Its Only Rock and Roll Memoir, But I Like Some Of It
Hank Rosenfeld and just some of the books he had to read on assignment for Off-Ramp.
I’ll tell ya when it hit me. It hit when I heard Kenny Rogers on NPR talking about his and then picked up the LA Times and saw an ad announcing a reading at Barnes & Noble for “Sinners,” the new memoir by the “front man” from Creed. And I thought: Kenny Rogers? Creeed?
Hey! Rockers! Leave us kids alone!
But a Kenny and Creed tome are just two among more rock and roll memoirs out there now than Britney Spear’s estate has executors. Why is all this tree flesh being wasted, adding to an already waist-high teenage wasteland, I mean there’s been a real spate of them. Is that a word? A whole lotta rock out there. And paper. (And scissors needed to edit them maybe?)
So I set myself a task: Read as many of these accounts as I could in a month. Yes, from Megadeath’s to Mickey Dolenz’es (I didn’t really read these two; I just liked the alliteration). I began with Chronicles, Bob Dylan’s 2004 memoir about his beginning days in New York…
[MFX: “You’ve got a lot to learn…” Dylan from Positively 4th Street] http://www.youtube.com/watch?
…which really gave me a feeling of trudging through winter in the snow in Greenwich Village with a guitar, so I went deeper into that scene, digging Carole King’sNatural Woman and Judy Collins’ Sweet Judy Blue Eyes. Both sweet. Then I had to read Just Kids by Patti Smith; it was a National Book Award Winner. Pattireally takes you inside:
[MFX: “Hi Hello….” From Frederick by Patti Smith]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
You get to be there with Patti and all those bohemian hearts making all that art back in her day – and you know what? She doesn’t say one BAD thing about anybody. Unlike Keith Richards in Life: 600 pages ripping into everyone. Best part for me was his description of how he got his sound by playing guitar into a cassette machine and then he –I guess the term today would be doubled down on it—he repeated and rinsed until the distortion jangled and crunched it into:
[MFX: Opening of Street Fighting’ Man Keith Richards 22:05 mark http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Too bad he couldn’t read his own audiobook:
[MFX: Johnny Depp reading “LIFE” by Keith Richards]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Read on! Rod Stewart has Rod out there now, joining Gregg Allman’s, Rick Springfield’s, all those Chili Peppers’s, more than one Kiss and a coupla Guns’n’Roses books, at least. In fact, Woody Guthrie wrote probably the first one, in 1947, calling it Seeds Of Man. Some even have an Index so you can look up sex and drugs and things like that. Blues legend Buddy Guy came out with his When I Left Home earlier this year. But next on my list was See A Little Light by Bob Mould from Husker Du, a band I’ve always loved from Minneapolis:
[MFX: “See A Little Light” Bob Mould http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Not great, but the gossip is good in a lot of these; I never know Mould was a gay punk guitarist or that Ms. King’s real name was Carol Klein and that one of her four husbands was a guy who played bass in the FUGS. (Or that she saw the movie “Taxi Driver” with John and Yoko, and this is why that Scorsese documentary on George Harrison was so fine—all the secret stuff is the best! Finding out things about the Beatles you never knew.)
It’s also about bringing back the musical parts of the counterculture and how they made you feel love, anger, sadness, a way through the confusion. Those times when you want to jump around, rip it all up, or just lie on the floor with your head in between the speakers. Headphones: I think these memoirs get in through there, ya know?
I asked my music writer friend Michael Simmons (who just reviewed the new bio of Leonard Cohen) what’s behind the publishing trend, and he said: “They’re getting huge advances!”
I dunno. Jethro Tull sang, “Too Old To Rock ‘n’ Roll: Too Young to Die!” in 1976, and I think some of these guys and gals may be, so now that they’re sitting down, why not make some more memories?
Me, now I’m into the Neil. 400 pages (“and there’s so much more…”) by the 67 year-old Buffalo Springfield and CSNY icon and current-and-always genius songwriter, young Young on the back cover, old Young on the front. I’ve seen all the docs made about him so…and say, did you know Jonathan Demme has madethree movies about him? Now THAT’S obsessive. This book is called Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream:
[MFX: opening riff from Young’s “El Dorado]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
I gotta say I liked the Smith, Collins and King memoirs best. More road stories and romance. (I was thrilled to read Judy Collins had a radio show on WBAI where I worked and she lived on 79th and Amsterdam. I lived a block from her, 20 years later) Neil’s Waging Heavy Peace is lots of fun because you get to see how his mind flits around from cars to trains to telling stories how he first met Stephen Stills in the middle of Sunset and Fountain and how he quit smoking and drinking a few weeks ago so had to do something, so here it is. On page 223, Neil offers this advice:
“Writing is very convenient, has a low expense, and is a great way to pass the time. I highly recommend it any old rocker who is out of cash and doesn’t know what to do next. You could hire someone else to write it for you if you can’t write it yourself. That doesn’t seem to matter. Just don’t hire some sweaty hack who asks you questions for years and twists them into his own vision of what is right or wrong. Try to avoid doing that.”
All right, sir. (Another note to musicians: You guys already get all the chicks. Not us writers, so expect a net loss there…unless it’s like ask a writer if he loves his job and he’ll say Yeah, but my dream job would be rock musician. Maybe with musicians, they always wanted to be authors?) Anyhow, I got Mr. Pete Townshend on deck: Who I Am. (Who am I, I am Who, etc.) I think the one we’re all waiting for is Joni Mitchell’s, right? Knowing Joni – which I don’t, I only knew she had coffee every afternoon at the Daily Grill on San Vicente – but knowing her, she will keep us waiting. She’s an artist, she don’t look back.
[MFX: Opening, Neil Young’s Star of Bethlehem: “Aint it hard when you wake up in the morning/and you find out that those other days are gone/all you have is memories of happiness/lingering on…”19:07] http://www.youtube.com/watch?
