Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd, by Nick Mason (Chronicle Books). Along the lines of the Beatles' Anthology, According to the Rolling Stones, and Bill Wyman's Rolling with the Stones, Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason produced a coffee table retrospective of his own supergroup, illustrated with a wealth of vintage photos. It's a little more modest than the above-mentioned tomes, but still impressive, with about 350 pages of text documenting the band from its tenuous mid-'60s inceptions (as almost a side hobby of university students) through their ascendance to the upper reaches of superstardom in the '70s and their fractious squabbling (and only intermittent music-making) from the early '80s onward. Unlike some other rock'n'roll autobiographers, Mason has a likably humble tone, putting himself lightly down when the occasion warrants, and not appearing to try and re-create incidents he doesn't fully remember. There's quite a bit about the creation of their studio albums, though Syd Barrett fans might be mildly disappointed to find that the very early recordings aren't described in quite as much detail as some of the famous '70s ones. There's also a lot about their work in film and their struggle to evolve from a standard touring band to one with a much more elaborate (and more widely attended) stage show. Too, Mason seems conscientious about trying to portray conflicts with attention to various of the principals' points of view, not just his own; indeed, he even interviewed some close Floyd associates (at times quoting them in the text) for corroboration, as well as having Roger Waters, David Gilmour, and Rick Wright look at the manuscript for feedback. The only mild criticisms to put forth might be that there's unavoidably not as much about the group's songwriting as some might like, since Mason was not as prominent a composer as some other members of the band. Also, it seems like an inordinate proportion of the commentary regarding the band's later days is devoted to the details of how they set up their stage show and managed their tour logistics -- a reflection, perhaps, of how much relatively less of interest there is to say about the music they made in the 1980s and 1990s.
Lollipop Lounge: Memoirs of a Rock and Roll Refugee, by Genya Ravan (Billboard Books). Though she never broke through to wide stardom, Genya Ravan was active on the rock'n'roll scene from the early 1960s onward, first as lead singer of one of the first all-women rock bands (Goldie & the Gingerbreads), then as the lead singer of Ten Wheel Drive in the early 1970s, and then as a solo artist and producer on the fringe of the new wave in the late 1970s. Even if you've barely or never heard of her, you might be interested in her entertaining memoir. For one thing, it documents the rock'n'roll experience from two unusual angles: that of an actual Polish refugee escaping the concentration camps of World War II for emigration to a life in the United States at the age of seven, and then as a woman functioning in traditionally male-associated roles within a heavily male-dominated rock'n'roll scene. In addition, along the way, she had memorable close personal and professional encounters with a pretty astonishing number of more famous people, including Richard Perry (a bandmate and boyfriend in the early 1960s), the Animals and the Rolling Stones (Goldie & the Gingerbreads lived and worked in England for a while in the 1960s), Lou Reed, and the Dead Boys (whose first album she produced). The journey also involved some sexual abuse, sexual experimentation, substance abuse, and struggles with exploitative managers and labels. It's all recounted here with a straightforwardly honest and (when appropriate) humorous feel, whereas in other hands it might have fallen into the self-pity or self-importance too common to rock autobiographies. As a minor complaint, it will be obvious to anyone with even a decent knowledge of rock'n'roll history that Ravan is conflating and confusing some of the chronology of what happened in what order; it's obvious that Goldie & the Gingerbreads couldn't have toured with the Rolling Stones in 1963, for instance. That doesn't seriously interfere with enjoying the book, but it really wouldn't have taken that much effort for an outside eye to straighten some of the sequencing out.
Rock Around the Clock: The Record That Started the Rock Revolution!, by Jim Dawson (Backbeat Books). Published on the fiftieth anniversary of "Rock Around the Clock"'s 1955 ascent to the top of the charts, this is a fun, well-researched book entirely devoted to the history of this groundbreaking rock'n'roll hit. There had been other rock'n'roll hits before Bill Haley and His Comets took "Rock Around the Clock" to #1; there had, indeed, already been another recording of the song. But Haley's "Rock Around the Clock," when all's said and done, was indisputably the first truly massive rock'n'roll hit, and the record that more than any other announced the arrival of rock'n'roll as an unstoppable force of musical and social change. The history of both the song and the recording is more involved and complicated than even many rock historians realize, and Dawson goes through its evolution in great (but witty and highly readable) detail. It's not well known, for instance, that there were a couple records titled "Rock Around the Clock" from the early '50s that contained elements that might have influenced the song Haley recorded; that there were lyrical similarities to "Rock Around the Clock" in blues, jazz, and R&B records dating back to the 1920s; that there were, and continue to be, disputes over who wrote the "Rock Around the Clock" Haley recorded; that the song Haley recorded had actually been cut, and first released, by Sonny Dae and the Knights; that Haley originally did the song as a B-side, in two hurried takes that had to be edited together; and, finally, that Haley's version had been just a small hit upon its initial release in 1954, only storming to #1 after its use in the film Blackboard Jungle. Dawson covers all of this and more, as well as looking at the song's international impact and the sad descent of Haley and the Comets from stardom in the late 1950s. It's not a long book, but it doesn't need to be longer than 200 pages, and also includes plenty of reproductions of original labels and record sleeves related to the song's history.
Magical Mystery Tours: My Life with the Beatles, by Tony Bramwell with Rosemary Kingsland (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press). A boyhood friend of most of the Beatles, Tony Bramwell was a personal assistant to Brian Epstein and the Beatles for virtually their entire career as a recording act, eventually working on some of their promotional films and promoting records for Apple. Unlike some of the other people who were reasonably close to the Beatles' inner circle, he's written a memoir that at least doesn't skimp on length, running over 400 pages. It doesn't have as many explosive revelations as one would expect given that length, and actually the text could have been trimmed by quite a bit, as much of it summarizes major events in the Beatles' lives that almost anyone interested enough to buy this book will already know by heart. Yes, there are some fairly little-known stories recounted here, like how the Beatles dubbed the soundtrack of their Shea Stadium concert film and the trip to Los Angeles at which Paul McCartney (accompanied by Bramwell) fell in love with his future wife. It's more valuable, however, for Bramwell's perspective on the Beatles (and Epstein) and their personalities than it is for the hard information, which contains quite a few chronological jumbles/conflations and factual mistakes. (Those aren't all mistakes only visible to Beatlemaniacs, either; even people who don't own a Beatles record might be able to tell you that the White Album track "Mother Nature's Son" was not considered for Abbey Road but rejected, as Bramwell writes here.) For what it is, however, it's a genial, likable read, giving some insight into the group's motivations and quirks from someone who actually was often there. The mood does, however, turn uncomfortably sour when Bramwell discusses Yoko Ono's influence on John Lennon (which he does at length). It's interesting that Bramwell recalls that their affair started much earlier than is commonly stated, but his portrayal of Ono as a villainous near-witch of sorts seems tilted toward the extreme. There's a little, incidentally, on Bramwell's post-Beatles activities as a promo man in the record business, but most of it's dedicated to the years in which he was at the Beatles' service.
Meet the Beatles: A Cultural History of the Band That Shook Youth, Gender, and the World, by Steven D. Stark (HarperEntertainment). This is not an overview of the Beatles' career (though there's much information about their basic evolution and accomplishments), but a study of how they both reflected and affected their times, and how they continue to impact culture several decades after their split. As marginal books about the Beatles phenomenon go, this is very well-written, with a lot of research and carefully considered opinions. Is it really necessary? That's questionable, even if it does strive to be something other than an ordinary bio or history of the band, and draw upon some obscure information and connections. Although many of the author's themes are not often explored with such thoroughness - the Beatles' egalitarian and favorable treatment of women in their songs, their contribution to flexibility in gender roles, their unapologetic use of drugs as a creative stimulus, their precise relationship to the counterculture -- these are topics which have been assimilated by millions of Beatles fans, if not at such conscious depth as they're plumbed here. Stark did interview many people directly and indirectly involved with the Beatles, from little-quoted former girlfriends to plain old ordinary American fans, but while some of those observations are interesting, they're rarely quoted at length. Although most of the deductions are right-on, there are also occasional feelings where it seems that evidence is being stretched to fit some of the postulations. For instance: yes, the Beatles did treat women kindly in general in song, but so did some other rock songwriters, and they weren't as unique in this respect as the text seems to suppose. It's a hard-to-categorize book, and while an enjoyable and highly accessible read, perhaps best suited toward the general Beatles fan who wants something of an offbeat primer to their significance, rather than more committed ones who have already thought through these issues at length.
The Unknown Paul McCartney: McCartney and the Avant-Garde, by Ian Peel (Reynolds & Hearn). Although Paul McCartney is known to the public -- not without justification -- primarily as a highly accessible pop-rock songwriter, he's done a surprising amount of experimental, avant-garde music during his career. This unusual book is wholly devoted to that aspect of McCartney's work, which the artist has usually given a far lower profile than his standard releases, to the point of often issuing it under pseudonyms. House music, trance, musique concrete, vegetable sounds, feedback, and more have all been explored by McCartney since the 1960s, though even devoted fans remain unaware of much of this output. Ian Peel covers every corner of McCartney's efforts in these tributaries, from his legendary unreleased Beatles sound collage "Carnival of Light" (devised in early 1967 for an event at the Roundhouse in London, and played in public only once) through obscure solo excursions. Those include his easy listening album as Percy Thrillington; his collaborations with Youth as part of the Fireman; his Liverpool Sound Collage album; music made with Yoko Ono, Super Furry Animals, and Nitin Sawhney; ambient sounds at exhibitions of his art; and even the odd bits of Wings and solo Paul McCartney records that went way off his usual path. Peel researches all of this with considerable thoroughness, to the point of detailed description of tracks only available on websites. Though he didn't interview McCartney himself, he did talk to several of his collaborators and associates in these projects, as well as dig up some pretty obscure McCartney quotes from various sources. The book isn't for every McCartney fan, and perhaps not even for most McCartney fans, as many such fans will have little taste for (and perhaps even dislike) the musician's avant-garde endeavors, so far afield are they from his most popular stuff. For more specialized tastes, though, it's a window into a side of McCartney that the public seldom sees, and written far more accessibly than many such studies are.
Keith Richards: Satisfaction, by Christopher Sandford (Carroll & Graf). Quite a few books about the Rolling Stones, and a few specifically about Keith Richards (duly noted in the bibliography), preceded this one. Was it necessary? Not really, though it's a pretty serviceable, thorough compendium of the basic facts and stories that have circulated about the Rolling Stones guitarist (and, by extension, close to a history of the Rolling Stones themselves). The tone that Sandford takes will not be to everyone's taste, with a bent for the dramatic and sardonic. But the book does cover the trail of Richards's musical and personal life from childhood and the halting formation of his band through their rocket ride to stardom, his well-documented struggles with the law and substance abuse, and his eventual assumption of senior rock'n'roll statesman status as the band coasted (very profitably) on its laurels from about 1980 onward. Quite a number of little-known incidents and anecdotes are related along the way, and Sandford did do a good number of first-hand interviews, though these were mostly with people on the periphery of Richards's core story (and certainly don't include any with actual members of the Stones). The point does get expressed rather more than it needs to that for all his hard living and dalliances with decadence, Richards is just a regular geezer, family man, and music nut at heart. It also seems as though his role in the Stones might be overemphasized at least a little here -- one gets the impression that Richards was the primary composer of most of their material, and Mick Jagger more someone who added touches than an equal collaborator, which is not a position most other surveys of the band take.
John, Paul & Me: Before the Beatles, by Len Garry (Collector's Guide Publishing). Len Garry was part of early lineups of the Quarrymen, the skiffle group that evolved into the Beatles. He played tea chest bass in their young days, fronted by John Lennon, and was still aboard for the first year or so that Paul McCartney was in the group as well. This is his story of those days, and while it's fairly entertaining for Beatlemaniacs, it couldn't make great claims as either a book or a piece of history. For a great deal of it consists of re-created conversations among the band -- so much so that it seems like a fair amount of poetic license in the storytelling must have been inevitable. Too, although Garry writes reasonably well, the text is riddled with typos and misspellings, though the inclusion of photos (both of the Quarrymen and of sites where they hung out) softens the blow. For those very familiar with the Beatles story -- who will comprise the huge majority of those who bother to seek out such a relatively obscure Beatles-related volume -- there won't be many great revelations. What this does do is convey something of the feel of growing up in Liverpool in the mid-1950s, and also how the Quarrymen were, at their very beginning, just as much (if not more) a way for a gang of normal mischievous teenage friends to have fun as a serious musical enterprise. That changed quickly shortly after McCartney joined, of course (and more so after George Harrison joined, though Garry was out of the band by then and didn't get to know Harrison well). Bound into the back cover is a bonus interview CD in which Garry and fellow original Quarryman Pete Shotton talk about Liverpool and the old days. It's kind of rambling and hard to follow in places, though, and the sound quality isn't so hot, as it was recorded while the pair were wandering around their old Liverpool haunts.
Lillian Roxon: Mother of Rock, by Robert Milliken (Black Inc.). Lillian Roxon was most famous as one of the first rock critics to reach a wide audience. She made her name in this field in the late 1960s in magazines and newspapers, and as the author of Lillian Roxon's Rock Encyclopedia, the first truly worthwhile rock'n'roll reference book. She was an unusual and somewhat tragic figure -- older than the great majority of both the musicians she was writing about and the other early rock writers, and also given to workaholic behavior, a somewhat unhappy personal life, and weight and health problems that contributed to her death in the early 1970s. Her achievements were substantial, but it's debatable whether her life was full and rich enough to merit a full-length biography -- or whether this book, which is likely to be the only such attempt, does that life full justice. Roxon actually came to rock criticism fairly late in her professional career; she was in her mid-thirties by the time she was making a mark in the still-infant discipline, and had already worked for quite some time as a journalist who didn't specialize in music. Much of the book, then, discusses her early life, work, and bohemian activities in Australia, sections that are not likely to be of much interest to rock fans -- and are only passably interesting at best on its own terms. Moving to the New York, and then into rock criticism almost inadvertently, her role as part of the rock'n'roll world makes for the book's most interesting reading, but comprises less than half of the text. More focus upon this period, and more of a context for how the world of rock criticism came of age and how she was one of its leading figures, would have benefited the treatment a lot. Too, about a third of this 350-page book is devoted to reprints of "selected writings" of Roxon's, most of those taken from her rock encyclopedia -- a book which makes, to be blunt, for a much more interesting read than this one.
Jimi Hendrix: The Man -- The Magic -- The Truth, by Sharon Lawrence (HarperEntertainment). As a young United Press International reporter, Sharon Lawrence was a friend of Jimi Hendrix in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Her book combines straight biography with her own memories of the musician. It was well received upon its publication by some critics who were, perhaps, unaware that Hendrix's music in particular had received far more in-depth treatment in several previous books. For although this does have interesting first-hand memories (among them her contention that he committed suicide) and some new research, it's neither the definitive Hendrix biography, nor even one of the better books about the man. Its most serious flaw is the relative shortage of specific description of Hendrix's music and recordings, or the stories behind their construction. That's not simply the nitpicking of a music geek, not when albums like Are You Experienced? and Axis: Bold As Love are granted a mere two or three sentences of discussion -- total -- in the text. It would be fair enough to evaluate this as primarily a study of the man and his life, but even there it has some problems. Although Lawrence did interview more than 250 people for the book, many of them had peripheral or lesser connections with Hendrix, and many of the quotes extracted from those conversations are blandly superficial. There is also an attitude struck that almost no one beside herself had Hendrix's best interests at heart, with Hendrix's father Al, stepsister Janie, and ex-girlfriend Monika Dannemann (who was with Hendrix when he died) coming in for especially vicious criticism. It's no doubt true that Jimi wasn't treated well by many of his associates, but the way in which the author attacks some of those who've laid claim to his legacy, and praises Hendrix in an almost hagiographic tone, makes one question whether her view is ideally balanced. It's most interesting when she remembers some of her discussions with Hendrix (and his tense trial for drug possession in Toronto, at which she testified), and the book does plow through the depressing, confusing posthumous legal haggling over his estate in detail. It's more a supplemental source of information for Hendrix fans, however, than something that should be turned to as the primary biography.
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