main plaudits for Charlie’s talents all over social media and in the music press centered around his steadiness, how he remained a classy lynchpin of non-showy drumming in the swirl of the Stones hurricane, how he was a metronome and a rock. And although all those things are true of Charlie Watts, they totally missed his most essential contribution to the Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World. The Rolling Stones only ever existed beyond hit-makers and social pirates and institutional corporate touring machinery because of the unique just-a-tad behind the beat drumming of Charlie Watts.
Trained in jazz, he never stopped loving and revering its intricacies, which made you understand that his approach to rock and roll as a pounding forcefield was never his bag. He attacked it with subtitles and accents and nuances that brought diamond/snowflake qualities to the Stones canon. Watts’s drumming had no origin or a map. Charlie does not play “Honky Tonk Women,”“Brown Sugar,” or thank goodness “(I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” like an in-the-pocket drummer might. He re-imagines that pocket and challenges the rest of the band to stick it out on his call. Keith starts it, and Charlie wraps it up in his bow.
Watching Charlie Watts was the key to appreciating this. After being a Stones fan as a teenager, my first times seeing them – 1978 and 1981 – I suddenly understood the optical illusion of Charlie Watts, that little lift the sick off the hi-hat right when the thwack of the snare came down, the stuttered kick drum, and the rest of his quirky blues-funk-muddy-water-thud-punch. Supple wrist action, military style grip, the violent use of the crash as a ride when noise is needed.
His finest work may be on the band’s finest album, Exile on Main St., “Rocks Off,“ Shake Your Hips,”“Lovin’ Cup” to name just three stand-outs), but it’s all there in the 1960s single phase, (“She’s a Rainbow” a particulate favorite Charlie thang for me), after the blues cover band, and Chuck Berry tribute band phase, (“Route 66” – first song on the first album… ummm… wow), the pop phase (“Ruby Tuesday,” “Get Off My Cloud,” “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby?”, the revolution phase (“Holy crap,, “Street Fightin’ Man,” right?) and the heroin chic fear-mongering phase (My god, when he kicks into “Sister Morphine” … fucking chills), that culminates in the greatest run of the era – Beggar’s Banquet through Exile – brutal beauty. It rattles walls and topples steeples, and Charlie is absolutely transcendent on those records and subsequent tours. Charlie may be the best thing about one of the most influential (and maybe best?) rock and roll live albums ever, Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out. This is why he is on the cover; alone with a donkey, leaping off the road. An inside joke, since Charlie loathed touring. Loved the gig. Loved the two hours pounding away on “Midnight Rambler” and the rest, but hated the whole thing – the press, the gladhanding, the hotels, the constant movement. He’s a sitter. Drummers sit and make their mark. The other members move all over the place and pose for posterity. Charlie was a good sitter.
The Rolling Stones only ever existed beyond hit-makers and social pirates and institutional corporate touring machinery because of the unique just-a-tad behind the beat drumming of Charlie Watts.
There is not enough space here to fully frame the man, (graphic artist, cartoonist, jazz band leader), so I concentrate on his drumming, which, again was so damn unique that when it was announced two weeks ago that the Stones were “replacing” him for an upcoming tour with an excellent drummer, Steve Jordan, I nonetheless whipped off texts to friends that it is a joke consider anyone beyond Charlie playing Stones songs. He is the soul of them, so much so that the trillions of cover versions over the years by bar bands and superstars sound like cheap imitations of imitations. No one can play Rolling Stones songs but the Rolling Stones, or (ahem), the Stones with Charlie Watts. I have written here a dozen times that there is no such thing as Gonzo Journalism beyond Hunter Thompson. People claim to practice it, but only one man did it. There was never any Minneapolis Sound, it was Pr
Stones songs only exist in the realm of the Stones. No matter how many humans attempt to get the groove on “Start Me Up,” it is not, nor will it ever actually be “Start Me Up”. Quite frankly, I’m not sure what the hell it is or what the Stones are doing on that song to make it work, never mind appear to the untrained ear to be simple, but, trust me, it is more complicated musically than anything the prog rockers or fusion bands attempted to convince us was complicated to make a point about prowess.
Of course, because Charlie took a slanted view at simplicity in his playing, we all slept on the point this week on the plain fact that the man is a creative unicorn, the way Ringo Starr and Keith Moon, his contemporizes who got more press, were, and had forged for themselves within what those bands were doing.
“Gimmie Shelter”; the monster of all monsters in the rock realm. There is nothing that can touch it, and Watts’s drumming on that is something out of Grendel. When he slams those accents in-between verses it fells me every time. Also, less known, is the 1981 Tattoo You track “Slave,” which may be Charlie’s finest moment. I think it is the best Stones song of the last decade they truly mattered, and for most of it they didn’t even play together. But “Slave” is Charlie’s Great Gatsby, his Mona Lisa, his lasting imprint on my favorite band of all time. It is less song than Charlie being Charlie. Unlike “Gimmie Shelter” the greatness is not in its composition but its execution, where all Rolling Stones songs came to be heard, conquer, and burn an indelible mark in our collective brain.
The death by suicide of grunge icon and long-time Soundgarden vocal dynamo Chris Cornell at age 52 caught the world by surprise in 2017. Unlike the brooding self-destructive contemporary Kurt Cobain, who famously took his own life decades before, Cornell was thought to be a rock and roll survivor who had successfully navigated the tides of fame and the music business to achieve a hard-earned place of respect with many years left to thrive.
It is to the credit of author Corbin Reiff that the death of Cornell does not hang over this account as any kind of grim foreshadow, and the evolution of the artist and man are given the proper retelling through the remembrances and quotes of not only many who shared his adventures but also Cornell himself. It is an engaging read that also entices one to explore some of the lesser-known material of Cornell and his various musical collaborations.
The rise of Soundgarden and the Seattle scene of the early nineties is recounted in all its rain-soaked glory, with Cornell’s talents as a singer, songwriter, and frontman given a full examination. The success of the band is portrayed well as a culmination of years of toil and dedication, and fans of the era and its bands like Mudhoney, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains will enjoy the trip down memory lane.
The Audioslave years, the solo releases, and television appearances – the Soundgarden reunion after more than a decade apart – all are presented with detail, as is the ultimate suicide by Cornell in a hotel room by hanging. The question of why a man so gifted and loved would take his own life may forever remain a mystery, and the author correctly does not try to answer that question, but instead conveys the love and appreciation felt by Chris Cornell’s family, friends, and fans for all the years of entertainment provided by the man.
I absolutely adored this book. Doubtless, my obsession with the musical subject and a preteen fascination with Jesus Christ Superstar has quite a bit to do with it, but as author Devin McKinney states in his introduction, loving or even knowing the famed rock opera is not an important ingredient to enjoying this story. Everyone knows someone who has had college or just plain institutional experiences like the one McKinney covers here, right? A bunch of forward-thinking and determined faculty members teaming up with enthusiastic young students to change the course of a school and a town’s fortunes. Okay, maybe not. But I think we all wish we did.
Jesusmania! reveals everything that is great about the spirit of a generation willing to dream and achieve a goal that begins with passion and ends in triumph. The hometown cooking McKinney brings with true pride to the Gettysburg, Pennsylvania milieu is part of the book’s charm, and his finding the voices of all those who participated in one of the first and only organic productions of the famed rock opera, before it became a Broadway hit and a theatrical institution, is paramount. These are mostly amateurs, barely familiar with the material they must conquer under a crushing deadline, dealing with church and school parameters, record label legal shenanigans and each other. McKinney takes us there every step of the way – the inspiration, hurdles, rehearsals, staging, musicians, and performers, all swept up in this one-time moment of creative achievement.
Part of a “Rush Through the Decades” series by author Martin Popoff, Anthem and Limelight comprises the most comprehensive journey into a successful rock band as can be consumed. Straight from all the sources that matter – parents, friends, roadies, manager, record agent, producer – including all three band members, bassist, and lead vocalist, Geddy Lee, guitarist, Alex Lifeson, and drummer/lyricist Neil Peart, the book reads as an oral biography. Swaths of paragraphs are conversational and anecdotal, putting you in the room, on the stage, and in the mindset of unfolding events. Rush’s story is one to admire as it is an inspirational tale of three uniquely talented Canadian lads finding their way to a boldly original sound, embracing it, then changing it again and again; all the while fighting to maintain truth in their art. What’s not to love? Whether you’re a fan or not.
When he does chime in, author Popoff does so with great care and some objectivity (he’s obviously a fan) in breaking down all the songs in the band’s early – and some argue golden era – career. Driven: Rush in the 90s is the next in the series and will no doubt provide the same archival dedication to the band’s arc that would come to an end with Peart’s death in early 2020.
There was a spate of John Lennon anniversaries in 2020 – he would have turned 80 in October, 40 years since his death in December, and 50 years since the release of the most dramatic, explosive, raw, and confessional of all pop/rock music albums: Plastic Ono Band. In 1970, during the demise of the Beatles and a series of public (and private) ups and downs, Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, were joined by ex-Beatles drummer Ringo Starr, old friend from the Hamburg club days, Klaus Voormann, and infamous producer, Phil Spector, to record the fallout. Lennon fans know all about the couple’s dalliance with Primal Scream Therapy and its effects on him, particularly the reliving of his childhood traumas and the angst he suddenly felt for his former band, which he duly unleashed on the world in a two-part Rolling Stone interview “Lennon Remembers.” This all feeds into the musical narrative of the album.
Author John Kruth covers the incidents and inspirations that led to Plastic Ono Band, as well as putting us in the studio and in the mindset of the participants. But what makes this a critical historical document of the sessions, is the attention paid to Ono’s mostly overlooked contribution. Many people are unaware that there were two Plastic Ono Band records with similar covers and photos of John and Yoko as children on the back. Using the same line-up as John’s stirringly stark renditions of his emotional songs, Ono essentially reinvents rock and jazz music, which later worked as a creative guidepost for the coming decade and beyond, especially with the advent of Kraut rock and punk.
Plastic Ono Band is my favorite ex-Beatle solo album; the context of its messages from the end of the 1960s dream to dealing with past tragedies, mining the deepest depths and heights of love and loss, and sharing the troubled mind of one of the greatest voices in the history of the genre. In its care for detail and sidelight, Hold On World delivers a similar telling and is more than worthy of its subject matter.
In another Herculean achievement, (I reviewed his 2018 Prince and the Purple Rain Era Studio Sessions: 1983 and 1984 here) author Duane Tudahl does masterful research and a compilation job trying desperately to keep up with Prince Rogers Nelson’s creative peak; his post-Purple Rain explosion of output for himself and a host of artists across the musical spectrum.
Tudahl’s work has now become must-reads for Prince aficionados much like Mark Lewisohn’s brilliant work chronicling the Beatles impressive nine-year output. The thing is that the Beatles were loungers compared to Prince from the early eighties to well after 1990, with the bulk of this spectacular run covered in Parade and Sign “O” the Times Studio Sessions.
In my tribute to Prince upon his death in 2016 in this magazine, I wrote about his tireless dedication to music – literally living in the studio, playing after-show concerts until the wee hours of the morning, running his bands ragged with rehearsals and soundcheck jams, then expanding his songwriting and producing to include his own stable of bands and straying outside the Minneapolis cocoon to offer his talents across the globe. This is the central force of this book: Prince working with dozens of protégés and then Miles Davis, the Bangles, Sheila E., Sheena Easton, sending songs to Bonnie Raitt, Patti LaBelle, and Kenny Rogers after rolling off week-long jazz fusion sessions called The Flesh. Then releasing Madhouse project albums, too.
In the twenty-four month period covered by Tudahl, Prince would tour Purple Rain, while composing, producing, and recording Sheila E.’s Romance 1600 – on stages after the shows – direct Under a Cherry Moon in Paris, disband the mighty Revolution and begin to gather a new band, while recording five albums (Parade included) worth of material, much of it appearing on his epic double-album Sign “O” the Times released in 1987 and later The Black Album, Lovesexy and Graffiti Bridge (Dream Factory, Crystal Ball, Camille). All of this was along with a host of B-Sides and all of it became top-notch, experimental, funky, rocking, and melodic gems.
Prince may be the most important musical artist of the latter half of the twentieth century and this book underlines this with zero fanfare. Just read the magic, as it rolls from day to day. Amazing stuff.
Good news: Rickie Lee Jones’ prose is very much like her lyrics – poetic, symbolic, penetrating. She writes like she sings. There is a free-flowing, jazzy, impish honesty delicately balanced between confessor and voyeur… and this is before you ever get to the music.
Half of the book deals directly and quite harrowingly with a childhood that is equal parts Dickensian and Dionysian. It begins with stories of a young artist in a car rambling around Hollywood, New York City, and New Orleans, but it is only a hint at what these pages reveal; a child on the run with and without her family, hippie communes, wild street marauders, pimps, exiled Mexicans, drug dealers, and reckless dreamers. Also, a young woman as symbol, the 1960s idealism devolving into the 1970s well-earned cynicism, and finding in this peripatetic, free-flow dementia, brilliant songs. Lots and lots of songs, and an anguished and sensuous woman’s vocal prowess to bring them home.
The second half of Last Chance Texaco introduces a new cast of sordid characters, many you know, as they are all great artists and lovers: Lowell George, Tom Waits, Dr. John, along with a painfully honest rebuke and celebration of stardom within the music biz labyrinth. Jones’ description of her epic appearance on Saturday Night Live is worth the entire ride. There is a resignation of sadness in Jones’s writing that gives way seamlessly to philosophical depth and finally an embrace of contentment that works as a beautiful addendum to her music, which always featured a refined madness.
This may well be the finest rock memoir I have reviewed here. A unique entrance in a disquieted creative mind that finds its solace in experience.
