There’s no escaping The Police; they’re everywhere. Individually, members of The Police continued to tour this past fall and winter, and garnered quite a bit of social media and press coverage with their music and publishing projects. A new book is now out by Laura Shenton for Wymer Publishing, The Police; A Visual Biography.
Featuring photography, text and layout that is visually appealing, The Police; A Visual Biography is a historical treat for Police fans as it chronicles their humble beginnings up to achieving world wide recognition and creative fame.
This coffee table book includes some little known tidbits about the band and some of their song origins. It includes rare press clippings from their unknown days, encompasses their musical journey to becoming what we now know them to be, and includes a discography and member’s solo projects. During their ascension, their record sales, tour grosses and GRAMMYs surpassed even that of the Rolling Stones. The Police would make history becoming the best band of their day, with “Every Breath You Take” still being the most radio played song in American history.
The Police gained traction here in New York at CBGB’s and in the Hudson Valley as relatively unknowns in 1979, also appearing at The Chance in Poughkeepsie. The song “Roxanne” would make its debut on U.S. radio here in the Hudson Valley on WDST, Radio Woodstock, 100.1.
Within three months, The Police had two singles and an album in the U.S. Top Ten.
In a phone interview I had in October, Andy Summers spoke of The Chance fondly, recalling how grateful they all were to get the gig and to be touring America at the time. “What it signified was how we had to maintain our spirit and do a raging show despite a small audience possibly due to a snowstorm at the time.”
Although meeting and forming in the UK, New York has been lucky to have shared in The Police’s early days, because it was also here in New York City and the Hudson Valley that The Police started creating such excitement for their unique sound in America and subsequently the world.
Laura Shenton is widely known for her music profile non fiction books, including profiles on Emerson Lake and Palmer, Kate Bush and Supertramp among others.
Featuring Alan Perry Concert Photography and Bill O’Leary Timeless Concert Images, the author’s voice is evenly paced, respectful of her subject, and engaging. Her interest in writing this book comes through and a recommended book on The Police.
This particular book differs from others on The Police in how thorough and methodically dates, press clippings, memorabilia, concert posters, song origins, tours, and the creative process is described, as well as how solo projects are detailed, and music reviews, awards, nominations and the discography is presented. The author included many quotes from band members giving us a good idea of their musical journey and lets us know the favorite song they all share.
As James Adams stated in 1983 and his quote is included in this book, “The Police are a band. Long may they arrest us.”
Drake was the ultimate cult artist. He was the creator of three well-regarded and oft imitated albums which only achieved a significant mainstream impact a quarter century after his death, in large part due to the use of his tune, “Pink Moon,” in a 1999 ad campaign for Volkswagen.
Drake was the kind of artist who couldn’t exist today. He was one who chose not to perform live, or do interviews for that matter, a young college student who was given well over a year of studio time to create his brilliant but barely selling debut album. Nick’s reluctance to play the careering game wasn’t born of ego or snobbery. It was the result of an emotional illness that would deepen and ultimately swamp him over time, one that would lead to his death at age 26 due to an overdose of anti-depressants in 1974.
While not an officially sanctioned book, NICK DRAKE: The Life is the only biography written with the blessing, involvement and a mountain of material provided by his sister and estate. The author interviewed well over 200 of Drake’s friends, school mates, family and fellow musicians to chart his life and career. He also had full access to a deep archive of personal material unavailable to previous writers. This included volumes of correspondence by Nick, his family, friends and teachers – material that provides an almost day-by-day catalogue of his activities and frame of mind during his short and enigmatic life. An especially important one is the diary Nick’s father kept as they worked to help their son cope with the growing disappointments in his life and musical career, and the final chapter of his battles with the treacherous illness that would ultimately win out in the end.
Raised in a comfortable upper middleclass family, Drake’s love of music was heavily influenced by his mother, Molly. Molly would play piano, write and record her original songs that would show their influence on Nick when they were ultimately released on an album a few years back. Though a gifted athlete, Nick would be a largely uninspired student, all they way through his time at Cambridge University. He would dabble on piano and sax before settling on guitar influenced by Joan Baez, Dylan, Donovan, the bossa nova of Joao Gilberto, Brit folker John Renbourn and Peter, Paul & Mary, from whom he learned classic blues and folk tunes like “Cocaine.” His progress on the instrument was nothing short of astounding. Through constant hours of practice, he would develop his revelatory use of a variety of alternative tunings and the intricate, clean fingerpicking that still amazes and inspires to this day.
In his youth, Drake would establish a pattern of vagabonding. There were with summer hitchhiking trips through France paid for by busking on the street and one to Morocco where he actually got to meet and play for The Rolling Stones. The author actually tracks down Nick’s traveling companion for the Morocco trip who had no idea that Drake achieved any sort of fame. He then laments having thrown out a recording he made of Nick’s performance for The Stones in a purge of his belongings during a move 20 years back.
Somewhere bootleggers are tearing their hair out over this!
During his school years, Drake would also develop a love of smoking hash, something that he said “soothed” his social anxiety and helped him create. By late 1967, he would pen songs like “Day Is Done,” “Time Has Told Me,” “Saturday Sun,” “Joey,” “Magic” and “Thoughts of Mary Jane,” tunes that would define his debut disc and career.
At his first major public performance at the Roundhouse in London, he is seen by Ashley Hutchinson of Fairport Convention. The musician who would sing his praises to his producer, Joe Boyd, who would sign Nick to his Witchseason label. Boyd would exercise both great belief and personal support for Nick throughout his career. He would provide him with a monthly stipend to live and work in London and make great efforts to insure Drake received his critical due well after his death.
The author devotes a good deal of time to the making of Nick’s three wonderful albums. The debut, Five Leaves Left, would take well over a year of sessions and take its name from a message in a package of Rizla rolling papers. Robert Kirby, his Cambridge classmate who created the lush string arrangement for Drake’s song, would say that his lyrics were “more about atmosphere than meaning… something to compound a mood that the melody dictates.” His fellow guitarist Paul Wheeler would concur saying they were “more about sound and rhythm than meaning.” Kirby’s orchestral arrangements were influenced by Nick and Boyd’s love of Randy Newman and Leonard Cohen’s self-titled debuts and Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. Fun fact – the leader on the string overdubs was none other than David McCallum, the esteemed violinist father of the same named acting star of TV’s “The Man from U.N.C..L.E.”
While everyone was convinced Nick would be a star, the release of the album on July 4, 1969, would be overshadowed by news of the death of Brian Jones and high-profile albums by Blind Faith, Jethro Tull and King Crimson. Drake would turn down all opportunities for press interviews and the album, with only 1,500 printed, would receive no radio play and no foreign licensing interest. A long letter from his father when he was thinking of leaving Cambridge to concentrate on his musical career warns Nick that he comes “from a family of slow starters” and that “self-employment needs discipline.”
The author sets straight a lot of misconceptions about Nick that have grown over time. Firstly, while quiet, Drake was anything but an odd ball during his school years. He was praised for his dry sense of humor and his proto-Goth style, like that of an old Romantic poet. And Nick did actually play live, about three dozen gigs in total, including major venues like Royal Festival Hall and the London folk den Cousins. It was at the latter that he would finally quit live performing in the middle of set in August 1970. Also, many were at so-called Working Men’s clubs out of London, where he would simply be drowned out and/or totally ignored, many which he opened for another new band, Genesis. The question of his sexuality is also addressed. The summation provided by the author and the consensus of those he quotes? It is that while Nick had infatuations like that with his early girlfriend Kirstie Clegg and his interest in French singer Francoise Hardy, he was largely asexual.
For his second album, 1970’s Bryter Layter, Boyd leads Nick to more fully arranged versions of his songs, with guest appearances by folks like Fairport Convention’s guitar virtuoso Richard Thompson and The Velvet Underground’s John Cale. Cale was at Sound Techniques producing Nico’s Desert Shore album and agreed to provide overdubs to one of the album’s most gorgeous tunes, “Northern Sky.” Though there were some good reviews and his engineer John Wood still rates it his best, this record only sold about 3,000 copies. Muff Winwood, the executive in charge of promotion, called working with Drake “a hopeless task,” and that maybe “he was too stoned to be bothered.” But there are more efforts to build his career. Boyd considered teaming Drake with another of his artists, Vashti Bunyan. In July 1970 in an effort to get his songs covered by other artists, Boyd produces a demo disc where the then unknown Elton John performs four of his classic songs: “Day Is Done,” “Way to Blue,” “Saturday Sun” and “Time Has Told Me.”
Drake becomes more untethered when his champion, Joe Boyd, decides to sell Witchseason to Island Records and take a job with Warner Brothers in America. In July 1971, some of his music is finally released in the U.S. on a compilation. A promotional party at the Troubadour for the album features an appearance by a cardboard cut-out of the reclusive Drake.
Drake will return to Sound Techniques in October 1971 for two, three-hour sessions where he cuts his bare bones classic third album, the 28-minute long Pink Moon. Boyd thought its brilliant “starkness” was a rebuke to the lush production on Bryter Layter. Others found it a reflection of Drake’s increasingly isolated and depressed existence.
The final quarter of this nearly 600-page book is a tough read for anyone who has loved someone who has suffered mental illness. Much of this comes from the diary his father created than spanned the last two years of Nick’s life.
Around this time, Nick expresses a desire to quit music – to get a job at a bank or a brewery. He also makes two attempts to join the Army and has a less than weeklong stint as a trainee computer programmer. He ends up back at his parents’ house. He will begin to make trips to London or Paris and turn around and head back home. He has frustrations which make him lash out and smash his guitars, a tape recorder and furniture – something at odds with the effete image of Drake propagated before this book. He will be hospitalized, have electro-shock treatments and go on and off his medications. His friend and label mate John Martyn will spend time trying to encourage him and immortalize these vain efforts in the song, “Solid Air.” He will return to the studio one last time cutting four even starker songs including “Black Dog,” named after Churchill’s famous term for his own depression.
Unlike others, this author seems to conclude that Drake’s death was likely not an accidental overdose but a suicide, maybe an impulsive one. Sixty powerful Triptyzol tablets were found in his stomach in the autopsy after he was found dead in his childhood bedroom at his parents’ home in November 1974.
The book concludes with Nick’s critical resurrection, led by the U.S. release of Bryter Layter in 1976 and Fruit Tree, one of the first high-quality boxed set released in 1979.
Richard Morton Jack has done a great thing for Nick and the fans of his music. He has provided a deeply researched and thoughtful critique of his life and creative struggle – and how a man so emotionally challenged could create such a warm and still entrancing body of work.
The final word comes from the dust jacket and his discoverer/benefactor Joe Boyd. “This is the book we’ve been waiting for… a biography to be treasured.”
If you grew up in the past three decades paying attention to pop culture, then you know Britney Spears. She took America by storm since she was just a little girl with her raw vocal talent and knack for dancing. With her quick rise to fame came unexpected and unwanted attention: being scrutinized by the media for her clothes, her body, her virginity, and later on, her mental health.
It didn’t matter that she was successful; she shaved her head and went “rogue,” so she was “bad.” She was put under a conservatorship, a legal status where someone else is appointed to take care of personal and financial matters instead of the original person, typically reserved for the elderly or disabled: of which, she is neither. Britney Spears’ book The Woman In Me uncovers the Circus that was her life, the abuse she endured, and how she is recovering to this day.
Britney Spears revolutionized teen pop during the 1990s and early 2000s. She signed with Jive Records in 1997 at the young age of 15, and faced immediate success. …Baby One More Time and Oops!…I Did It Again are among the best-selling albums of all time.
She’s a famous artist, but she’s also a mother of two boys (Sean Preston Federline and Jayden James Federline), as well as an author, as of October 2023.
Spears, with the help of ghostwriter Sam Lansky, tells her story. She starts with her early life, hiding no tarnishes, such as her family’s struggles with mental health and her father’s alcoholism, and how both have affected her throughout her career.
Spears began taking dance lessons in her hometown of Kentwood, Louisiana, and from then, she was hooked. She later tried out for the 1990s revival of The Mickey Mouse Club, and after being rejected the first time and returning later with more experience, she was hired in December of 1992 as well as Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, Ryan Gosling, and Keri Russell. After the termination of The Mickey Mouse Club, she realized she needed to pursue her true passion: music.
After a few rejections, Jive Records signed Spears and ordered a full album, which we know today as the infamous …Baby One More Time.
With so much success so fast, Spears realized that her life would never be the same. She was no longer a 15 year old girl in Louisiana: she was a national super star. And with all that attention came a lot of unwanted attention, too.
Male hosts, some who could be classified as Womanizers, constantly asked about her breasts, her virginity, and her “risqué” clothing. She noted that many of her male peers simply weren’t asked these questions. In fact, the sexism in the industry is very easily distinguished from her recollection of her time dating Justin Timberlake.
Their relationship was very serious very fast, which unfortunately led to many issues. Timberlake allegedly cheated on Spears with numerous women, but that’s not how he told the story. Through his music videos, he alluded to Britney Spears cheating on him, and how it hurt him so much– and everyone believed it, because why wouldn’t they?
What didn’t make it into the press was the abortion she underwent at Timberlake’s request, and the pain and heartache it caused her. Britney Spears recounts her loneliness at this time and how, no matter what, she felt her story would be overshadowed by Timberlake’s.
She fell into a deep depression, feeling as if the world was against her, and no matter what she did, it was wrong. She later married Kevin Federline, with whom she had their children, and ultimately divorced in 2007. During a long and difficult custody battle, Spears was often photographed at her worst: she lost her children, lost her voice, and lost any support system she had (if there even was one to begin with). The most infamous photos from this time are when she shaved her head, and proceeded to smash a car window with an umbrella. This image tarnished her reputation, changing her from being a pop star to a Crazy woman. She was put under a conservatorship for her well-being, but what she really needed was support and real, genuine help.
After 13 years of having her life controlled at the hands of her Toxic father, being told what to eat, when to eat, when to go to the bathroom, when to perform, and even being denied the removal of her IUD, she had enough when her father allegedly hurt one of her sons. She started searching for a good lawyer, and a court date was eventually set.
In November of 2021, the conservatorship was removed, and Britney was free. After years of other people telling her story– the press, her Criminal father, and numerous documentaries– she decided it was time to tell hers.
“Sometimes I talk trash on Instagram. People don’t know why I have such anger toward my parents. But I think if they were in my shoes, they would understand.”
Britney Spears’ “The Woman In Me,” pg. 171
Britney does not deny that the trauma she endured made her Stronger, and she makes it clear that she would not be the woman she is today if it weren’t for that trauma. But she also makes it clear that she, or any woman for that matter, shouldn’t have to be that strong in the first place, because no one should go through what she did.
Being a religious woman herself, one would think that she’d be preaching “forgiveness sets you free,” but it’s the opposite.
In our patriarchal society, women are indirectly, and sometimes directly, told to not express anger. It’s not feminine, it’s not pretty, so don’t do it. But Britney Spears has a lot of rage because of her past, and she doesn’t hide it, because women shouldn’t have to.
“In that moment, I made peace with my family– by which I mean that I realized I never wanted to see them again, and I was at peace with that.”
Britney Spears’ “The Woman In Me,” pg. 251
While there were some flaws, such as a vague description of some vital points in her career (such as the sexualization of her from such a young age and how that affected her later on, and her Instagram posts), one thing that this book really gets right is peace.
While she says that reaching peace is important, she actually defines her version of peace. “Peace,” to Britney, is not forgiving her family for what they did to her, or even keeping them in her life. Peace is being alone, and being at peace knowing that you are okay alone. So no, she does not forgive them– but she’s still free.
The idea that you have to forgive someone who traumatized you is absolutely ludicrous: and that’s really the takeaway from Britney’s book. Sometimes it’s okay to be angry, and it’s okay to feel that. Don’t let it destroy you, but remember that you don’t owe anyone anything.
Harold Bronson is a true rock-n-roll Zelig. He’s an everywhere man who began his career as a teenage rock journalist before rising to become co-founder of Rhino Records, the revered label that has put decades of often overlooked and unappreciated music back into circulation to the delight of both lifelong fans and new generations of music lovers.
Before he co-founded America’s leading re-issue label, Bronson was just another Southern California kid who was mad about music. He channeled his passion and discerning ear into writing about music, first for the UCLA Daily Bruin then with Rolling Stone, Hit Parader, Melody Maker and many other magazines. After interviewing many of the greats, he helped co-found, with Richard Foos, Rhino Records from the back of Foos’ record store. The label was created to release novelty records like those of Dr. Demento and Wild Man Fischer. But, most importantly, it would go on to re-issue classic sounds and many unheard gems from the catalogs of artists who were critically undervalued at the time like Arthur Lee & Love and The Monkees.
Bronson’s book is very much a diary, one rendered with day-by-day entries. It begins in the Summer of Love with him journalizing his critical take on, and the price paid for, albums like Procol Harum’s Shine on Brightly and The Beatles’ White Album. There’s also his mini-reviews of the many concerts he attended by artists like Jimi Hendrix, Soft Machine and The Vanilla Fudge. Soon, Bronson is getting his first paid work – an interview for Entertainment World with the Bee Gees’ Maurice Gibb. Bronson hauls his massive reel-to-reel tape recorder to the interview, one where Gibb delights in telling him a stream of lies such as that he played and sang on The Beatles’ Abbey Road. In short order, Bronson is publishing features with artist like Cat Stevens (he looks like a “gypsy carnival worker”), Van Dyke Parks (who shows him “the future” from his office at Warner Brothers – the first fiber optic cable) and famed British session pianist Nicky Hopkins (who mistakes Jeff Beck for Mick Jagger at his first Rolling Stones’ meeting and who badmouths The Kinks for never paying him for his session work with them). There are also notables like comedian George Carlin and The Doors’ manager Danny Sugerman who he will interview repeatedly and forge lifelong friendships with.
Bronson’s life kicks into high gear in 1974, when he takes a job managing the Rhino Records store in L.A. Soon, Bronson and Foos will launch their label with novelty records by artists like Wild Man Fischer (the certifiably insane street singer discovered by Frank Zappa), The Temple City Kazoo Orchestra (with whom he makes appearances on national TV shows) and a reissue of tracks by comedian Alan Sherman of Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda fame. But Bronson and Rhino’s true worth would come with their lovingly crafted re-issues like the 1995 box set, Love Story (1966 – 1972). Bronson would have a long history with Arthur Lee, the band’s mercurial leader, a man he calls “an arrogant Muhammad Ali.”
https://youtu.be/ML1OS_1zuHY?si=ZJSH-4a4HB2Mjyya
Bronson’s book is chockful of humorous meetings with the likes of Iggy Pop (who asks for money to get wine and 10 aspirin at tackle a hangover), ELO’s Jeff Lynne (who confesses he can only write melodies between 10 am and noon) and Howard Kaylan (who recalls snorting coke off Abe Lincoln’s desk during a visit to the Nixon White House with his band, The Turtles). Also revealed is how Richard Delvy, a former surf musician/music entrepreneur, won the rights to “Wipeout” in a poker game.
Rhino Records would get much bigger until Bronson left the company in October 2001. Before that, there would be many acquisitions and partnerships that would find Bronson in the midst of many bigger things, such as bringing The Monkees TV show to a new generation via MTV and ultimately managing their careers, going into business with one his idols, Frank Zappa, on the Beat the Boots project and more. There’s even a cameo by the odious MAGA architect, Steve Bannon, during his days as a venture capitalist.
Credit should go to longtime music journalist Ira Robbins who is the driving force behind Trouser Press Books, the publisher of this and other fine releases reviewed here at NYSMusic. If you like Bronson’s LA-centric rock time trip, be sure to check out another Trouser Press book, Rock’s In My Head. This is the memoir of Art Fein chronicling his six decades in the California music scene, drawn from over 10,000 page of diaries he kept. For 20 years, he was the host of Art Fein’s Poker Party, a decidedly offbeat, ultra-low budget public affairs spectacular where the cream of music – from Phil Spector and Tom Waits to Joe Strummer and the Stray Cats – let down their guard over sometimes friendly, sometimes fierce games of cards.
In 1980, Brooke Wentz landed her dream volunteer job as host of WKCR-FM’s late night radio show, “Transfigured Night.” Billed as an “exploration into the world of new music,” this Columbia University broadcast allowed the then-student free reign to conduct candid interviews with dozens of avant-garde pioneers in free jazz, no wave and electronic and world music before they emerge as internationally-renowned artists.
Thanks to the downtime afforded this busy music executive due to the Covid lockdown, these long unheard interviews are now contained in a fascinating new book: Transfigured New York: Interviews with Experimental Artists and Musicians, 1980-1990 (Columbia University Press). Wentz’ latest writing is a virtual and very vivid time capsule of musical and artistic creation from 1980-1990 – a juncture when New York’s uptown and downtown converged to birth bold new sounds and a new generation of sonic visionaries.
The musicians and artists tell their stories and share their thoughts about the creative process, capturing the ambition and energy that animated their work against all odds. Legends in the making like Bill Frisell, Philip Glass, John Lurie, Laurie Anderson and Glenn Branca convey what it was like to be a struggling artist in 1980s New York, a time when the city was alive with possibilities and affordable for artists. Others who were well known at the time, including John Cage, La Monte Young and Ravi Shankar, advocate for their distinctive ideas about art and open up about their creative lives.
Transfigured New York contains an astonishing range of interviews covering the waterfront of creative musical genres – all rescued from dusty cassettes and reel-to-reel tapes of interviews that were only heard once, at their initial airings. Morton Subotnick, Joan Tower, Steve Reich, Joan La Barbara, Vernon Reid of Living Colour, Arthur Russell, Eric Bogosian, Bill T. Jones and many more are included. The scene is set with a forward written by someone who was in the thick of the experimental action, former Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo. These interviews are also accompanied by a collection of historic black & white photos, captured by renowned photographers of the era. This book is a one-of-a-kind account of one of the most exhilarating and inventive periods for art and culture in New York City’s history.
Wentz is launching the book at a November 13 event at the home of the New York avant-garde music scene, Roulette (info here) The event will include conversations with many of the artists profiled including Peter Gordon, Zeena Parkins, Brandon Ross, Tim Berne and Ikue Mori. Several, including Don Byron, Elliot Sharp and Shelley Hirsch, are also scheduled to perform.
Wentz is a Billboard Music Award–winning music producer, music supervisor and founder of Seven Seas Music and The Rights Workshop. With Seven Seas, Wentz is a key supplier of world music from 145 countries for licensing in prestige film and television productions including Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. The Rights Workshop has handled music supervision for films including Melancholia and Bill Cunningham New York. Wentz is a leading expert on music copyrights and former ESPN music director. Her other books include Hey! That’s My Music: Music Supervision, Licensing, and Content Acquisition (2007) and Music Rights Unveiled: A Filmmaker’s Guide to Music Rights and Licensing (2017).
The Singers Talk is a first-of-its-king compendium of lengthy conversations conducted with dozens of vocal greats by Jason Thomas Gordon, the lead singer and drummer of buzzworthy LA-based rockers, Kingsize. Interestingly, Gordon is also the grandson of Danny Thomas, the early television sitcom pioneer who founded St. Jude’s, the world’s foremost hospital for child cancer patients, in 1962. All proceeds from the sale of this book will go to the hospital through its Music Gives to St. Jude Kids, a campaign created by the author.
The lengthy subtitle to Thomas’s book tells all – The Greatest Singers of Our Times Discuss The One Thing They’re Never Asked About – The Voices. Unlike guitarists, bassists and keyboardist who get to share their thoughts on their instruments through a plethora of specialty magazines and websites, how our favorite singers cultivate their unique sounds, and what they do to maintain them during high stakes recording sessions, grueling tours and over decades-long careers, is often a mystery. Interestingly, The Singers Talk also features exclusive interviews about many celebrated voices no longer with us. These include Steven Van Zandt on Little Richard, Butch Vig on Kurt Cobain, Clive Davis on Whitney Houston, Nile Rodgers on David Bowie, Wendy Melvoin on Prince and Jimmy Iovine on Tom Petty.
Gordon’s conversations with and about the vocal greats are steered by 20 questions he poses to each. These include where and when they began singing, their earliest influences and dream duet partners (living or dead), five favorite singers and several technical questions like how they warm up (if at all) and keep their voices intact on the road. Naturally, they also reveal the stories behind some of their most famous performances on record.
The Go-Gos’s Belinda Carlisle shares that it was Julie Andrews in the film Mary Poppins who inspired her to sing and that she never takes to the stage with consuming two Aleve tablets to fight inflammation that can compromise her performance. If Emmy Lou Harris’ early dreams came through, she would be a singing actress in musicals like West Side Story. The country rock great credits Gram Parsons and his amazing story songs to helping her find her voice. The original leather rocker girl, Joan Jett, was also all about movie musicals in her youth, especially Liza Minnelli in Cabaret. This was before she would fall in love with rock via Paul Rodgers’ singing in Free’s “All Right Now” and T. Rex’s “Bang A Gong.” This trio is representative of many singers interviewed here who say they keep their voices is shape while on the road by avoiding overly air-conditioned rooms and by traveling with one or more humidifiers! And while Chrissie Hynde also ascribes to the above road Rx, she was turned on to singing by the original punk, Iggy Pop. She says, ironically I trust, his success demonstrated that there was a space on the hit parade for “ugly Midwestern voices like ours.”
Producer Butch Vig shares that Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain hated to double-track his voice, claiming “it was fake.” The mercurial musician would also only be good for a couple of takes before he blew out his voice. But Vig did get Cobain to double-track by using a bit of psychology – by telling Beatlefile Kurt that his idol, John Lennon, did it on almost every record. The Doors’ Robbie Krieger credits some of Jim Morrison’s vocal punch to the size of his throat commenting: “Have you ever looked at the size of his neck? It’s as big as Pavarotti’s!” He also sets a long-discussed rumor straight saying that his singer’s spine-chilling performance on “The End” was indeed recorded while Morrison on L.S.D. Ozzy Osborne also brings up the legendary Italian opera star saying he always eats as apple before going on stage, just like Pavarotti himself did (it helps lubricated the voice according to Osborne). The Who’s Roger Daltrey feels he found his voice through the band’s songs, most notably, in the studio and live performances of the rock opera, Tommy. And rock’s most iconic scream, the one in “Won’t Get Fooled Again?” Does it obscure his singing talent? “It drives me nuts,” he says. “I’m getting to the age where it’s my least favorite song to sing.”
The recently-departed jazz great Tony Bennett claimed it takes seven years of steady work to learn how to sing properly and that his own influencers are not singers but great jazz sax players and pianists. Producer Nile Rodgers ascribes the success of David Bowie to his perfectionist preparation and thespian skills. Like his career and discography, his voice was also about constant change. Bowie would develop wholly new styles and approaches for the “characters” he took on in his songs. And the secret to Public Enemy’s Chuck D’s success? It’s that he wanted to be – and communicates very much like – a sports play-by-play announcer. “Rap carries the same rhythms as sportscasters like Marv Albert,” adds D. His technique has been helped by his recent study of Pilates and five-years of core training.
“Singing is so much more than hitting the right note,” Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs. “It’s about connecting with the audience, connecting with something divine, connecting to your most primitive and deepest intuition, and to your nature as a human on this planet.” Adds Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, mid-interview, “This is the most geeked out I’ve ever talked about my voice!”
For those looking to dive deep into the darkness that is inherent in the Goth scene, “The Art Of Darkness: The History Of Goth” was released on May 16th (Manchester University Press). Author John Robb takes an in-depth look at all that makes up the Goth music scene – the music, the culture, and the history.
A book that took eight years to be published, “The Art of Darkness: The History of Goth” has received rave reviews across Europe, the nexus for Goth. The Irish Independent said of the tome, “Gloriously knowledgeable…stuffed with stories about the bands who changed your life as a teenager.”
John Robb is a veteran of the global alternative music scene, coining the term “Britpop” in the 1990s, was the first UK writer to interview Nirvana back in 1989, and has written on popular music for The Times, The Guardian, NME, and founded the UK music website, Louder Than War. John has previously written the best-selling books “Punk Rock: An Oral History” and “The North Will Rise Again: Manchester Music City 1976-1996”.
John Robb: Photo by John Middleham
This 546 page book takes the reader into a Goth club, before expanding to take a look at the wider culture and history of the times. Examining the subculture that rose in underground UK clubs, spread thrrough word of mouth at pubs or via posters and handbills, the early scene included hippies, scenesters, dominatrices, and gives a breakdown of what went down in the club scene.
Taking a look at the social conditions at the time that led to the rise of Goth in the post-punk period, Robb finds history influencing art, shifting gears as he looks upon the fall of Rome, folk tales from Europe, the occult, Gothic architecture and more to tie present-day Goth to these continental roots.
Examined is the Goth connection to the punk club scene and how it shifted from punk to goth over time, plus that which makes up various goth sub-groups: mall, traditional, romantic, vampire, etc… all the way to Glam Rock and how Goth arrives at present day, and even how certain genres of music (heavy metal, indie) correlate to the Goth culture.
The book is built mostly around the 80s post-punk Goth period and features interviews with Andrew Eldritch, Killing Joke, Bauhaus, The Cult, The Banshees, The Damned, Einstürzende Neubauten, Johnny Marr, Trent Reznor, Adam Ant, Laibach, The Cure, Nick Cave and many others.
An enjoyable read, one of the biggest takeaways, especially for the uninitiated, are the origins of Goth in the club scene of the 1960s, and the evolution of the beatnik/mod era through punk and post-punk, with goth borrowing as it arose during the time period.
Order a copy of the definitive deep-dive into Goth here!
Ed. note: Thanks to Lola for her insight into goth culture.
From the coffeehouses of Greenwich Village to the stage at Woodstock, folksingers were a powerful force shaping the culture and attitudes of the 1960s. Marrying music and politics, tradition and innovation, romance and righteousness, these were singular tunesmiths of the most literate and informed order – a coterie of chordal preachers who put a mirror to the political upheavals and spiritual awakenings of this halcyon era. Richie Havens, Peter, Paul & Mary, John Sebastian, Phil Ochs, Roger McGuinn, Melanie, Janis Ian, Leonard Cohen, Peter Tork and later arrivals, like The Roches and Suzanne Vega, all cut their teeth and catapulted to stardom from a handful of clubs in the narrow streets of NYC’s West Village.
The life and times of 19 of the most impactful artists who emerged from New York City’s folk scene are profiled in The Bleecker Street Tapes (Trouser Press), the latest from veteran music journalist Bruce Pollock.
As stated in the introduction, Pollock was an eyewitness who became a chronicler of many of the most important names in folk in writings for outlets like The New York Post and Entertainment Weekly. Pollock lived in four apartments in Greenwich Village from 1966 – 1975 and had been frequented clubs like the legendary Gaslight nightly since the early 1960s.
Pollock’s book is interesting because of the timing of the interviews. Most of the quotes in these profiles come from the mid ‘70s – mid ‘80s when the commercial fervor for folk was waning. In many, it shows artists in reduced financial and professional circumstances stubbornly plugging away before modest cult audiences. Many are pondering the failures of the Age of Aquarius and its idealism as American approaches the conservative swing to the Reagan era.
Pollock’s begins with Dave Von Ronk, the bearish man who ruled the roost at the Gaslight Café’s open mics, an early champion and inspiration for Dylan and many who came after.
Von Ronk is captured heading to a scarcely attended club gig in 1982. He reflects on his “few good earning years” and how he always seemed “on the brink” of something bigger. He tells how he passed up the opportunity to be the “Paul” in the folk mega group, Peter, Paul & Mary (that went to Noel Stookey, a Village comedian whose act ended with him imitating a toilet flushing!), and of his failed audition for Dylan’s manager-to-be Albert Grossman. This was after a winter hitchhike to his club in Chicago, something borrowed for the Coen Brothers’ wonderful folk music film, Inside Llewelyn Davis.
In his interview with Phil Ochs, we learn that his decision to become a songwriter came while in jail for vagrancy in Florida. Ochs’ political powered anthems were an outgrowth of his first desired career – journalism. Phil was writing about Vietnam in 1962, way before any songwriter was penning war protest songs. And, contrary to popular belief, he shares that he didn’t think less of his longtime rival Bob Dylan’s decision to stop writing about politics and social causes. He also reveals, perhaps in jest, that his favorite cover of one of his songs was former beauty queen and anti-gay activist Anita Bryant’s of “Power & Glory.”
One of the more interesting profiles, one that truly captures the low-rent, pre-Gentrification splendor of the era, is that of Tuli Kupferberg of the infamous The Fugs. Tuli was in his mid-40s and divorced when he teamed with writer Ed Sanders to marry rock music, poetry and racy lyrics in a group named after a Norman Mailer term for intercourse. Gentrification be damned, as Tuli relates renting a six-room apartment of Avenue D for $12 a month in 1965. It was all about fun, poetry, revolutionary theatre and orgies. “We weren’t worried about writing for the ages,” he declares.
Buffy St. Marie relates how her writing of classics like “Universal Soldier” was the product of “channeling words and music that come at once, like a radio station.” The most romantic folk star of the Gaslight era, Eric Andersen, believes his songs survived because he didn’t get too political. Don McLean tells of the impact of Pete Seeger on his work and personal life, namely his adventures as a part of the original crew of Seeger’s ecological boat, The Clearwater, in 1969. Also, how his mega-hit, “American Pie,” ruined his career by branding him a “sellout” and how the fortunes from it bought him a Mercedes Benz and not a Chevy he would drive to the levy. Both Loudon Wainwright III and Leonard Cohen reveal they turned to songwriting because it was easier than writing novels.
Pollock calls folkie-turned-Monkee Peter Tork “a rock-n-roll Maynard G. Krebs.” He captures Tork in 1981 when he had lost all his Monkees’ money but is content in his move back to the East Coast and playing gigs that provide him and his daughter with “three hots and a cot.” His 1982 interview with Roger McGuinn provides a pocket history of folk and country rock, two genres birthed by his band, The Byrds. McGuinn also reveals how he was the catalyst for Beatle George’s interest in both Ravi Shankar and Eastern Religion.
The most interesting and lengthiest profile is that of Lovin’ Spoonful singer/songwriter John Sebastian.
Unlike anyone else here, aside from his early bandmate/friend Maria Muldaur, Sebastian was born and raised in Greenwich Village. He was raised on Bank Street in a family headed by a renowned classic harmonica virtuoso father who would have friends like Woody Guthrie and Burl Ives drop by. Sebastian traces his woodshedding days, playing as a teenager with Lightnin’ Hopkins, doing sessions with Bob Dylan and Tom Rush, his time in the Even Dozen Jug Band before forming the Lovin’ Spoonful. Their lengthy residency at The Night Owl Café was the event that ushered in a bit of rock raucous to the high-minded acoustic scene.
Sebastian recounts the Spoonful’s run of huge hits and their eventually breakup in the wake of a drug bust, the fits and starts of his solo career and disillusionment with the business. Sebastian would move to L.A. and live in a tent for two years before remarrying, having a son and moving into, then flipping, a couple of houses. “I would make as much from real estate as songs in the early ‘70s,” he says. Of course, there’s talk of his unscheduled performance at Woodstock, something done with a borrowed guitar and on a “triple acid trip,” and how it both helped and hurt his career. Some other interesting bits – a cameo by the real-life Frank Serpico of movie fame who would revive drug O.D.s among the scene . There’s also discussion of the invitation to join Crosby, Stills & Nash as their drummer in the early days when they were getting their act together out at Sebastian’s place in Sag Harbor.
Sebastian credits some of his longevity to seeing his dad hustle a career in the not so lucrative world of classical music. “He wasn’t afraid to get his tux dirty,” quips Sebastian. Shortly before this 1982 interview, Sebastian would find himself back on top with a number one hit he wrote on order and almost forget. It was the theme to the TV series, “Welcome Back Kotter.” For the past few decades, he’s been living a happy and unironic life in Woodstock.
Pollock’s book concludes with a playlist featuring the works of 70 artists who influenced or emerged from Greenwich Village’s folk scene.
For some fans, The Allman Brothers 1971 live double-disc, At Fillmore East, was the pinnacle of the band’s career and artistry. It was the culmination of years of relentless touring, a door-to-door musical missionary work that sold fans on bandleader Duane Allman’s unique fusion of blues, rock, big band styled melodic harmony and extended jazzy improvisation into a form that, more than any other, gave birth to the still-thriving jam band idiom. While At Fillmore East remains one of rock’s most revered live albums, it was another crafted after Duane’s death, 1973’s Brothers and Sisters, which was their commercial highpoint.
With over seven million copies sold, Brothers and Sisters was their best-selling album. It was also the one that generated a level of fame that would find them swaying a Presidential election, headlining the world’s largest rock festival, ushering in the commercial juggernaut of Southern Rock and, yes, even becoming the subject of a steady stream of Hollywood tabloid fodder.
In 2015, Paul penned the definitive title on the band, the New York Times best-selling oral history, One Way Out: The Inside History of The Allman Brothers Band. He is also co-author of another comprehensive biography of an American blues master, Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan.
To set the scene for this latter chapter of the band, Paul begins with a compact, pre-fame history of each of the original Allman Brothers players. There is Duane and Gregg’s early days as the Allman Joys and the underrated Hourglass, Duane’s time as a session musician and in Derek and the Dominoes and guitarist Dickey Betts’s experience pioneering dual lead and melody in the Second Coming alongside Larry “Rhino” Reinhardt. His description of Betts as “Zen Charles Bronson” is worth the cover price of the book alone. The preamble takes us up to their breakthrough days after At Fillmore East, when all should have been well but really wasn’t. The entire band, minus drummer Butch Trucks, were addicted to heroin. Duane would die in a motorcycle crash a couple of months after its release; bassist Berry Oakley would be dead by the same cause a year later.
Paul’s book captures the Allmans at a time of uncertainty — of rebuilding a band and a shifting in their creative power balance. The addition of young Chuck Leavell on keys and Lamar Williams on bass would help usher in a new style, in studio and on the stage. Williams would bring more of a solid groove to the rhythm section, one propelled with a pick made from a Clorox bottle by the seasoned bassist (my favorite bit of weird trivia in the book). Twenty-one-year-old Leavell would add a depth of harmony, honky tonk swing and a new, virtuoso lead voice to complement the Allman’s new, one guitar lineup.
That one guitarist, Dickey Betts, would emerge from Duane’s shadow to be the leader of the band during Brothers and Sisters. He would pen four of the six originals on the disc, including “Ramblin’ Man,” the Allman Brothers’ first and only Top Ten hit. The tune would feature one of late bassist Berry Oakley’s final contributions and harmony guitar by Les Dudek. The author also shares how Betts, unhappy with the tempo, asked for the song to be speedup, then changed his mind. In a mix up, the speed up version was released, with Betts’s voice in a higher than wanted range, infuriating the mercurial guitarist. This tune ushered in an old school country feel to the Allmans’ sound and even spurred a mighty accolade from Bob Dylan who called it “one of the best songs ever written.” Guitarist Dudek would also be featured on another Betts’ standout from the album, “Jessica,” a tune the author adds was written as an exercise inspired by the work of two-fingered jazz great Django Reinhardt.
One reason Betts assumed leadership was Gregg Allman’s dividing his time between recording Brothers and Sisters and his first solo disc, Laid Back. Here, Paul delves into Gregg’s love of Laurel County folksingers, his own desire to be viewed a part of the creative community of his onetime roommate in L.A., Jackson Browne.
Paul’s book provides a balanced perspective on Phil Walden, the man who served as both manager and record company for the band through his Capricorn Records. Walden would have an up then way down history with the band and would, via their success, build an empire largely around Southern rockers like The Marshall Tucker Band, Charlie Daniels and others. There are some colorful descriptions of Walden’s annual Capricorn Picnic and Summer Games, which drew strange bedfellows like Andy Warhol and boxing promoter Don King to rub shoulder with the rowdy Southern rockers.
Author Alan Paul – photo by George Lange
One of the more interesting chapters is how the Allman Brothers help revive the Presidential campaign of Jimmy Carter, something covered in great detail in the wonderful 2020 documentary “Jimmy Carter: Rock and Roll President.” Paul also spends a great deal of time exploring the history of The Allman Brothers’ on-going touring partnership with the Grateful Dead, something culminating with Summer Jam at Watkins Glen, the 1973 festival which attracted a world record 650,000 attendees. For the gossip minded, there’s a detailed look at the star-crossed union of Gregg and Cher, a relationship which, like the band itself, was severely compromised by Allman’s addictions. Another factor compromising the band was guitarist Betts’ dependence of cocaine and alcohol, something which made his stage performances, and the bands, more unpredictable as time passed. By 2000, Betts would be out of the band for good and The Allman Brothers would never play “Ramblin’ Man” again.
Like his earlier book on the Allmans, Paul’s latest is an honest and very in-depth assessment of the most commercially vital era of the band. In creating it, Paul had access to hundreds of hours of never-before-heard interviews with the band and its confidants, including Dickey Betts and Gregg Allman, from ABB archivist Kirk West.
Paul will be supporting the launch of the book with a variety of events around the country featuring a reading, Q&A and performance by his band, Friend of the Brothers. Paul ensemble will feature former members of Dickey Betts’ Great Southern, Jaimoe’s Jassz Band and the Phil Lesh Band and special guests including Duane Betts. The lineup includes a July 30 events at New York’s City Winery and August 4 and 5 at Daryl’s House in Pawling, New York.
In his new book, Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins, author Aidan Levy has created a work nearly as sprawling and monumental as the seven-decades of sounds crafted by a man widely considered “jazz’s greatest living improviser.”
Levy devoted seven years to the task of capturing Rollins – the musician, the myth, the civil rights activist, environmentalist and wandering spiritualist – in a whopping 750 very readable pages. The book is based on more than 200 interviews with Rollins, his family members, friends and collaborators, as well as the artist’s personal archive of letters, journals, photos and press clippings accrued over a career in which he has taken a few notable sabbaticals and sharp stylistic turns. It pretty much traces every recording session and gig that the Saxophone Colossus participated in. The depth of Levy’s astounding research is furthered by the more than 400 pages of footnotes available only online (including my story for NYSMusic on his legendary concert at Opus 40 in Saugerties).
I’m a pretty fast reader but I spent close to three months with Levy’s book. It was devoted to toggling between deep reading and deeper listening to the many corners of Rollins’ 60 solo and live albums, and the multitude of classics on which he guested with Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Clifford Brown and the like.
Rollins was a child of the Harlem Renaissance. Inspired by his Sugar Hill neighbor, tenor great Louis Jordan, he picked up the sax at 8 and landed, beginning as a teenager, on the bandstand and in the recording studio with greats like Bud Powell, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie. His youthful exposure to the Calypso music of his familial roots in the West Indies and love of classic Hollywood movies would bear fruit later in his career in respective classics like “St. Thomas” and “I’m An Old Cowhand.” With drawn-on moustaches, he and his original band formed while attending Franklin High, the Counts of Bop featuring Art Taylor, Walter Bishop, Jackie McLean and Kenny Drew, would head to Minton’s or the phalanx of jazz clubs on 52nd St to watch and hopefully be invited to sit-in with idols like Coleman Hawkins.
Sonny Rollins with Don Cherry and Henry Grimes at the Stockholm Concert Hall, January 17, 1963. Not pictured: Billy Higgins. Ove Alström. Courtesy of The Centre for Swedish Folk Music and Jazz Research and Inger Stjerna
Sonny’s passion for civil rights and justice was shaped by two early events. The first was his military-lifer father’s court martial and jailing for the crime of “teaching a white woman to dance” at an officer’s party he was managing, an event that made national headlines. The second was his own experiences in the criminal justice system. This latter was the result of his and his musician pals’ heroin addictions, something plied in a Harlem park they called “Goof Square.” Rollins would do two stretches on Riker’s Island for pickpocketing and a gun charge. It was during a stint at that jail in 1954, while playing in the Protestant chapel band, that Rollins penned three of his much-covered classics, “Airegin,” “Doxy” and “Oleo.”
In 1955, Rollins turns his life around by starting to kick junk after a stay in Lexington, the famous prison/rehab facility, and a move to Chicago and legendary collaboration with the Max Roach/Clifford Jordan. He would stay clean working day jobs as a porter, door-to-door salesman and janitor in Chicago. It’s also the city where he would meet his second wife and manager Lucille.
In 1956, Rollins begins what may be one of the most critically acclaimed and productive runs in jazz history, waxing ten astounding classic albums, six as leader including his twin masterworks, “Tenor Madness” and “Saxophone Colossus.” He would conjure nine additional solo classics in 1957 and 1958 including “Way Out West,” “Newk’s Time” and “Freedom Suite.”
For these and the dozens of albums that followed, Levy gives a blow-by-blow on the sessions. He details the careful selection of sidemen and the sometimes dozen-plus takes Rollins would record before hitting on something that met, maybe, his insanely perfectionist standards.
While by this time he was finally being accorded the acclaim he deserved, the revelation in Levy’s book is how savagely he was treated by critics like Leonard Feather in earlier solo discs and in sessions with Miles Davis and others.
A great deal of the myth around Sonny Rollins has been predicated on his sabbaticals from the world of music, ones taken because he didn’t think he was “good enough.” The most legendary was the one from 1959 – 1961 when Rollins would walk from the apartment he shared with Lucille on Grand Street to the Williamsburg Bridge, where he would play for 15 hours – day and night – to the skyscrapers and ships passing in the harbor below. This sabbatical, and another in India in 1968, weren’t only about music. During these times, Rollins explored various religions like Rosicrucianism, anthropology and sociology. He also became deeply committed to nutrition and fitness, practicing Hatha Yoga, juicing and vegetarian diets and weight lifeting. Later on, Rollins would travel the world with a suitcase full of dumbbells, something that was impossible for any of his bandmates to lift. Rollins’ devotion to fitness even earned him a place on JFK’s Fitness Committee.
Great light is shed on Rollins’ methodology and inner thoughts, and those of his Swife/manager Lucille, in the many diaries and letters Levy was granted access too. Sonny seemed to forever be trying to commit his practice methodology, mixed with life and spiritual lessons, in a never-finished book he sometimes titled “Saxophone Energy & Health.”
A scourge that returned repeatedly to hamper Rollins’ playing and career were his dental problems, which made playing his marathon live sets nearly impossible. On many nights, he just played through the pain, creating a brand of improvisatory ecstasy that he may never have felt was properly captured on disc.
Sonny Rollins on the Williamsburg Bridge, October 7, 1961. Atsuhiko Kawabata. Courtesy of Hanako Kawabata
Another thing that is evident in Levy’s book is Rollins never-ending quest for the right group of musicians. Sonny would fire folks in the middle of sets, actually firing his whole band, one by one, during the opening night of a run at the Village Vanguard. It wasn’t personal; he was always looking for the right mix, and players who were fired, would often be asked to return.
Levy devotes a great deal of time to Sonny’s classic eras like his return in 1961 in a quartet, donning a Mohawk haircut, with guitarist Jim Hall, a configuration which yielded albums like “The Bridge.” Levy also discusses Sonny’s writing and recording of the soundtrack to the classic British film, “Alfie.”
As someone who has seen Sonny live numerous times and listened to a lot of his discography, I, like many, kind of brushed aside Rollins’ so-called fusion period of 1970s. Levy’s book made me come to appreciate a lot of the great work on these later albums, the Herbie Hancock Headhunters-inspired “Nucleus” and “Next Album.” The author also sheds light on Rollins’ guesting with The Rolling Stones on “Tattoo You.” He didn’t know who they were and didn’t really want to be a part but Lucille insisted, knowing it would heighten his profile with younger music fans. He made the overdub session, waxing ballsy one-take solos on tracks including “Waiting On A Friend” and the blazing jam “Slave.” But when they came with a cool million in hand asking him to join them on the road, Sonny said “nyet” because rock was “below jazz.”
Levy takes us up to the present with Sonny’s story. In the beginning on the 2000s, he sees many of his contemporary and collaborators – Miles, Monk, Dizzy, etc. – slip the mortal coil. We hear all about the legendary gig at Opus 40 where he breaks a heel jumping off the stone monument stage then continues to finish the concert, drama immortalized in the “Saxophone Colossus” documentary. I had the pleasure of seeing Sonny on his next gig on a Hudson River cruise boat, where he played a steaming, three-hour set seated in a lounge chair with his wounded foot elevated. It was one of the top three gigs of my lifetime. I was also lucky enough to catch another gig detailed in the book, Sonny’s 80th Birthday show at the Beacon Theater. Here he reunited with past collaborators like Jim Hall and Roy Haynes and played, for the first-time on stage, with Ornette Coleman.
Ahh, the interesting sidebars and detours. While not central to the story, Levy shares reams of gee-whiz history/trivia. In a discussion of Rollins’ island-inspired classics, he shares how Nation of Islam leader Lewis Farrakhan and novelist Maya Angelou first gain notoriety. It was as calypso singers, The Charmer and Miss Calypso respectfully. We hear how Dave Brubeck’s sax man Paul Desmond turns Sonny on the wonders of Pepto-Bismol and of the multi-faceted life of Babs Gonzales. Babs was a vocalist/poet/author/promoter/proto-hipster and global playboy with whom Sonny made his recording debut in 1949.
Sonny finds peace with a move to a farm in Germantown, N.Y, where he will take only the best live gigs, with Lucille minding the business, including touring and record production. In 2001, he will finally win a Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental album.
Also in 2001, Sonny becomes another victim of 9/11. Rollins was in his pied-a-terre six blocks from the World Trade Center at the time of the tragedy. Possibly due to his inhalation of toxic dust from the site in the day it took him to evacuate, Sonny develops pulmonary fibrosis. In 2004, Sonny’s wife Lucille passes. In 2012, he plays his last concert in Barcelona. Also, that year, he moves to Woodstock, where he remains being looked in on by friends like drummer Jack DeJohnette and his wife.
In 2014 due to his lung condition, Sonny totally quits playing sax. He stays busy with his reading and study of things maybe far greater than jazz. He believes in reincarnation and tells his dying collaborators that he will just catch them at the next gig in whatever world comes next.
Levy’s book is a wonderful detailed and insightful journey through the life of an incredible artist and thinker. It is unlikely anyone will pen anything about Rollins, and maybe any other jazz musician, that will be its equal.
