The year’s best rock ‘n’ roll reading
Days remain until the holiday shopping deadline, meaning it’s officially crunch time when it comes to picking up what is quite literally a last-minute gift to give to the music lover in your life.
Consider Rock Music Menu your Secret Santa this year, and today our annual gift guide focuses on some books that you can bestow upon those with stockings hung by the chimney with care, or on the e-reader kept by their nightstand.
Subjects include a grunge legend who died too soon, a straightahead rock outfit lead by two endlessly sparring brothers, a woman who broke boundaries everywhere she went and a good old boy with a surprisingly strong music career. Below are some of the top page turners 2019 had to offer when it came to music.
‘HARD TO HANDLE: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE BLACK CROWES’ — STEVE GORMAN
One of the more enduring mysteries in rock and roll was the sudden dissolution of the partnership between The Black Crowes and Jimmy Page. The former had long fallen out of favor with the music mainstream by 1999 when they linked up with the Led Zeppelin guitarist, whose own mid90s reunion with former bandmate Robert Plant had run its course at that point.
Together, the two factions brought a ton of excitement to the stage performing each other’s material for a series of tour dates, but suddenly Page experienced back issues that scuttled a
55 date U.S. and UK tour just 11 dates in, shows that were never made up despite promises otherwise. It turns out, Crowes guitarist Rich Robinson had rudely rejected Page when the latter offered to co-write a song for or even produce the band’s next album. Page exited without warning, severing the partnership for good.
That’s just one of the stories former drummer and Black Crowes co-founder Steve Gorman reveals in his memoir ‘Hard to Handle.’ It’s easily one of the best to come out, focusing on a group known for their volatility, especially between the Robinson brothers Rich and Chris. The book comes at the perfect time, with the siblings recently having announced a reunion of the band, with only the two of them remaining from the original lineup. After reading Gorman’s take on things, that decision makes a lot more sense.
‘FACE IT’ — DEBBIE HARRY
Musician, actor, activist, and the iconic face of New York City cool, Debbie Harry gained notoriety as the frontwoman of Blondie, a band that forged a new sound that brought together the worlds of rock, punk, disco, reggae and hip-hop to create some of the most beloved pop songs of all time. She’s also played the role of a muse, collaborating with some of the boldest artists of the past four decades.
The scope of Harry’s impact on culture is contrasted by her reserve in revealing a rich inner life, remaining as private a person as they come. All that has changed with her memoir, ‘Face It,’ an arresting mix of soulful storytelling and stunning visuals. The book upends the standard music memoir while delivering a truly layered portrait of a complicated and enigmatic person. It features all the grit, grime and glory of Harry’s life recounted in intimate detail, recreating the downtown scene of 1970s New York City, where Blondie played alongside the Ramones, Talking Heads, Iggy Pop and David Bowie.
‘Face It’ follows Harry’s path from glorious commercial success to heroin addiction, the neardeath of partner Chris Stein, a devastating bankruptcy and Blondie’s breakup as a band to her multifaceted acting career in more than thirty films, a solo career then triumphant return of her band and her tireless advocacy for the environment and LGBTQ rights. Aesthetically, it’s dazzling with never before-seen photographs, illustrations and fan art.
‘SERVING THE SERVANT: REMEMBERING KURT COBAIN’ — DANNY GOLDBERG
When it comes to an artist as legendary as Kurt Cobain, everyone from his childhood best friend to the cashier who once served him at the doughnut shop mistakenly think they have a story to tell. This is not that book. In early 1991, top music manager Danny Goldberg agreed to take on Nirvana, a critically acclaimed upand-coming band from the underground music scene in Seattle. He had no idea that the group’s leader would become a pop-culture icon with a legacy arguably at the level of that of John Lennon, Michael Jackson or Elvis Presley.
Goldberg worked with Cobain from 1990-1994, the most impactful period of the singer’s life on music and culture. This key time saw the stratospheric success of ‘Nevermind,’ which turned Nirvana into the most successful rock band in the world and made punk and grunge household terms. He was also there for Cobain’s meeting and marriage to the mercurial Courtney Love and their relationship that became a lightning rod for critics, the birth of their daughter, Frances Bean and, finally, his public struggles with addiction, which ended in a devastating suicide that would alter the course of rock history.
‘MY LIFE, MY WAY’ — JOHN SCHNEIDER
Wait, what’s Bo Duke doing in Rock Music Menu? For starters, Schneider has over 20 albums to his credit and four No. 1 singles on the Billboard Country chart. He returned to the genre in 2018 with ‘The Odyssey,’ an ambitious 52song project, ‘Greatest Hits…Still’ and the holiday EP ‘Merry Christmas Baby.’ He continued releasing new music this year with the Southern rock inspired ‘Redneck Rebel’ and the just-released inspirational album, ‘Recycling Grace.’
Musical cred established, Schneider’s autobiography ‘My Life, My Way’ provides an indepth look at his rise to fame and reveals stories of the actor sneaking on set to make his film debut in ‘Smokey and the Bandit,’ starring as co-pilot of the General Lee on ‘The Dukes of Hazzard,’ playing Superman’s dad on ‘Smallville’ and finding success as a country singer and moving in with Johnny Cash. It’s not all cheery though, there’s also a messy, lingering divorce that resulted in jail time, the floods that destroyed his home and film studio — twice — and controversy surrounding the Confederate flag, a staple on “Hazzard.’
“Vinyl of the Week” will return in the new year.