Recent reads

I got really into rock biographies recently - here’s the ones I’ve read over the last couple of months. Reach out if you’ve got any recommendations!

Nothin’ But A Good Time: The Uncensored History of the ’80s Hard Rock Explosion (Tom Beaujour & Richard Bienstock)

I found out this one existed while reading about the next book on the list, so I figured I’d give it a read while I was waiting for the next book to be released. I’m pretty much a sucker for the oral history format (Live from New York is the preeminent example of the genre, IMO) so I enjoyed this. Predictably there is a lot of debauchery recounted here (sex! drugs! more drugs! even more drugs!) but also a fair bit of humility and regret for lost time and absent friends.

Lollapalooza: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock’s Wildest Festival (Tom Beaujour & Richard Bienstock)

This was the one I was really waiting for. For a hot minute Lollapalooza was just a fact of the summer - you’d check out the lineup and figure out how necessary it was to get tickets, ¹ who’d want to go, and what substances would need to be obtained. It was interesting the way me and my friends thought about the lineups was mirrored at the macro level by ticket sales (the lurch towards less-well-known bands for Lollapalooza 3 meant we gave that year a miss) and how we were not the only stop on Lollapalooza 4 where everyone left during the Smashing Pumpkins set to beat traffic. ² This was a really nostalgic read for me, it brought back lots of memories of those endless summers.

Fahrenheit-182 (Mark Hoppus)

Very readable - as funny as you would expect from Blink-182’s lyricist, but Mark also displays a great deal of insight and self-awareness. Lots of this resonated with me pretty strongly. Of course, there’s also plenty of toilet humour and debauchery.

The Name of This Band is R.E.M. (Peter Ames Carlin)

I came to R.E.M. pretty late - during the Green era - so there was lots here that was new to me. The band depicted here is more ambitious and less ascetic than the impression I formed of them at that time, making this book the most surprising and insightful of the bunch for me. It’s also more prose than reporting in places, and not your typical rock bio. (Turns out the author has also written biographies of McCartney, Simon and Springsteen, which I may have to check out…)

Long Ago & Far Away: James Taylor, His Life and Music (Timothy White)

I was pretty excited for this one - I’ve been a casual James Taylor fan for a long time, but I don’t know too much about him aside from the broad strokes. Unfortunately, as much as I hate a DNF, this book was not the remedy for my James Taylor ignorance - it starts out in 1622 with his ancestors, and by page 200 had still only reached 1961. There’s such a thing as too much detail.

Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout (Laura Jane Grace)

One of the most compelling frontpeople in punk rock, I was very much looking forward to this and it did not disappoint. Short but very readable, and largely taken from contemporaneous diaries - the emotion is raw and in your face. The background to Against Me!‘s history and lineup changes is illuminating, but the real story here is LJG’s long battle with gender dysphoria and eventual acceptance of her true identity. Interestingly there were also clues hidden all over the place in Against Me!‘s discography - The Ocean wasn’t the first.

Birth School Metallica Death / Into the Black: The Inside Story of Metallica 1991-2014 (Paul Brannigan & Ian Winwood)

A massive two-volume set that covers the band from its inception in 1981 to the Black Album, and from there to Death Magnetic in 2014. The authors interviewed Metallica plenty of times over the years, but much more so during the era covered by the second book, which shows - the first book is a bit more cobbled together from other sources. There is a lot less ass-kissing than you see in this kind of biography though, and they are particularly unsparing when it comes to the raw deal Jason Newsted got from day one until his exit from the band in 2001. You won’t learn much that’s new here, but if you are into the band it’s a reminder of just how unlikely their ascent to the title of the biggest metal band in the world really was.

Heartbreak is the National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music (Rob Sheffield)

Don’t expect journalistic objectivity in this book - it’s a love letter from an unapologetic Swiftie. But then again, so am I - so I loved it. This isn’t aimed at people on the fence, it’s more of a celebration of all things Taylor. Includes album-by-album chapters, dissection of the track 5 phenomenon, the Eras Tour and Taylor’s Versions (Rep TV when 😭). Skip this one if you’re not a fan, but very worthwhile if you are.

A Dream About Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons (Ben Folds)

Just finished this one, and while it glosses over some aspects of Ben’s life (his fourth wife barely gets a mention, and even then not by name) it’s a fun history of his early musical career, the Ben Folds Five years and his solo career, and his later multimedia TV/rock/orchestra/Shatner collab years. (Though it doesn’t include the story behind One Down, sadly.)