Rolling Stone 50 greatest Rock Memoirs of all time

[TRAVIS222]

Rolling Stone magazine just released it`s top 50 list of Rock memoirs...the top three were Dylan, Patti Smith and Springsteen...Ridiculousy, Linda`s Simple Dreams memoir is nowhere in sight....

[eddiejinnj]

Welcome to the forum, Travis!!! It's easy to become a member of forum. Thanks for the info even if like you said it is ridiculous. eddiejinnj

[erik]

Quote by eddiejinnj:

Welcome to the forum, Travis!!! It's easy to become a member of forum. Thanks for the info even if like you said it is ridiculous. eddiejinnj

I think Rolling Stone's (or at least Jann Wenner's) "rationale" (such as it is) is that memoirs are only any good if the artist's life is marked by sex, drugs, booze, getting in trouble a lot with the law. Linda's was "A Musical Memoir", and she didn't exactly make it a state secret that that was what it was. She really didn't have promiscuous sex; she didn't really drink; she did drugs, but not to the point where it put her in rehab or an early grave; and her only conflict with the law was spending a couple of hours in a Bay Area jail in 1970 because of her and her band being given tickets to a Capitol Records show in Hawaii that were obtained by her then-manager Herb Cohen (not John Boylan) via questionable means.

In short, if it doesn't have sordidness, a rock and roll memoir doesn't attract Rolling Stones (or Jann Wenner's) attention. For someone who spent close to fifty years in a business where she could have succumbed to almost anything, Linda led a relatively "normal" life, while exploring virtually every style of music in her internal DNA, including rock, R&B, Mexicana, American standards, and left-of-center C&W, and that was what she wrote about. But it was a great memoir all the same, so I wouldn't sweat this latest swipe at her dignity.

[Partridge]

And unlike most rock memoirs, it was a Top 10 bestseller and continued to sell for years. It did not go into the bargain racks.

I liked her writing style. If I have complaints about the book, it is that she flew by the most successful era of her career in a few pages. It can be a musical memoir and still be more revealing. I didn't feel enlightened after reading it, but unlike the casual reader, I knew about 90% of her public story from magazine articles.

[Richard W]

Well, she wasn't on their list of the greatest singers of the rock era, either, so at least they're consistent.

[RobGNYC]

I read it twice. It was ok. I agree with Tony--I liked the tone--it sounded like Linda talking rather than a ghostwriter. But she raced through one of the most successful musical careers of the 1970s in just a couple of chapters. It felt like the written equivalent of her bolting the hockey arenas to sing Gilbert & Sullivan. More stories like the living-room jam session that resulted in her recording "Blue Bayou" would have made it a much stronger book. She must have a million great stories--she could have added a few more that we don't know about and still kept it a "musical memoir." Compared with memoirs by Keith Richards and Chuck Berry, for example, I would not put it in the Top 50.  

[hazardaguest]

I have to agree that I was disappointed in the brevity with which she treated her mid to late 70's releases. After talking a bit about HLAW she wrote, IIRC, something along the lines of 'For the next few years I then settled into a pattern of do an album, do a tour' and that was Prisoner, Hasten, Simple Dreams, Living ... and Mad Love covered. My reaction was 'Is that it?' and sadly it was. I didn't expect an in-depth discussion of all those albums but a bit more about how she found the songs, some discussion of the musicians and singers she worked with on them etc would have been welcome. I know she is not 'proud' of them but that's the case with nearly all of her career anyway. Perhaps my disappointment stemmed from the much greater depth with which she wrote about the standards albums, Canciones and Pirates when it is 1970's Linda that I love the most. I mentioned this here once and someone replied that 'You can find her talking about those albums in interviews from the time of their release' but I felt that was missing my point - a look back on her most high-profile era in a 'musical memoir' was what I had hoped for, not having to search out 40-year-old interviews. Having said that, I enjoyed it nonetheless and liked her straightforward writing style but overall felt something was 'missing'. I also found it odd that she talked about Nicolette Larson a bit but made no mention of her untimely death. I can understand her not wanting to go into detail, and I respect that she is a very private person and was never comfortable with celebrity or dabbled in 'gossip' but I still found it noticeable that it was not mentioned at all.

I just finished Delta Lady, Rita Coolidge's memoir, and she does much the same thing: it's very readable but musically, it jumps from her debut to Anytime, Anywhere with no mention of the four or so albums in between which is her best period IMO. Once she found success her records became very slick and soulless and I pretty much gave up on her. There's a lot about Kris K though and the Mad Dogs tour stuff is interesting.

Was Rosanne Cash's memoir on the list? I enjoyed it a lot and she is a very good writer, both of songs and prose.

[hazardaguest]

Just checked and no, no Rosanne. Next on my list is Chris Difford's Some Fantastic Place: My Life In and Out of Squeeze, which I think will be good though quite a geographical jump from Rita and LA to Chris and east London.

[eddiejinnj]

Cool name and welcome to the forum, hazardaguest!!! I think what happened to some degree was that Linda I believe had a deadline. She ran out of time to put more into it, I believe is some of the issue. Also, Linda is not the best historian so she said she used different sources to help with details etc. It is a very good book written by a solo first time book writer. She did not have a co-author as some do. Trying to be objective, overall, the book I would say is good but not comprehensive enough to do Linda or her fans/readers justice. eddiejinnj

[hazardaguest]

Thanks for the reply and the welcome Eddie. Yes, I pretty much agree with your take - a good read and well written but not comprehensive enough in its coverage of certain periods of her career. Probably fine for a 'casual reader' but not enough to fully satisfy (some) fans. I also think a large part of my disappointment stemmed from looking forward to it so much that the condensing of five albums into one sentence left me feeling a bit 'I've been cheated'. Though not mistreated.

I read somewhere (or maybe she said it during one of the talks she gave when promoting the book) that her editor kept asking her to 'add more, add more' so it may have been even slighter without his/her prompting! I guess the next best hope is if someone writes a really good and in-depth biography of her that gives an equal weighting to all the stages of her career. The Rita Coolidge memoir has a co-author, Michael Walker, who wrote the very good Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-and-Roll's Legendary Neighborhood book, though they have done a good job of making it sound like 'her' voice telling the story. I just realised two omissions from that Rolling Stone list that surprise me a bit: Marianne Faithful's and Grace Jones's memoirs. Both were very interesting and I'd of thought those two women would be 'acceptable' to the RS powers that be. I love Grace's 80's Island albums, which don't sound in the least dated IMO, and the book made me like her a lot too - she came across as much warmer than her persona suggests.

[vikingfan]

I wanted more detail in the putting together and recording her biggest albums. I'm sure that is because of her well-known disdain for her "rock" era recordings. I get artists who are their own worst critics. But I wish she seemed to appreciate/understand that era is when most of us fell in love with her music. I didn't need to hear about the sex and drugs of usual musical memoirs but I wanted the rock and roll.

[eddiejinnj]

The thing is she did a lot of "other than rock" stuff on each album to explore and be proud of. I mean "Old Paint" is the epitome of life in the Southwest. One you can honestly hear Linda sing. Hey you never know those years may be a little foggier to Linda than we think. It seems, imo, she has compartmentalized this period and it has a negative vibe maybe for her. Life is perception.
That being said (my 27 yo neighbor says that phrase a lot), it would have been great to read how Linda got "I Will Always Love You", etc. Priceless times in music history. eddiejinnj post 2963

[alyn]

I found Linda's book totally fascinating and a real insight into her life. Like others here, maybe a little disappointed that my favourite era for her albums (mid - late 70s) was skimmed over very lightly, but everything else more than made up for it and I have gone back to it serveral times to re-read (mostly because I have a goldfish memory)... I don't read any musician / rock memoirs these days as I don't have a lot of interest any more, but the last one I did read was the Donald Fagen book which I thought was excellent, back in the day I remember being very impressed by the Lynyrd Skynyrd book written by a roadie that survived the aircrash, and also BB King's book was a favourite... nothing else sticks in the mind... I prefer reading biographies / autobiographies of my favourite movie stars from the golden Hollywood era and before, but they have to be had been written at the time, and I'm happy that they are maybe written with rose-tinted glasses rather than the nitty gritty... I just like to be molly-coddled to preserve the integrity of those stars :-)

[eddiejinnj]

You crack me up, bloke!!! Goldfish memory. What definition word of mollycoddled (I looked it up;
thanks bloke for supplying the word of the day) are you using in regards to you? eddiejinnj

[erik]

Quote by hazardguest:

I have to agree that I was disappointed in the brevity with which she treated her mid to late 70's releases. After talking a bit about HLAW she wrote, IIRC, something along the lines of 'For the next few years I then settled into a pattern of do an album, do a tour' and that was Prisoner, Hasten, Simple Dreams, Living ... and Mad Love covered. My reaction was 'Is that it?' and sadly it was. I didn't expect an in-depth discussion of all those albums but a bit more about how she found the songs, some discussion of the musicians and singers she worked with on them etc would have been welcome. I know she is not 'proud' of them but that's the case with nearly all of her career anyway.

Quote by RobGNYC:

I read it twice. It was ok. I agree with Tony--I liked the tone--it sounded like Linda talking rather than a ghostwriter. But she raced through one of the most successful musical careers of the 1970s in just a couple of chapters. It felt like the written equivalent of her bolting the hockey arenas to sing Gilbert & Sullivan. More stories like the living-room jam session that resulted in her recording "Blue Bayou" would have made it a much stronger book. She must have a million great stories--she could have added a few more that we don't know about and still kept it a "musical memoir."

As a matter of fact, I do happen to agree with both of you gentlemen. It would have been nice just to hear a fair amount more from Linda about how she, Peter Asher, and her band collaborated on those albums; how the arrangements were worked out, and how Linda balanced her (understandable) love of ballads with the rock and roll songs that, contrary to what she may want everyone else to believe, helped to form the balance that I have always said made her stand out from everyone else. The fact that she never liked performing in big sports arenas and stadiums is understandable, and I don't think one can hold a grudge for her on that count. But she tends to conflate the nauseating arena experience with supposedly having to craft songs for those places in the studio, and I just don't think that's either an accurate or a fair statement for her to make (IMHO).

[alyn]

Aug 27, 2020 14:23:05 GMT -5 eddiejinnj said:

You crack me up, bloke!!! Goldfish memory. What definition word of mollycoddled (I looked it up;
thanks bloke for supplying the word of the day) are you using in regards to you? eddiejinnj

I'm here to entertain :-) :-)

Mollycoddled to me is to be shielded from the truth... kept in a Happy Place :-)

[eddiejinnj]

We all need that happy place to go to in our hearts/mind!!! :-) Entertain us; it is good to spread mirth, bloke!!!! eddiejinnj