Here’s a sampling of recent books on pop music:
Most rock bios are a dime a dozen, and some are worth even less. Take David Dalton’s “El Sid” (St. Martin’s Press). Dalton fleshes out his skimpy portrait of punk icon Sid Vicious by presuming to “channel” his subject’s diary, complete with Cockney accent — a gimmick that can’t hide the recycled information he relies upon.
“The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock” (Random House) is a collection of essays by some fine writers who address a tired subject from predictable angles. Terri Sutton’s chapter on “Soft Boys: The New Man in Rock” is the most provocative read; instead of siding with rock’s new breed of sensitive males, she chides them for “fleeing sexuality to find the comfort in being angry.” Perhaps the biggest surprise is that, in contrast to a number of recent Rolling Stone magazine covers, most of the women pictured are fully clothed.
That’s not the case with “Rolling Stone Images of Rock & Roll” (Back Bay Books), a picture book featuring a nearly naked Courtney Love on the cover with her infant daughter. The images inside are often spectacular, including a shot from 1957 — at outset of the civil-rights era — of a clean-cut Chuck Berry signing autographs while surrounded by a bevy of young white admirers in Waco, Texas.
The Rolling Stone book shares one image with “Not Fade Away: The Rock & Roll Photography of Jim Marshall” (Bulfinch): an iconic shot of Johnny Cash flipping the bird into the camera lens at his famed 1969 Folsom Prison concert. Marshall was a character as passionate and crazed as many of his subjects, and his pithy comments are nearly as revealing as his black-and-white photographs. Among the tidbits disclosed: His famed cover shot for the Allman Brothers’ “At Fillmore East” was shot not outside the New York theater but in Macon, Ga. “I hear there are guided tours of the Lower East Side in New York City that supposedly visit the spot where this shot was taken,” Marshall writes.
“Heart & Soul: A Celebration of Black Music Style in America, 1930-1975” (Stewart Tabori & Chang), by Bob Merlis and Davin Seay, is a breezy, beautifully illustrated history of African-American visual expression that doesn’t dig too deeply into the negative. A chapter titled “Soul For Sale” barely explores how that subculture has been exploited by the mainstream for profits that did not always trickle down to the innovators. But from a quickie homage to Hal Fox, inventor of the Zoot suit, to the vintage album and poster art, this is an endlessly entertaining volume.
Even non-Floydians should be enthralled by “Mind Over Matter: The Images of Pink Floyd” (Sanctuary), a sumptuous visual history of the band’s surreal album art, with text by the band’s artistic director for 30 years, Storm Thorgerson. A decidedly narrower audience is the target of “Get Back: The Unauthorized Chronicle of the Beatles’ `Let It Be’ Disaster” (St. Martin’s), by Doug Sulpy and Ray Schweighardt, a tedious minute-by-minute diary of the Beatles chatting, rehearsing and squabbling in the studio during their last recording session.
As “Be Here Now,” the much-hyped third album by Beatles wanna-be’s Oasis, free-falls out of the Top 100 album chart, one has to wonder which publisher is taking the biggest bath on all of the quickie bios and picture books released in the last year on the Brit-pop band. By far the nastiest is Ian Robertson’s “Oasis: What’s the Story” (Delta), a dirt-dishing tell-all that begins with Robertson, the band’s one-time tour manager, being punched out by Liam Gallagher. Of course, the book’s bilious tone couldn’t be the result of Robertson’s losing his job over the aforementioned punch-up, could it?
If anyone should feel screwed, it’s former Elvis Presley sidekick Scotty Moore, whose autobiography, “That’s Alright, Elvis” (Schirmer), recounts how the seminal rock ‘n’ roll guitarist barely eked out a living while the King rolled in millions. Moore, who briefly managed the singer and was a key sonic element on his classic early sides for Sun Records, reports that he made less than $30,200 in his 14 years with Presley.
Notorious contrarian and critic Chuck Eddy is up to his usual outrageousness on “The Accidental Evolution of Rock ‘n’ Roll” (Da Capo). If you’re amused by the idea that there is a connection between Prince’s “When You Were Mine” and the prog-rock of Styx, then this book’s for you. Considerably less eccentric is “Music Hound Country: The Essential Album Guide” (Visible Ink), a useful buying guide to a genre that is rarely covered with any sort of critical insight. Robert Santelli’s “The Best of the Blues: The 101 Essential Albums” (Penguin) is sure to raise the hackles of that notoriously picky creature, the blues aficionado: How is it that Buddy Guy’s “Stone Crazy!” is ranked ahead of his Chess-era classic “I Was Walking Through the Woods”? Why was Albert Collins’ “Cold Snap” included instead of his stunning 1978 comeback, “Ice Pickin’ “? How is that Eric Clapton merits two albums in the Top 100 and Fenton Robinson not one?
Though not about music, Arthur Nersesian’s “The F***-Up” (Akashic Books) is most definitely a rock ‘n’ roll book. Set in New York’s Lower East Side during the early ’80s, it evokes the gritty detail of Jim Carroll’s classic “The Basketball Diaries.” The novel marks the impressive debut of Akashic Books, which was founded by Girls Against Boys bassist Johnny Temple.
