George Henderson reviews a rock memoir by Wayne Kramer, leader of the MC5, a 60s band who advocated “Dope, rock and roll, and fucking in the street.” “We have developed organic high-energy guerrilla bands who are infiltrating the popular culture and destroying millions of minds in the process” – John Sinclair, White Panther Party Programme, … Read more
Steve Braunias reviews the new autobiography by Roger Daltrey, singer with one of the best and worst groups of all times, The Who. The Who! Godawful mostly, although not always. All those unlistenable rock operas and what-not. Tommy. Jesus. But even that fruity melodrama about a deaf, dumb and blind kid who sure did well … Read more
It’s Zep-tember! Spinoff Review of Books literary editor Steve Braunias reviews a new rock biog of Led Zeppelin’s unappealing genius, Jimmy Page. What an egg. Strange, and a little dismal, to plod through a 500-page biography of one of the great conductors of rock – who played the guitar like he was ringing up Hell and getting straight through, who turned … Read more
A new biography is being lauded as an “intimate and inspiring narrative that helps us at last understand Paul Simon”. But is that possible when there’s no sign of Art Garfunkel? Before starting Robert Hilburn’s Paul Simon: The Life, I was reading Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa: The Adventures of Talking Heads in the 20th … Read more
Music memoirs are so hot right now. Philip Matthews reads one of the best new books of the bunch – a hilarious account by Will Carruthers of Spacemen 3, a “drug parakeet” who ended up digging trenches. Do you feel like there is a boom in music memoir writing right now? Long may it run. Locally, Nick Bollinger’s … Read more
Alea Balzer talks to journalist, critic and experimental music obsessive David Keenan about his debut novel This Is Memorial Device. When is life the equivalent of music, except in memory, except in dreams? Can you be alive for the moment in the moment or is it always retrospectively that you understand the magic of it? In … Read more
Philip Matthews examines three new books looking back on the day the music died: December 6, 1969, when the Hells Angels murdered a guy at that Stones concert at Altamont. “I looked away from Mick and saw, with that now-familiar instant space around him, bordered with falling bodies, a Beale Street nigger in a black hat, black … Read more
Gary Steel surveys two new biographies by two old foes from the Beach Boys – Brian Wilson (genius) and Mike Love (asshole), and finds the asshole’s book is better. In the left corner, the drug-fucked genius, the Bach of modern pop: BRIAN WILSON! In the right corner, the craven villain that everyone loves to hate, the … Read more
On the eve of shows in Wellington and Auckland – his first in New Zealand since the death of his long-time musical partner Grant McLennan – songwriter Robert Forster talks to Russell Baillie about life in the Go-Betweens, and his new book, Grant & I. Most rock memoirs peter out at the end. The fun’s … Read more