The German Genius: Europe’s Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century by Peter Watson

A quarter millennium of rich intellectual history reassessed

British historian, novelist, and journalist Peter Watson has published over two dozen books over the past 50 years. He is best known for his nonfiction books on intellectual history or the history of ideas. Rather than tell the history of the world through its wars, dynasties, and diplomacy, Watson examines world history through the arts, sciences, literature, and social sciences. In his 2010 book The German Genius, Watson explores the prodigious intellectual achievements of Germanic Europe, a realm that includes not just Germany but other German-speaking lands, including Prussia, Austria, and parts of Switzerland, Poland, the Czech Republic, Denmark, and more. The book covers a time span from 1750 to the present. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Germany (collectively speaking) led the world in a vast assortment of scholarly disciplines: philosophy, physics, biology, medicine, mathematics, chemistry, engineering, literature, history, sociology, psychology, and music to name a few. Germany’s intellectual profile took the ultimate turn for the worst in the 20th century, however, with the Nazi atrocities of World War II and the persecution of academics under that authoritarian regime. Watson examines how this nation stacked with geniuses fell from the zenith to the nadir of intellectualism, and how that fall has affected Germany’s intellectual legacy.

I had previously read Watson’s 2022 book The French Mind, in which he gives a similarly comprehensive, centuries-spanning overview of French thought and culture. I would assume his latest book, The British Imagination, does the same for the UK, but I haven’t yet read it. The German Genius is a better book than The French Mind, which tried too hard to advance a specific thesis and was only partially successful. The German Genius mostly just lets the Germans’ achievements speak for themselves. While The French Mind pushed a very feminist argument, feminists will not be happy at all with The German Genius, where maybe five women are mentioned for every thousand males. In both his French and German studies, Watson makes the convincing case that Britain and the United States could learn a thing or two from the way these cultures view the world.

Of course, the elephant in the room is the Third Reich. Watson doesn’t excuse or deny in any way the evils perpetrated by the Nazis or the horrors of the Holocaust. He calls out many scholars and intellectuals who supported the Nazis. The question Watson grapples with in this book is to what extent should the Nazis’ wrongs negate German achievements before and after the Third Reich. He traces a continuum of intellectual cause and effect from Immanuel Kant to the present day. Romanticism led to inwardness, which led to cultural pessimism. Social Darwinism led to nationalism and antiSemitism. The horrors of the Nazi years are a part of this continuum, not removed from it, but how much of this spectrum of thought should be darkened by that black mark, and where exactly is the line of demarcation? Friedrich Nietzsche’s work had philosophical value, for example, but was co-opted and misconstrued by the Nazis, thus tainting his name. Martin Heidigger, on the other hand, was a willing collaborator with the Nazis. Does that render his philosophy totally invalid?

Watson asserts that, because of animosity generated by the World Wars, many Germans who made important contributions to knowledge and society have undeservedly fallen into obscurity. He even includes an appendix on 35 semi-forgotten Germans we should all know better. Watson also points out the important contributions to American and British science, arts, and culture made by German immigrants who fled the Nazi regime.

Watson is really great at writing these sweeping historical syntheses. He summarizes vast quantities of information and explains complex concepts in engaging and accessible prose, all the while pointing out interesting connections and drawing insightful conclusions. I come away from each of his books with a long list of interesting people, ideas, and books to explore further. I enjoy Watson’s books so much, I purposefully read them slowly too make them last longer. I would suggest starting with his worldwide histories Ideas and The Modern Mind before venturing into his regional studies like The German Genius and The French Mind.

Rock and Roll, Part 3

More music history and biography
I occasionally review books on the history of rock and roll music. After reaching a critical mass of reviews, I periodically post a recap on the subject. This is the third of such “omnibus” posts, the prior installments being Rock and Roll (Auto)biographies and Rock and Roll, Part 2. Highlights of the past have included memoirs by Bobby Womack, Bob Dylan, and Neil Young, oral histories of Warren Zevon and Sly and the Family Stone, and a biography of session man Nicky Hopkins. Below are ten new selections reviewed by Old Books by Dead Guys over roughly the past year and a half. Click on the titles below to read the full reviews.

Heartbreaker: A Memoir by Mike Campbell with Ari Surdoval (5 stars)
Tom Petty’s lifelong guitarist Mike Campbell presents this candid account of his career as one of rock’s greatest sidemen. The story of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (and their earlier bar band, Mudcrutch) is an engaging rags to riches tale, and as Campbell tells it here, they wore rags for a long time before the riches showed up. Campbell also details his work as a sought-after session man and producer for other artists, including Bob Dylan, Fleetwood Mac, and Don Henley. Everything you'd want in a rock autobiography is here: every recording session, every touring milestone, every band personnel change, every interior personality conflict, and every record company business deal. Campbell’s humble and likable voice shines through in this very well-crafted narrative. This is one of the best rock memoirs I’ve ever read.

Drums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon by Joel Selvin (4.5 stars)
Jim Gordon was one of the top rock drummers of the 1970s. He was briefly a member of Derek and the Dominos and Traffic, but he was also a session musician on thousands of recordings by many other artists, including the Beach Boys, George Harrison, John Lennon, Steely Dan, the Everly Brothers, and even television theme songs. This book provides a fascinating look inside the career of an expert session man. Behind this great talent, however, there was a darker side to Jim Gordon. A longtime sufferer from undiagnosed schizophrenia, he eventually went insane, killed his mother, and died in prison. Gordon’s tragic downward slide  into insanity is riveting, and veteran rock journalist Joel Selvin delivers a compassionate and moving account free of tabloid sensationalism. 

The Producer: John Hammond and the Soul of American Music by Dunstan Prial (4 stars)
John Hammond is a legend in the music industry. As a talent scout, record producer, and Columbia executive, he was one of the most influential trendsetters and tastemakers in 20th-century American music. Rock fans will know him as the man who discovered Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, but Hammond started decades earlier as a jazz impresario who helped launch the careers of Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, and Count Basie. Hammond was also instrumental in desegregating the music industry and also served on the board of the NAACP. Author Dunstan Prial delivers a well-researched, balanced, and comprehensive biography that really gives you a sense of the personality of the man behind the music.

Why Bob Dylan Matters by Richard F. Thomas (3.5 stars)
An odd but interesting study of Dylan’s music by a professor of classics at Harvard University. Richard F. Thomas uses his prodigious knowledge of Dylan lyrics and classical (ancient Greek and Roman) texts to point out parrallels between the two. Focusing mostly on Dylan’s highly regarded work of the 1960s, his 1976 album Blood on the Tracks, and his late '90s and early 2000s renaissance, Thomas makes a reasonably convincing case that Dylan has drawn ideas and phrases from the works of Virgil, Ovid, and Homer and is somewhat obsessed with The Odyssey. Like most books of Dylanology, the depth of minutiae will be too much for casual readers, and not everyone is going to appreciate lengthy discussions of Cicero, Virgil, and Catullus.

Sound Man by Glyn Johns (3 stars)
Glyn Johns is one of the most highly respected record producers and sound engineers in the history of rock. He worked with the Who, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and Eric Clapton on albums like Who's Next, Abbey Road, Let It Bleed, Led Zeppelin I, and Slowhand. Johns gives the reader a whirlwind tour of his career, recalling recording sessions with a multitude of arts, from Rock and Roll Hall of Famers to obscure has-beens. This is primarily a music-business memoir about making records. There aren’t a lot of anecdotes here about rock stars’ personal lives, with the exception of the Rolling Stones. If you’re a classic rock fan, you’ll enjoy Johns’s perspective on the music biz of the ’60s and ’70s.

Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin): A Memoir by Sly Stone with Ben Greenman (3 stars)
Sly Stone was a genius songwriter, musician, and record producer who changed the landscape of soul music. He was also kind of a scary character, with a drug problem that allegedly fueled a vindictive demeanor and violent tendencies. That’s the picture that his bandmates and colleagues give in Joel Selvin’s book Sly and the Family Stone: An Oral History. Here, Sly has the chance to set the record straight, if indeed it needs to be straightened, but he mostly glosses over all the negative stuff and focuses on upbeat anecdotes about recording sessions and talk show appearances. The text, written in the hip conversational voice of Sly, is fun to read, but you don’t end up liking the guy.

Slowhand: The Life and Music of Eric Clapton by Philip Norman (3 stars)
British rock journalist Philip Norman provides an overview of Clapton’s life, but it’s not particularly well done or pleasant to read. It focuses heavily on Clapton’s early career and doesn’t cover much after about 1986. Because Norman is known as somewhat of an expert on the Beatles, nearly half of this book is about the relationship between Clapton, George Harrison, and Pattie Boyd (the woman who married them both). Norman has nothing good to say about Clapton in this book and seems to enjoy digging up dirt on him, so it’s a book about a not very nice guy written by someone who doesn’t like him. Sound like fun? You’d be better off just reading Clapton’s autobiography. It gives you a better understanding of the man and his music.

Hüsker Dü: The Noise-Pop Pioneers Who Launched Modern Rock by Andrew Earles (3 stars)
Minneapolis post-punk band Hüsker Dü never became a household name on the level of Nirvana, but they had a profound influence on all alternative rock that followed in their footsteps. Author Andrew Earles is so awed by this influence that he would rather write about all the bands that learned from Hüsker Dü rather than concentrate on a biography of the band itself. This book is more of a music-business narrative about recording, touring, and selling records, with little information about the personal lives of the band members. Earle also digresses into stories about every obscure band of the Minneapolis scene. Drummer Grant Hart and bassist Greg Norton participated in interviews for this book, while guitarist Bob Mould did not.

Trouble in Mind: Bob Dylan’s Gospel Years—What Really Happened by Clinton Heylin (2.5 stars)
Clinton Heylin has written at least a dozen books on Bob Dylan, but does he even like his music? He certainly doesn’t like the period he’s writing about in this book: Dylan’s three gospel albums from 1979 to 1981—Slow Train Coming, Saved, and Shot of Love—and the tours that followed them. Heylin has assembled a detailed chronology of events from this period, much of it too trivial for all but the most diehard of Dylan fans. I like this period in Dylan’s music, so I liked learning more about it, but I couldn’t stand Heylin’s snarky, pompous attitude and the way he denigrated Dylan throughout the book. The artist and this work deserve more respect and consideration. Read Scott Marshall’s Bob Dylan: A Spiritual Life instead.

Black Caesars and Foxy Cleopatras: A History of Blaxploitation Cinema by Odie Henderson (4.5 stars)
This is actually a film book, but if you know anything about the Blaxploitation genre you know that the music made to accompany these films was some of the best soul and funk music of the 1970s. Maybe about 15% of this book is about the music, discussing soundtracks and scores by such artists as Isaac Hayes (Shaft), Curtis Mayfield (Super Fly), Marvin Gaye (Trouble Man), James Brown (Black Caesar), Willie Hutch (The Mack), Bobby Womack and J. J. Johnson (Across 110th Street), Roy Ayers (Coffy), the Staples Singers (Let’s Do It Again), The Impressions (Three the Hard Way), and more.

Heartbreaker by Mike Campbell with Ari Surdoval

Soft-spoken guitarist with much to say

Mike Campbell may not be a household name, but you’d probably recognize his face if you saw it. He’s the guy who stood next to Tom Petty for about the past 50 years. Campbell is the guitarist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, as well as Petty’s band from the early 1970s, Mudcrutch. He is also a sought-after session musician, songwriter, and recording producer. Since Campbell’s autobiography, entitled Heartbreaker, was published in 2025, you can add bestselling author to that list. This book is really an excellent rock memoir, even though I’m not a zealous Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers fan. I like their music, but I don’t have all their lyrics memorized or know Petty’s life story. I’m actually a bigger fan of Campbell than I am of Petty. Campbell’s probably one of the top ten living guitarists in rock, and I like the work he’s done with other artists like Bob Dylan, Don Henley, Stevie Nicks, and others. I really enjoyed Peter Bogdanovich’s documentary film about the Heartbreakers, Runnin’ Down a Dream. This band has one of the better rags-to-riches stories in rock. Bogdanovich’s take on the band is a lot more sunshiny than Campbell’s account. Here in Heartbreaker, you get to see a darker side of Tom Petty. Campbell clearly loves and admires Petty, and would die for him, but he relates how Petty at times could be egotistical, vindictive, and, well, petty.

The bulk of Campbell’s account focuses on his and Petty’s early career. Before you ever even get to the Heartbreakers, about a third of the book is spent on Mudcrutch. If anybody still thinks rock and roll is a “money for nothing” profession, they should read Campbell’s recollections of how he and his bandmates had to claw their way to the top. As Campbell relates, he was dirt-poor to begin with, when growing up in Gainesville, Florida. At first, choosing to devote his life to a rock band did not improve his financial situation any, though his malnourishment kept him out of the Vietnam War. Even after the Heartbreakers had a half dozen hits getting frequent radio airplay, and their album Damn the Torpedoes went triple platinum, Campbell was still in financial dire straits. Such is the musician’s plight when your name is not the one in front of the band. Not until Campbell wrote the music to Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer” did he reach a level of financial security where he could reliably pay his mortgage.

Of course, from such humble beginnings things took off considerably. Campbell eventually did get to live the life of a rich and famous rock star. Despite his tremendous success, Campbell comes across as very humble, grateful, and down-to-earth. He talks as if he’s an average-joe, unassuming working stiff who’s just as amazed as we would be when members of the Beatles, the Stones, Fleetwood Mac, or Bob Dylan show up on his doorstep asking for his help. You get some very entertaining and candid behind-the-scenes insights into all of the rock luminaries that Campbell has rubbed elbows with. As a Dylan fan, I really enjoyed Campbell’s humorous and revealing stories about touring and recording with Dylan.

Heartbreaker delivers everything fans could ask for in a rock memoir. I assume Campbell’s coauthor Ari Surdoval is responsible for how well-written this book is. The way the stories unfold is quite skillfully done, captivating, and addictive. Campbell covers the recording of every album, every touring milestone, every band personnel change, every interior personality conflict, and every record company business deal. Not being a musician myself, there’s more here about guitars and playing them than I can understand. Drugs are discussed as a fact of the rock and roll life, not as a badge of honor nor a cross to bear, neither glorified nor scorned. The consequences of drugs are plainly evident in some of the book’s sadder moments—the death of Petty and of bassist Howie Epstein. Overall, however, Campbell’s memoir is a life-affirming celebration of music and friendship, full of humor and poignancy. I read a fair amount of these classic-rock autobiographies, and Heartbreaker is a superb addition to the genre.

Hüsker Dü: The Story of the Noise-Pop Pioneers Who Launched Modern Rock by Andrew Earles

A non-tell-all career retrospective

Minneapolis rock band Hüsker Dü existed from 1979 to 1988. Within that short tenure, they managed to have a profound influence on alternative music. Combining the raw power of hardcore punk with the catchy melodies and harmonies of pop, Hüsker Dü rose from Midwest indie band to big-label signees who flirted with Nirvana-level mainstream stardom. Music journalist Andrew Earles examines the band’s career in his 2010 book Hüsker Dü: The Story of the Noise-Pop Pioneers Who Launched Modern Rock.

In the introduction, Earles does his best to dissuade you from reading this book by telling you everything it’s not: It’s not a biography of the musicians’ personal lives. It’s not a behind-the-scenes tell-all. It’s not about the conflicts within the band, drug use, love lives, or the musicians’ post–Hüsker Dü solo careers. Earles states his intention in writing this book is to make a case for Hüsker Dü’s importance in music history. Luckily, however, the book is a little bit of all those things that Earles says it’s not. There are, in fact, elements of an exposé here, so it’s more than merely Earles’s critical opinion of their music. What biography there is, however, is very much a music-business narrative about recording, touring, and selling records. If one of the band members fell in love or got busted for drugs, Earles isn’t going to tell you about it.

Sometimes the Hüskers (as Earles repeatedly refers to them) seem like supporting characters in their own book. There are lengthy passages that chart out a history of the Minneapolis punk and post-punk scene, or the history of various indie record labels, in particular Los Angeles’s SST Records. Like music fans of all genres are wont to do, Earles demonstrates himself an aficionado of punk and post-punk by naming as many obscure bands as he can cram into the text. More annoying, however, is the great lengths to which Earles goes to define the genre of “hardcore.” At least a few chapters are spent belaboring that term, decreeing what is hardcore and what isn’t, and obsessing over exactly when Hüsker Dü stopped being hardcore and started being something else. Such hair-splitting of labels becomes tiresome.

Earles interviewed Hüsker Dü band members Grant Hart and Greg Norton for this book. Bob Mould declined to participate because he was in the process of writing his own memoir, See a Little Light (2011). The Hart and Norton interviews are the most valuable aspect of the book. You learn the most from what comes straight out of Grant and Greg’s mouths. Not surprisingly, Hart gets some digs in on Mould, declaring him an egomaniac and a control freak. Have no fear, however, Mould had much worse to say about Hart and Norton in his book. Reading Mould’s autobiography actually lessened my appreciation for Hüsker Dü’s music, because it revealed his personality to be everything Hart says it is—off-puttingly arrogant, pretentious, and vindictive. On the other hand, I’ve grown to have more respect for Hart’s work over the years. Outside of the band, Earles interviewed a few dozen other music industry figures, including their sound technician Lou Giordano, audio engineer Steve Albini, and colleague Mike Watt of the Minutemen. The book ends with a comprehensive discography of Hüsker Dü recordings that delves deeply into rarities beyond their eight albums.

As a fan of Hüsker Dü, I didn’t learn as much about the band as I had hoped, but I did learn some. Earles does a good job of making a case for Hüsker Dü’s historical importance and musical influence, but is that really necessary? If you’re reading this book, chances are you already know that. It would be hard to find an “alternative” band these days that doesn’t claim to have been influenced by Hüsker Dü. If you’ve never heard Hüsker Dü’s music, this book might make you want to listen, but you’re probably not going to want to know about all the minor punk bands that Earles discusses here. This would have been a better book if Earles hadn’t been so reluctant to just tell the story of the band, warts and all. Isn’t that really what most Hüsker Dü fans would want to read?

Black Caesars and Foxy Cleopatras: A History of Blaxploitation Cinema by Odie Henderson

From Harlem to Hollywood, and vice versa

Black Caesars and Foxy Cleopatras: A History of Blaxploitation Cinema was published in 2024. The author is Odie Henderson, film critic for the Boston Globe, who I think is probably right around my age. While I, however, grew up watching Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood movies in a small town in Wisconsin, Henderson grew up watching Pam Grier and Fred Williamson movies in Jersey City and Times Square. Henderson brings to this history a nostalgic enthusiasm for the genre but also an extensive knowledge of the film industry. For each movie he discusses, Henderson provides a wealth of behind-the-scenes stories about the making of the picture and the careers of those involved in its production.

In the first chapter, Henderson provides an overview of Black American cinema, pre-Blaxploitation. The bulk of the book then covers the years 1970 to 1978. Henderson considers Cotton Comes to Harlem to be the birth of the Blaxploitation genre (when Hollywood realized they could make money off of Black films) and The Wiz to be the nail in its coffin. In between, he highlights every major Blaxploitation film, as well as some lesser-known obscurities. Along the way, a number of subgenres are examined, such as horror films, westerns, rom-coms, high school dramas, women in prison, and of course, gangster/crime movies, like those starring the aforementioned Grier and Williamson.

I’ve seen at least half of the films discussed here, and after reading this book, I’d like to see the rest. Henderson provides plot summaries of all the movies he covers in the book. His synopses include spoilers, and they do often give away the endings of the films. By the time you get to the end of this information-rich genre survey, however, it’s unlikely you’re going to remember the difference between the conclusions of Uptown Saturday Night versus Let’s Do It Again or Hammer versus Bucktown. There is so much film criticism, film history, and film trivia crammed into this book. Throughout, Henderson’s prose is a joy to read, delivering a wealth of information in an addictively fun narrative, with just enough period slang to keep things cool while maintaining film-critic dignity and avoiding overly ostentatious cleverness. He intersperses the film-talk with a few stories of his youth, how he grew up watching these movies, but this is definitely not a memoir. It’s closer to an encyclopedia of the genre, although arranged chronologically. Henderson also includes a few brief interviews with a movie producer and a couple of fellow film critics.

My interest in Blaxploitation films springs mainly from their soundtracks, an important aspect of any film in this genre. Artists like Isaac Hayes (Shaft), Curtis Mayfield (Super Fly), Marvin Gaye (Trouble Man), James Brown (Black Caesar), Willie Hutch (The Mack), Bobby Womack and J. J. Johnson (Across 110th Street), Roy Ayers (Coffy), the Staples Singers (Let’s Do It Again), and The Impressions (Three the Hard Way) created some of the best soul music of the ‘70s in their scores and soundtracks. Although this is primarily a film book, Henderson does cover the music that accompanies the films he discusses. Perhaps as much as fifteen percent of the text might be concerned with music. There’s an entire chapter on Black concert films, and a sidebar on “The Top Ten Best Blaxploitation Songs.”

As a fan of 1970s cinema, I really enjoyed Black Caesars and Foxy Cleopatras. The only way to make this book better would be to make it bigger by adding more lesser-known films. Henderson has certainly got the biggest and best movies of the era well-covered. Inspired by this fun and fascinating study of the genre, I’ll be hunting down many of these movies on streaming services and YouTube.

Trouble in Mind: Bob Dylan’s Gospel Years—What Really Happened by Clinton Heylin

More than most fans want to know, and not who you want to hear it from

Although I’m not a true Christian believer, I love Bob Dylan’s gospel period. He made some fine rock and roll from 1979 to 1981 and assembled some excellent musicians to perform it. Dylan’s born-again Christian spell, which encompassed the albums Slow Train Coming, Saved, and Shot of Love, is generally not well-regarded by critics or fans. At the time, some concert-goers expressed outrage that Dylan was only playing his new Christian rock tunes in concert while ignoring his Greatest Hits. This period in Dylan’s musical career perhaps enjoyed a slight resurgence in appreciation with the release of The Bootleg Series Vol. 13: Trouble No More in 2017. To capitalize on the release of that official collection of previously unreleased material, frequent Dylan biographer Clinton Heylin published his book Trouble in Mind: Bob Dylan’s Gospel Years—What Really Happened, also released in 2017.

Heylin takes the “What Really Happened” in the subtitle very literally. His main concern here is to establish a detailed chronology of events, such as the first time Dylan played “Slow Train” in a rehearsal, the first time he attended the Vineyard Christian Fellowship in LA, the last time he played “Saved” in concert, and so on. In great detail, Heylin recaps every recording session, tour rehearsal, concert performance, and on-stage sermon that took place over these three years, as well as newspaper and magazine reviews of Dylan’s concerts and Dylan’s reactions to those reviews. Much attention is accorded to any change in concert playlist or album track selection. It’s a lot of trivial detail, but as a Dylan fan, and in particular a fan of this period, I found all this interesting. Heylin’s research is commendable. If you don’t mind seeing the trees rather than the forest, this book is for you. If, however, you really want to understand Dylan’s religious beliefs, the religious content of his songs, or why he embarked on this gospel trip in the first place, you’re not going to find that here. Thankfully, however, we have Scott Marshall’s excellent 2017 book Bob Dylan: A Spiritual Life to enlighten us on such deeper matters.

What I really don’t like about Trouble in Mind is Heylin’s tone and attitude. First of all, his prose reads as if it were written for a group of his buddies. It’s rather casual and snarky, and Heylin seems too pleased with his own clever turns of phrase. When you’re acting as a journalist and a historian, whether you like it or not, write with a little professionalism and formality. This isn’t a fanzine. Even if you hate Heylin’s prose, however, much of the text is quoted from other sources that are better written.

After reading this book, I have to ask, does Heylin even like Dylan’s music? He certainly doesn’t care much for this gospel era. He frequently states that Saved and Shot of Love are terrible albums, full of lackluster performances. Obviously, I like this period of Dylan’s career or I wouldn’t be reading your book, so why would I want to read about how much this music sucks? Heylin frequently repeats the old chestnut that the studio recordings don’t hold up to the live performances, which is the same gripe you often hear from your friends who like to brag about how many concerts they’ve seen. Heylin thinks it’s his god-given mission to inform you of what he considers Dylan’s every fault and stupid mistake in these three years of his career, whether it’s songs he left off albums, records delivered later than promised, unproductive rehearsal sessions, or song arrangements that Heylin didn’t agree with. This is a relentlessly negative portrait of Dylan as a sloppy, foolish, absent-minded buffoon that the reader is supposed to chuckle along with. Heylin writes as if he’s too good for Dylan. No, you’re not better than the guy you make your living off of. We know he’s quirky, makes messy music, and sometimes weird decisions, but he’s still the greatest rock singer-songwriter of all time and a deserving Nobel laureate. Marshall wrote a book that treats him as such. Heylin has not.

Why Bob Dylan Matters by Richard F. Thomas

Dylan the classicist (i.e. ancient Greece and Rome)

Richard F. Thomas is a professor of classics at Harvard University, “classics” in this context meaning the literature and culture of ancient Greece and Rome (in Thomas’s case, more Rome than Greece, I believe). Thomas is also an avid and diehard fan of Bob Dylan. Thomas’s 2017 book Why Bob Dylan Matters arises from the Venn-diagram intersection where those two circles of interest overlap. Thomas uses his prodigious knowledge of classical texts and Dylan lyrics to point out parallels between the two, asserting that Dylan frequently makes references to the works of Virgil, Ovid, Homer, and other classical writers in his songs.

The bulk of this book discusses intertextuality in Dylan’s work, what laymen might call borrowing, sampling, or stealing from prior works of literature and music. To those of us who aren’t professors of classics or literature, where that’s most apparent is when Dylan recycles snippets of lyrics from traditional folk songs and old blues tunes. Thomas, however, has uncovered and enumerated many instances where Dylan has borrowed from ancient Greek and Roman poetry, in particular the epics The Aeneid and The Odyssey. Thomas asserts that Dylan is somewhat obsessed with Rome: “Clearly Dylan feels a connection to the antiquity of Rome, as he does with no other place.” That seems like a bit of a stretch to me—wishful thinking for a classics professor, perhaps—but there certainly is some merit to Thomas’s point. He states his case well by making many side-by-side lyrical comparisons that are quite interesting interpretations of Dylan’s art.

Thomas focuses primarily on the periods in Dylan’s career that most scholars and commentators emphasize: the ‘60s classics like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Masters of War,” the 1976 album Blood on the Tracks, and Dylan’s renaissance of the late ‘90s and early 2000s from Time Out of Mind to Tempest (the last Dylan album released before this book was published). It is in the latter period in particular that Thomas finds many references to ancient Rome and The Odyssey, so Time Out of Mind, “Love and Theft,” Modern Times, and Tempest are all examined in detail.

One big problem I have with this book is the way it’s packaged—the title and the cover design. There’s nothing to indicate that this book has anything to do with the Greek and Roman classics. Why Bob Dylan Matters is an incredibly generic title for such a specific approach to Dylan’s music. Before buying the book, I browsed through the table of contents and got the idea this was a lit-crit book defending Dylan’s right to win the Nobel prize. Right up front in chapter one, however, Thomas makes it clear that this is a book about Dylan’s relationship to ancient Rome. Shouldn’t the title and/or subtitle make that clear? Why not call the book Dylan and the Classics, or Dylan and Ancient Rome, or Bob Dylan and the Early Roman Kings (to quote a song title)? I get the feeling the publisher William Morrow deliberately tried to hide what this book is about in hopes of misleading more people into buying it. I like what Thomas has to say about Dylan, but not every Dylan fan is going to get into a book about Cicero, Virgil, and Catullus.

Like any book on Dylanology, Why Bob Dylan Matters gets into much parsing of words, hair-splitting of trivial facts, and conjectural mind-reading of the Bard from Hibbing. That can be annoying at times, but if you’re a Dylan fan, that’s also part of the fun. I wasn’t blown away by Thomas’s revelations, but I did learn quite a bit and gained insight into Dylan’s songs and writing process. This book renewed my enthusiasm for music that I already loved. It made me want to go back and listen closely to those albums discussed. If a book of music criticism can manage to do that, then in my opinion it’s accomplished its mission.

Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin): A Memoir by Sly Stone with Ben Greenman

Sly accentuates the positive

Sly Stone, the leader, songwriter, and record producer for Sly and the Family Stone, passed away recently at the age of 82. Very late in life, Sly decided to get off drugs and write his autobiography. Entitled Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), it was published in 2023. The book includes an introduction by Questlove, leader of the Roots (Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show band). Questlove was also the publisher of the book, through his company AUWA books.

In 1998, rock journalist Joel Selvin published Sly and the Family Stone: An Oral History, which contained first-hand testimony from many members of Sly’s band, family, and entourage. That book painted a very dark portrait of Sly. As he became more famous and wealthy, his drug use increased, and he became progressively more unhinged, at times allegedly threatening those close to him with violence. Sly’s Thank You reads like it was written in response to the stories told in Selvin’s book. Rather than own up to any wrongdoing, Sly either responds to such accusations with denial or ignores them entirely, opting for safer subjects. He discusses all of his recordings, album by album, with a sentence or two about most songs. He spends a few chapters giving detailed recaps of his talk show appearances. There’s a chapter about his wedding, which took place on stage in Madison Square Garden, plus a lot of name-dropping of celebrities he often hung out with or just met once.

Sly (and perhaps Questlove) wants you to come away from this book with the idea that he was an artist that was taken advantage of and creatively stifled by the music industry, but that’s a difficult theory to buy into. The book is filled with instances of people going out of their way to give Sly the opportunity to do what he does best (including Michael Jackson, for one), but Sly chooses to sabotage his own career with his drug use and his self-destructive behavior. Sly had a reputation for skipping out on scheduled concerts, not only dissing his fans but also his own band. Here he blames everybody but himself for those numerous no-shows. Sly confesses that he used a lot of drugs, and that he liked them, but he fails to mention much of the scary behavior that Selvin’s book discusses at length. In Selvin’s Oral History, there is a very harrowing story told by Sly’s ex-wife about how his unfed pit bull mauled their toddler son. Sly, however, dispatches the incident in two sentences. Much like Keith Richards’s autobiography Life, there’s much bragging about drug use, partying, and macho tough-guy brandishing of weapons. Richards, at least, seems to respect women, while Sly seems to view them as his sexual servants. Overall, Sly comes across as a child who never grew up. He wants what he wants, when he wants it, regardless of the consequences, and he needs managers and girlfriends to take care of his basic needs because he’s incapable of doing so himself. Sly mentions his friend Bobby Womack often in this book. Sly could have learned a thing or two from Bobby about how to write a memoir. Womack’s My Story is candid, forthright, and accountable, the exact opposite of Sly’s Thank You.

One thing this book does well is capture the conversational voice of Sly. Though I’m sure it required some unsung effort on the part of coauthor Ben Greenman, this memoir is written as if it came straight out of Sly’s mouth. Sly claims credit for initiating the phrase, “Different strokes for different folks” (from his song “Everyday People”), and this book is chock full of similar funky, pithy aphorisms, many of which rhyme. As an orator, Sly falls somewhere between Snoop Dogg and Nipsey Russell. The prose is enjoyable to read, but what it has to say isn’t always pleasant. I love the man’s music, but when all is said and done, I didn’t come away from this liking Sly. Maybe I’m wrong, and Sly was a wonderful human being, but that’s not the impression one gets from this book.

The Producer: John Hammond and the Soul of American Music by Dunstan Prial

One of jazz and rock’s most influential tastemakers

As a fan of classic rock music, I know of John Hammond as the record producer and Columbia executive who discovered Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. (It’s Hammond’s grinning visage, looking like he could be Stevie Ray’s dad, that graces the back cover of Vaughan’s debut album Texas Flood.) Journalist Dunstan Prial’s 2006 Hammond biography The Producer, however, has taught me that there was much more to Hammond’s long and influential career in the recording industry.

The bulk of this book is concerned not with the history of rock but with jazz. In fact, Hammond’s first encounter with Dylan in the early 1960s doesn’t occur until chapter 12 of 16. Hammond’s career started way back in the 1930s working with artists like Benny Goodman (who eventually became his brother-in-law), Billie Holiday, and Count Basie. Through his work as a critic for DownBeat magazine, a talent scout and producer for record companies, and an all-around jazz impresario, Hammond helped launch some of the biggest stars of the swing era. On the tail end of the jazz age, he also discovered Aretha Franklin and produced her first two albums.

John Henry Hammond Jr. decided at a young age that he wanted to work in the music industry. One of the reasons he was able to make that dream a reality is that he was independently wealthy, being a great-great-grandson of railroad and shipping tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt. (Gloria Vanderbilt, more famous in recent years, was his first cousin.) To establish himself in the music business, Hammond often worked for free or for little pay, just for the joy of making music. He would often use his own money to finance a record, a concert, or to keep a hungry musician afloat. He had no musical talent himself (at least none is discussed in this book), but he had great taste and a keen eye for spotting future superstars. In The Producer, Prial argues convincingly that Hammond’s taste was instrumental in shaping American popular music in the 20th century.

In addition to his contributions to the music industry and popular culture, Hammond was active in the civil rights movement. Seeing jazz music as a means to further the integration of Blacks into American society, Hammond was the first music producer/promoter to put Black and White musicians together on the same stage. When, at Hammond’s urging, Benny Goodman added Black musicians Teddy Wilson and Lionel Hampton to his band, it was a milestone moment in racial integration that preceded Jackie Robinson’s debut in Major League Baseball by a decade. Hammond was also a long-time board member of the NAACP before resigning in protest over the organization’s disagreements with Martin Luther King Jr.

Prial interviewed Hammond’s sister and sister-in-law, some industry associates like Atlantic Records’ Ahmet Ertegun, and a few musicians such as Hampton, Springsteen, and the surviving members of Vaughan’s band Double Trouble. Most of Prial’s research, however, comes from previously published biographies, interviews, and some archival documents—sources into which he has dug admirably deep and wide. Springsteen’s vivid and exuberant recollections of Hammond’s benevolent guidance are really the highlight of the book for rock fans. Much of the Dylan material comes from Dylan’s Chronicles memoir. Prial’s narrative highlights about ten or twelve big stars that Hammond discovered and/or championed. There is much praise here for Hammond’s major accomplishments, but this is not a unilaterally positive, hero-worshipping biography. Hammond had his faults and difficulties as well. The reader gets a balanced and comprehensive sense of Hammond’s personality from Prial’s well-researched and well-written account.

Sound Man by Glyn Johns

Career retrospective of a record producer extraordinaire

Though I appreciate all kinds of music, the bulk of my listening time tends to be devoted to rock music of the 1960s and ‘70s (I was born in the middle of that period). With few exceptions, I generally don’t pay a whole lot of attention to who produces or engineers a recording. I have come to learn over the years, however, that if the name Glyn Johns is attached to an album, I’m probably going to like it and maybe even love it. Through his work as producer or sound engineer on such landmark albums as Who’s Next, Abbey Road, Let It Bleed, Led Zeppelin I, Slowhand, The Eagles, and many more, Johns did much to shape the sound of rock and roll during its formative and peak years. In his 2014 autobiography Sound Man, Johns recalls his stellar career recording some of the biggest names in popular music. If, like me, you’re a fan of Johns’s work, you’ll want to read this.

In Sound Man, Johns offers up a little bit of information about a lot of different people he’s worked with, so the approach could be characterized as broad in scope but shallow in depth. Johns has contributed his production, engineering, and/or mixing skills to hundreds of albums over the course of his career, and here he discusses about fifty of the most important projects and artists with whom he’s worked, so you get a few pages on each. As a result, the chapters are short, and the reading is brisk. At times, Johns seems to have compiled the narrative from his old appointment calendars. It’s not unusual for him to rattle off the names of a half dozen artists in a single paragraph: I worked on this, this, and this project; hopped on a plane to somewhere; had a meeting with so-and-so; than went back to mixing that album.

If you’re a fan of classic rock of the ‘60s and ‘70s, you will enjoy Johns’s perspective on the music business. His narrative does extend to 2014, but the bulk of the book deals with the classic bands of rock’s glory days. Johns has interesting stories to tell about the artists with whom he’s worked, but there aren’t really any major revelations here. This is very much a career memoir about the recording industry. Most of Johns’s anecdotes of his interactions with rock stars take place within the recording studio. There aren’t a lot of personal stories here. Johns never did any drugs, which probably kept him from penetrating the inner circle of many rock artists. The exception might be his relationship to the Rolling Stones. He worked on several of their records, accompanied them on tour, and formed a close friendship with Bill Wyman. Johns gives you a behind-the-scenes look at the personality dynamics within the band. If you’re a big fan of the Rolling Stones, however, you’ve probably read other books about them, so what Johns has to say here won’t surprise you. Beyond the Stones, Johns gives a fair amount of coverage to the Beatles, the Steve Miller Band, and the Eagles. Many of the moments that Johns recalls have since become familiar nuggets of rock-and-roll lore that most fans are already aware of, but Johns was actually present at these important turning points in music history.

In addition to the Hall of Fame-level artists that Johns discusses, he also mentions many musicians and bands that will be unfamiliar to those who aren’t British and didn’t grow up in the 1960s. That’s part of the fun of this sort of book, however—discovering previously unknown bands and nuggets of music history. Knowing Johns was behind the helm of their recordings makes me want to look up some of these artists who were previously unknown to me. I may not have learned a whole lot about the Rolling Stones or the Beatles from reading this book, but I did learn a lot about Johns and about how rock records were made in the good ol’ days. That, for me, made Sound Man a worthwhile read.

Drums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon by Joel Selvin

Legendary talent, infamous crime

Joel Selvin is one of the best writers working today in the rock-and-roll history genre. I thoroughly enjoyed his book on Sly and the Family Stone. When I found out about Drums & Demons, Selvin’s 2024 biography of rock drummer Jim Gordon, I was excited by what seemed to me like the perfect pairing of an excellent biographer with a fascinating subject, both of whose work I admire. With Drums & Demons, Selvin does not disappoint.

Jim Gordon was one of the greatest drummers of the late 1960s and ‘70s. Most classic rock fans will probably recognize his name from the rosters of the bands Derek and the Dominos and Traffic, but Gordon was also a highly sought-after session man who played drums and percussion on thousands of recordings, many of them rock and pop classics including the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain,” Eric Clapton’s “After Midnight,” John Lennon’s “Power to the People,” Steely Dan’s “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” and Kermit the Frog’s “Rainbow Connection.” Rolling Stone put Gordon at number 59 of their 2016 list of the 100 Greatest Drummers of All Time, and, quite frankly, he deserved better. In this book, however, Selvin maybe expends too much effort in persuading the reader that Gordon was the G.O.A.T. of drummers, and after a while the hyperbolic praise grows somewhat tiresome.

Unfortunately, Gordon is not only famous but also infamous. After lifelong troubles with schizophrenia, which went undiagnosed, Gordon became psychotic and murdered his mother in 1983. He spent the remaining 40 years of his life in a prison for the criminally insane, where he died at the age of 77. Drums & Demons is a gripping biography that comprehensively covers both the soaring heights of Gordon’s music career and the crashing depths of his mental health struggles and substance abuse. This isn’t a tabloid account that revels in the horror story of the crime and the misery of its victims. Selvin writes with compassion, a genuine care and admiration for Gordon, and a sensitivity towards mental health issues that is commendable.

As a fan of classic rock, including Gordon’s music, and someone who delights in the minutiae of rock-and-roll trivia, I enjoyed the career retrospective portion of the book immensely. I find the stories of these great rock session musicians really fascinating. I similarly enjoyed Julian Dawson’s biography of the legendary rock pianist Nicky Hopkins. It’s just really interesting to read about all the illustrious artists these session men played with and learn about all the classic recordings to which they contributed their stellar talents. Who knew that Gordon’s best friend in high school was Mike Post, the composer of many classic television theme songs like The Rockford Files (on which Gordon played drums) and Magnum, P.I.? Selvin includes much fascinating detail on Gordon and the musicians with which he worked, including the Everly Brothers, Clapton, George Harrison, Glenn Campbell, Harry Nilsson, Joan Baez, Frank Zappa, and more. Whether in the studio or on tour, Selvin provides an inside look at the music industry that makes you feel like a part of the band.

The latter half of the book, which chronicles Gordon’s downward slide into insanity, is riveting. You can’t help but be moved by this terrible tragedy. Selvin compiled much of this account from interviews with those who knew Gordon, and you can feel both the love and the fear they felt towards this troubled artist. Selvin clearly did prodigious research in the making of this biography, and he writes with an authoritative knowledge and a personal pathos that make this a memorable book well worth reading for any fan of classic rock music.

Slowhand: The Life and Music of Eric Clapton by Philip Norman

Read the autobiography instead

Published in 2018, Slowhand is a biography of guitar legend and three-time Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Eric Clapton, written by Philip Norman, a British rock journalist who previously published several biographies on the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Slowhand is ostensibly a full cradle-to-the-present biography, but it focuses heavily on Clapton’s early career and gives short shrift to anything that happens after about 1986.

Norman’s primary area of concern in this book is Clapton’s love affair and marriage with Pattie Boyd. Clapton’s love for Boyd inspired the song “Layla,” one of the most powerful love songs in the history of rock. The real story of their romance, however, is far from enchanting. Boyd was the wife of George Harrison, one of Clapton’s closest friends. Clapton stole her away, although George really didn’t seem to mind, and once Clapton had her, he really didn’t want her anymore. Poor Pattie. Why does Norman spend almost half the book on this relationship? Because Norman is first and foremost a biographer of the Beatles, so in this book what matters most to him is Clapton’s connection to the Beatles, which is through George by way of Pattie. Norman also clearly relishes cataloging horror stores of drug abuse, alcoholism, and infidelity. Once Clapton gets clean and sober, Norman doesn’t want to talk about him anymore.

Another favorite topic of Norman’s is the fact that Clapton was abandoned by his mother, which Norman repeatedly cites as the reason or excuse for just about every action Clapton has taken in his life. Norman has really nothing good to say about Clapton in this book, but, granted, a lot of that is Clapton’s fault. For most of his life, he wasn’t a very nice guy, at least not to women. It is just rather depressing and kind of annoying to read a book about a terrible person by someone who really doesn’t like him much. In his autobiography, Clapton is very open and reflective about the bad things he’s done in his life, yet you can also see him making strides to become a better person. Clapton writing about himself comes across more objectively than Norman’s take on him and gives a fuller, well-rounded portrait of the man. So why take Norman’s word for it, when you can get the story straight from the horse’s mouth?

If you don’t know anything about Eric Clapton, then this book will certainly give you a good overview of the general story of his life. If you are a fan of Clapton, however, and have followed his musical career, you’re likely to know just about everything Norman relates in this volume. He’s mostly synthesizing information from other biographies and prior rock journalism. In the book’s introduction, Norman says that he just found out that Jim Gordon, drummer for Derek and the Dominos, was in prison for killing his mother. I knew that thirty-odd years ago when I was in high school, because I’m an Eric Clapton fan, and I read Rolling Stone. The book also contains some dumb errors that should have been caught by a copy editor. At one point Norman confuses Duane Allman with Gregg Allman. “Greg” [sic] was neither Clapton’s “guitar blood-brother” nor did he die in a motorcycle accident (p. 286). Song titles aren’t always exact, like Phil Collins’s “Something in the Air Tonight”? These may seem like paltry complaints, but if any average-joe rock fan can point out these mistakes, then there’s no excuse for Norman getting them wrong.

For any number of reasons, you’re better off reading Clapton: The Autobiography. Though it’s far from a perfect book, you learn more about Clapton, and it’s just a more interesting read than Slowhand.

Rock and Roll, Part 2

More music history and biography
Although this topic has nothing to do with the title of this blog, every once in a while I review recent books about rock music. Back in 2018, I published a post on rock and roll autobiographies (mostly), featuring eight books on Bob Dylan, Pete Townshend, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Warren Zevon, Morrissey, and Bob Mould. Since then I’ve reviewed enough music nonfiction to fill another omnibus post recapping past reviews on the subject. Below is the latest crop of books on rock and rollers. Click on the titles below to read the full reviews.

Biographies and Autobiographies

Bobby Womack: My Story 1944–2014 by Bobby Womack and Robert Ashton (5 stars)
This may be the best rock and roll autobiography I’ve ever read. Bobby Womack lived a hard life, enduring much tragedy and hardship, and he tells his story with an unflinching honesty that is admirable and captivating. In addition to his own successful career as a soul singer and guitarist, Womack worked with a long list of rock and roll legends, many of them now Hall of Famers like himself. The stories he tells of these famous acquaintances really reveals their personalities and enlarges your understanding of each individual. Womack’s life story will sometimes make you laugh, might make you cry, and every once in a while may even give you the heebie jeebies.

Sly and the Family Stone: An Oral History by Joel Selvin (5 stars)
This gripping band biography is compiled from interviews with about forty different people who lived and/or worked with Sly and the band. Sly Stone himself, a recluse since the 1980s, did not participate. Sly was a successful radio DJ in San Francisco before he decided to form his own band and demonstrate his musical genius on albums like Stand! and There’s a Riot Goin’ On. With escalating fame, however, came escalating drug use and paranoia. This narrative quickly goes south from a success story to a horror story, with former Family Stone members telling harrowing stories of Sly’s erratic and dangerous behavior. This is definitely not a feel-good story, but it’s a riveting read.

And on Piano . . . Nicky Hopkins: The Extraordinary Life of Rock’s Greatest Session Man by Julian Dawson (4.5 stars)
Even if you’ve never heard of Nicky Hopkins, you’ve certainly heard his work. One of the greatest piano players in rock music, Hopkins played on some of the best albums of the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Kinks, the Beatles (mostly their solo records), and more. Hopkins was an official member of a few bands, most notably Quicksilver Messenger Service, but for most of his life he was a much sought-after session man who worked as a hired gun on hundreds if not thousands of recordings. This thoroughly researched book charts the roller coaster career of this humble but highly respected session man who barely achieved fame and never really achieved fortune. 

Ronnie by Ronnie Wood (4.5 stars)
Before joining the Rolling Stones, Ron Wood had already enjoyed quite a successful career in rock and roll, having previously played with The Birds, The Creation, The Jeff Beck Group, The Faces, and Rod Stewart, in addition to his own solo albums. In Ronnie, Wood charts his trajectory from blue-collar upbringing to multimillionaire superstar in charming, articulate, and humorous prose. There is plenty of interesting stuff in here about Wood’s personal life and also about what it’s like to be a Rolling Stone. Though maybe not the most candid of memoirs (as far as his drug use and love life are concerned), this is an entertaining and satisfying read and more enjoyable than Keith Richards’s Life.

The Never-Ending Present: The Story of Gordon Downie and The Tragically Hip by Michael Barclay (3.5 stars)
Though little known South of the border, The Tragically Hip is Canada’s biggest rock band, cranking out challengingly innovative rock albums since 1987. After lead singer Gordon Downie was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, the band went on a farewell tour in 2016. Their final concert was a nationally televised event, and Downie’s death inspired nationwide displays of mourning. This book provides a history of the band, but also goes off on numerous digressions. Downie is highlighted at the expense of the other band members, which is unfortunate because they’re all excellent musicians.

Hellraiser: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Drummer by Ginger Baker with Ginette Baker (3 stars)
Widely considered one of the greatest rock drummers of all time, Baker pounded the skins for Cream, Blind Faith, Ginger Baker’s Air Force, the Graham Bond Organization, and Nigerian jazzman Fela Kuti, among others. Baker may have been an excellent musician, but he and and his daughter, who coauthored this book, do not make a great writer. Hellraiser is a rapid-fire string of one-paragraph anecdotes, one after the other, with no continuity, momentum, or suspense. One learns a lot about Baker’s post-stardom life in Africa and his passion for polo. Though Baker and his daughter want you to think his notorious cantankerousness is lovable, he does not come out as likable as they wished. The best you can say about this autobiography is that it does give you a glimpse into the man’s personality, for better or worse.

Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine by Joe Hagan (3 stars)
Jann Wenner, founder and longtime editor of Rolling Stone, authorized this biography, but it is in now way flattering to him. It’s basically an extended psychological study about what a jerk he is. The most disappointing thing about the book is that there really aren’t much in the way of rock and roll stories, just a lot of Wenner and his friends doing drugs, sleeping around, and being mean to each other. This is a very well-researched and well-written work of investigative journalism, but it’s also just really depressing to read a book full of so many unlikable people.

Music History and Criticism

Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock by Steven Hyden (4 stars)
Music critic Steven Hyden celebrates all things classic rock and ponders what kind of future the genre will have now that its stars are dying out. There is also an autobiographical component here as Hyden describes his youth growing up under the influence of classic rock. This will especially appeal to readers from Wisconsin who, like Hyden and myself, grew up listening to the classic rock station WAPL.

Muscle Shoals Sound Studio: How the Swampers Changed American Music by Carla Jean Whitley (2.5 stars)
Some of the greatest recordings in the history of classic rock came out of Muscle Shoals, Alabama. This book recounts the history of one recording studio, the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, run by a group of expert session musicians known as the Swampers. Unfortunately, the author just quotes a bunch of magazine articles and doesn’t really provide any inside information. I would recommend watching the documentary film Muscle Shoals instead.

Songs and Their Stories

 

The Rolling Stones All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track by Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon (4.5 stars)

Bob Dylan All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track by Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon (4 stars)

The All the Songs series is just what it claims to be: commentary on every album and every track recorded by the artists featured, including information on the writing and recording of each song and some explanation of lyrics. The print editions are heavily illustrated coffee table books; the ebook editions are pictureless, but still very informative.

The Songs He Didn’t Write: Bob Dylan Under the Influence by Derek Barker (5 stars)
An encyclopedia of songs that Dylan has covered, in concert or recordings, up to 2008. This book provides a detailed and enlightening glimpse into Dylan’s musical influences. At first glance, this book seems like it would only appeal to the most diehard Dylanologists, but it is quite surprising how much interesting information it delivers on the history of American popular music in general.

Dylanology

 

Bob Dylan: A Spiritual Life by Scott M. Marshall (4.5 stars)
A deep dive into Dylan’s spiritual influences and the religious subject matter in his music. Marshall gives welcome attention to Dylan’s gospel period of the late ’70s to early ’80s and analyzes the interplay between Judaism and Christianity in Dylan’s life and work.

Dylan: Disc by Disc by Jon Bream (4.5 stars)
An assortment of rock critics, Dylan biographers, university professors, musicians, and DJs—arranged in pairs—debate the merits and deficiencies of each Dylan album. The selection of contributors is interesting, and every album gets equal treatment, even those that are often derided.

Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews, edited by Jonathan Cott (4 stars)
The title is pretty self-explanatory: an anthology of Dylan interviews from throughout his career.

Bob Dylan: Like a Complete Unknown by David Yaffe (3 stars)
A collection of four highbrow music-critic essays. Two are pretty enlightening; the other two not so much.