Book Review: Reinventing Pink Floyd: From Syd Barrett to The Dark Side of the Moon

For more than half a century Pink Floyd produced some of the most fabled and successful albums in popular music history yet the singular British band has nevertheless remained, at least in some respects, an enigma. 

Much of that enigma surrounds Syd Barrett, the Floyd’s principal songwriter and eccentric visionary behind the band’s earliest efforts. The music he created with Pink Floyd in the mid-to-late sixties—enriched by his distinctly puerile songwriting style and psychedelic eccentricities—contrasts so boldly from the music the Floyd made following his termination from the lineup in 1968 so as to sound like a different band altogether. Even still, Barrett’s legacy loomed over the band (bassist Roger Waters, keyboardist Richard Wright, drummer Nick Mason, and Barrett’s replacement, guitarist David Gilmour) for decades thereafter.

In Reinventing Pink Floyd: From Syd Barrett to The Dark Side of the Moon, author Bill Kopp reframes the band’s legendary oeuvre by surveying those earliest efforts to illustrate how they presaged and ultimately informed the Floyd’s most celebrated subsequent discography beginning with 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon. He delves deep, for instance, into the band’s nascent recording sessions and performances, including early studio albums like 1967’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and 1968’s A Saucerful of Secrets as well as experimental forays into film-soundtrack recordings. 

Kopp exerts a keen perspective throughout, contextualizing each project by dissecting each one’s artistic direction with the knowledge of one who is not only intimately familiar with the band’s expansive output but with rudimentary music principles as well. Such explanations never succumb to sounding too technical or abstract for casual fans to appreciate, thankfully, as Kopp offers just enough expert analysis to enlighten—rather than overwhelm—the reader. Overall, Reinventing Pink Floyd sheds light on a pivotal and all-too-often overlooked era of one of the all-time great bands just as it was evolving into an undisputed commercial hit-making  behemoth of progressive rock. Highly recommended. 

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Book Review: How to Write About Music: Excerpts From the 33 1/3 Series, Magazines, Books and Blogs with Advice from Industry-Leading Writers

If a book called How to Write About Music sounds like something you’ve just got to read, chances are you’re already writing about music. That said, the perspectives shared throughout this 400-page compendium from the folks behind the sensational 33 1/3 series of album dissertations (published by Bloomsbury, edited by Marc Woodworth and Ally-Jane Grossan) is both useful and, particularly to emerging writers, enlightening.

Indeed, while presented essentially as a combination textbook/workbook, what lay within doesn’t instruct so much as it surveys various types of music writing while offering practical insights from some of the trade’s most renowned, influential (and, at times, pretentious) exponents.

Along the way the reader will encounter everything from critical reviews to personal essays to artist interviews and profiles to consolidated cultural studies of select musical touchstones and themes — in other words, everything from the most traditional forms of music writing to its most avant-garde expositions. There’s even a chapter on how to pitch a 33 1/3 series book, including sample proposals.

Ultimately, though, if How to Write About Music yields one unifying theme it’s that there is no one correct way to write about music, but the book nevertheless provides invaluable context and encouragement to those with a passion for the craft.

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Book Review: 'After the Dance: My Life with Marvin Gaye' by Jan Gaye with David Ritz

“I thank God for the time that he gave us together, good and bad,” Jan Gaye writes at the conclusion of her recent memoir, After the Dance: My Life with Marvin Gaye, “for without both I would’ve had none.” Even thirty-one years after the tragic death of the music legend that was her husband and father of her two children, such an acknowledgement could not have been easy to come by. The eleven-year relationship she recounts here in stark and often forthright detail is fraught — despite its many gentle, loving, and passionate moments — with simmering distrust, betrayal, and, on occasion, violence. Still, hindsight has afforded the author a balanced, empathetic perspective with which to tell her story.

Already smitten with the suave, sophisticated image she’d seen on Soul Train and on various album and magazine covers of the day, seventeen-year-old Janis Hunter’s celebrity crush on thirty-four-year-old Marvin Gaye developed into an all-too-human hunger thanks to a fortuitous meeting with the Motown superstar at his Los Angeles recording studio during a session for his landmark 1973 album, Let’s Get It On. The attraction between the two was immediate though furtive at first and while a courtship ensued, odds of them enjoying anything beyond a fleeting affair seemed anything but promising. Particularly encumbered was Gaye, who was then embroiled in a bitter divorce from his first wife, Anna Gordy (older sister of Berry, president of Motown Records), as well as myriad financial plights and professional anxieties. Regardless, Hunter and Gaye’s mutual passion would not be denied. 

Such baggage couldn’t help but intrude on their relationship (and, come 1977, marriage), though as underscored throughout the book, the couple’s greatest burden — indeed, the prime catalyst for whatever chaos they wrought and suffered both individually and together — was substance abuse. The author is unflinchingly explicit at times in her recollections, in particular when depicting her husband’s gradual descent over the last few years his life amid the throes of hard drugs and their destructive, psychotic effects. Such moments come across not as an indictment on Marvin Gaye’s character or his legacy, however, but rather as unvarnished examples of the way things were at the time. If anything, the author places just as much scrutiny on her own past behavior, conceding amongst other indiscretions how her own substance abuse affected her marriage and life in general, so much so that not even Gaye’s death at the hand of his father in 1984 could at once compel her to seek help in an effort to quit.

While not a biography of Marvin Gaye — the definitive one being Divided Soul by David Ritz, who serves as co-author here — After the Dance nevertheless includes truly fascinating insights to his creativity and talent, the sort which are revealed in the most inconspicuous moments or in drowsy, late-night conversations in bed. In other words, the sort which only an intimate confidant could know. In a broader but no less personal context, the same could be said for this overall gripping memoir as a whole. 

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Book Review: Man on the Run - Paul McCartney in the 1970s by Tom Doyle

By the time the Beatles had officially broken up in April 1970, Paul McCartney was one of the world’s most celebrated musicians, having achieved just about every benchmark in the music business as well as the notoriety that comes with being a cultural icon. With John Lennon he’d forged the most beloved (and lucrative) songwriting partnership in pop music history. With the band as a whole he’d crafted a catalog that was by and large regarded as creatively unrivaled. Such distinctions were ones which McCartney understood all too well when, while confronting the unenviable prospect of following up the Fab Four, he embarked upon the next phase of his musical life.

He was 27-years old.

As author and music journalist Tom Doyle chronicles in Man on the Run: Paul McCartney in the 1970s, McCartney’s next phase ended up being the most turbulent decade of his career. 

Well researched and partly informed by Doyle’s own interviews with his subject, the book adds sharper context to the familiar portrait presented by other such biographies of a preternaturally gifted, boyishly charismatic family man to reveal the McCartney of this era as being often oblivious to (or at least careless of) the ways in which the real world works outside the Beatles bubble. Matters that likely never crossed his mind as a member of the Beatles now as the leader of his next band, Wings, not only became necessary concerns—auditioning and hiring (and firing) musicians, compensating those musicians, replenishing the band’s requisite marijuana supply—but were also his responsibility. If he wasn’t quite longing to reunite with his old mates from Liverpool, McCartney nevertheless seems to have missed the sense of refuge they collectively conferred, from the implicit quality of musicianship in John, George, and Ringo, to producer’s George Martin’s almost paternal guidance, musical wisdom, and studio expertise. 

As far as the music McCartney composed in the ‘70s is concerned, pertinent circumstances of its creation are offered throughout the book. There isn’t too much in the way of session details (examining how songs evolved, critiquing specific takes, etc.), with the emphasis instead focusing on how McCartney maneuvered through the various twists and turns of his life while making that music. Given a subject as well-documented as McCartney, it’s an effective narrative approach. The depicted scene surrounding the recording of 1973’s Band on the Run, in particular, which found McCartney naïvely travelling not only with Wings (and former Moody Blues) mate Denny Laine and engineer Geoff Emerick but also with his own wife and children to Lagos, Nigeria—a scene of rampant crime, poverty, and political corruption—is especially gripping. 

Man on the Run tells of McCartney the human being as much as McCartney the superstar musician, and readers will likewise appreciate its insights and enjoy the story it has to tell.

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Feelin’ Like I Don’t Belong: Bio Tells Sad, Tragic Tale of Karen Carpenter (Book Review)

If the disease that led to her untimely death at 32 was exacerbated by anything, as a new-in-paperback biography suggests, Karen Carpenter suffered from deep-seated feelings of inferiority and loneliness.

In Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter, author Randy L. Schmidt chronicles the often-troubled and ultimately tragic life of one of popular music’s most gifted voices.

In one particularly telling passage, the author notes that when Carpenter started making records and touring with her older brother, Richard, she considered herself foremost a drummer, then a vocalist. At the time she was, if anything, a bit overweight. Yet by all accounts Carpenter seemed either content with her curves or indifferent to them altogether. However, as the duo’s success necessitated that she step into the spotlight—literally, as concert audiences had difficulty discerning the five-foot, four-inch singer behind her drums and cymbals—her self-esteem and health began to deteriorate.

The author gives much consideration to Carpenter’s personal (mostly familial) relationships. While her father is rendered as being genial and supportive, her mother comes across as overbearing at best and, at worst, dictatorial. Richard Carpenter seems to fall somewhere between these two extremes, appearing as a musical perfectionist yet also a protective if, at times, condescending older brother. And yet even accounts of some rather heated arguments between the two can’t diminish the overriding impression that Richard loved his sister to no end.

In depictions of the behavior and various tactics she resorted to in maintaining and masking her illness—and over time she acknowledged she was indeed contending with something more than low self-esteem and poor eating habits—Karen Carpenter never comes across as willfully self-destructive. Her actions were, it seems, a means to cope with circumstances in which she felt helpless or inadequate. Anorexia nervosa instilled in Carpenter a false sense of security, providing her a means of control, the only kind she believed she had.

Though the author wrote Little Girl Blue without the Carpenter family’s participation or blessing, the narrative is nevertheless well-substantiated, insightful, and riveting to read. Karen Carpenter’s story, of course, remains heartbreakingly sad.

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New Lionel Richie Bio Stuck On The Basics, Lacking Depth & Soul

In what often carries the tone of a flattering press release rather than what’s ostensibly an all-around biography, British music journalist Sharon Davis chronicles the career of Lionel Richie, drawing together a surplus of source material and firsthand encounters with the R&B singer/songwriter in Lionel Richie: Hello.

The author doesn’t hide her admiration toward her subject—“Well, for god’s sake, it was the Lionel Richie!” she gushes in the preface, recalling her first meeting with the man—which would be fine if it didn’t distract from the narrative. However, she increasingly undermines it each time (of which there are many) she concludes otherwise direct statements with frivolous exclamation marks.

That being said, though, Davis does a decent job in rendering a thorough account of Lionel Richie’s career to date—from his formative years in the Commodores to his most successful years as a solo artist—making for an informative read for popular music buffs.

Writing about the Commodores forming as a funk/soul hybrid with slick joints like “Machine Gun” and “Brick House,” the author traces how the group ascended from their lucrative slot as the opening act for the Jackson 5 to arena headliners. Yet when Richie began turning out smash-hit ballads—beginning with “Three Times A Lady” and including “Sail On” and “Still”—not only did the public’s perception of the group shift, but the dynamic within the group itself changed as well.

As the author relates, the question looming within the Commodores—at least for everyone except Lionel Richie—was how do you handle your dissatisfaction with your band’s musical direction when that direction is yielding your greatest success?

Of course, Richie soon launched a thriving solo career and the Commodores then struggled to remain relevant in the wake of his departure. Curiously, though, the author continues to track the musical evolution of the Commodores, creating a disproportionate (and comparatively sad) parallel between the group and their infinitely more successful former lead singer.

In keeping with the deferential tone she maintains throughout, the author divulges little in the way of any scandalous or unauthorized information about Richie that hasn’t already been circulated in the press. Actually, there’s not much in the way of personal anecdotes—scandalous or not—to be found here anyway. So while she does reflect upon on select gossip—namely the turbulence surrounding Richie’s first divorce and the pricey cost of his second—she steers clear of recriminations.

All things considered, Lionel Richie: Hello is a by-the-numbers career retrospective of the musician far more than it is a comprehensive biography of the man. Such is not a detriment in and of itself, but longtime fans will be left wanting to know more than just the facts.

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No Magic In Springsteen Paperback

Like Dylan and the Stones, the Beatles and Bowie, so many biographies have been written about Bruce Springsteen that—barring some crucial shift in context that would warrant the writing of an altogether new life story—books that concentrate on a particular aspect of his craft have become more prevalent in recent years.

One of the newer ones, Magic in the Night: The Words and Music of Bruce Springsteen, sets its focus on the Boss’ songwriting. While author Rob Kirkpatrick does an adequate job of identifying major and recurrent themes in Springsteen’s works, his assessments seem derivative and compulsory or—when not backed up by one of his many cited sources—contrived.

Surveying each of Springsteen’s albums in chronological order—from 1972’s Greetings From Asbury Park through 2007’s Magic—Kirkpatrick delivers a condensed account of their writing and recording, now and then injecting an innocuous opinion or side-note anecdote respective to the album at hand. There aren’t any notable revelations here and any fresh insight to be gleaned would most likely come from a more qualified source rather than from the author, who frequently renders his subject and occasionally his work in a condescending light.

For example, when mentioning Springsteen's infamous lawsuit against his then manager Mike Appel following the release of Born to Run, Kirkpatrick notes that his intention is “not to take sides,” but then proceeds to label the then-twenty-something Springsteen as “careless to the point of naiveté regarding financial matters.” For the record, the author makes no remarks or judgment on Appel’s business acumen at the time.

In another instance, the author dismissively undercuts the significance of one of Springsteen’s mentors and the prime inspiration for We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions. Kirkpatrick asserts, “Not only was this the first collection of arrangements that the nation’s most famous singer-songwriter [Springsteen] had ever released, but it dusted off songs associated with a folkie who was decades removed from pop-culture relevance.” That’s sort of like saying J.D. Salinger—who, like Pete Seeger, is also 90 years old and, incidentally, alive—isn’t influential or important in the realm of literature (or in pop culture, for that matter) because he hasn’t published anything in about the last half century.

The most frustrating part of Kirkpatrick’s examination of Springsteen’s work, though, lay in his comparative scrutiny of songs that have yet to see the proverbial light of day. Now, most Springsteen fans know that a treasure trove of unreleased material is locked in the vaults and that Tracks barely scratched its surface. Knowing such material exists, though, is different than knowing its specific contents.

Regardless, the author writes of several obscure, as-of-yet-unreleased songs, at times describing their sound—as he does with “One Love” and “Betty Jean,” calling them “rockabilly” and “country”—while at other times explaining their narratives (“Richfield Whistle,” “Losin’ Kind’”).

Altogether, he compares and contrasts such works—including their arrangements, lyrics, and themes—to officially released ones of the same era on albums that anyone can obtain (in this case, Nebraska and Born in the USA). It’s a one-sided assessment, though, because most people (even many diehard fans) neither have these obscurities nor the resources to acquire them to form their own opinions. Knowing the author has heard them doesn’t help the reader or the rock ‘n’ roll listener appreciate what it feels like to hear these songs roaring at full blast.

Point blank, for those serious enough about Bruce Springsteen’s songwriting or career in general, there is no shortage of compelling and comprehensive books available at your local library or bookstore; this one just isn’t among them. While Rob Kirkpatrick lays out a solid premise and expounds on a few thematic tendencies in Magic in the Night: The Words and Music of Bruce Springsteen, his uninspired and often patronizing analysis does nothing to serve that objective.

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Book Review: Steely Dan: Reelin’ In The Years (Updated Edition)

On the surface, this book tells the story of a legendary band. Technically speaking, though, the band in question really isn’t a band at all, at least not in the rock ’n’ roll “group” connotation. Consider its principal members, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, more as auteurs of a joint enterprise, if you will.

Basically, these two jazz and literature buffs from Jersey write their own stuff – weird stuff – while utilizing the skills of proficient musicians to interpret it, yet not always (and more often than not) by using the same musicians. More to the point, they interchange session players like most bands swap out guitar strings and drumsticks.

In Steely Dan: Reelin’ In The Years, author Brian Sweet traces the history of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker’s songwriting partnership, giving the reader a meticulous account of some of the most enigmatic, cynical, and hippest sonic compositions in modern music. First published in 1994 following the Dan’s long-awaited comeback to concert performing, this updated edition (released March 2008) covers the making of their successive albums, Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go, as well as Morph the Cat, Donald Fagen’s third solo release.

While this book doesn’t reveal much in the way of personal specifics, it does, however, chronicle Steely Dan’s emergence and progression within context of the 1970s music scene. Recalling an era saturated with sentimental pap, the author illustrates how albums like Pretzel Logic, The Royal Scam, and Aja injected the zeitgeist with biting lyrical satire and cunning embellishments of traditional song forms. The Eagles or Three Dog Night they weren’t; Steely Dan didn’t convey any “Peaceful Easy Feeling” or “Joy To The World” vibes whatsoever, yet their songs undeniably resonated both with critics and record buyers.

The most illuminating aspect of Steely Dan covered here – which will interest fans and drive detractors to the brink of insanity – is Fagen and Becker’s infamous and meticulous work ethic. Before the days of digital recording and modern computer technology, most Steely Dan albums resulted from inordinate amounts of painstaking performances and production. The author sheds light on extensive (and expensive) recording sessions as well as the minutiae involved in mixing and mastering songs. Sardonically commenting on the fastidiousness that he and Becker applied to their craft, Fagen is quoted as once saying, “This is music, music we care about. We don’t make records to find girls. We already have girls.”

Drawn from a myriad of source material and rendered with considerable insight, Steely Dan: Reelin’ In The Years reveals the lowdown on a “band” that conformed not to convention or popular style, but rather to the rhythm of its own quirky groove.

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Book Review: Greetings From Bury Park

Born in Pakistan and raised in England, Sarfraz Manzoor grew up in a state of discontent, invariably torn between the contradictions of his heritage and his personal ambition. When a college friend introduced him to the music of Bruce Springsteen, Manzoor considered it a revelation, one that would serve as self-affirmation and inspiration in an environment that seldom encouraged either.

Given what could have comprised an impressive memoir, though, Greetings From Bury Park suffers from a fragmented narrative and flawed thematic development.

Manzoor renders the chapters more or less thematically rather than chronologically, which accounts for much of the book's inconsistency. Moreover, though, the writer doesn't support his assertion of how Springsteen's music bolstered his desire to define his identity and sense of purpose.

The basics of the account, at any rate, suggest a potentially compelling story with cultural enlightenment. As a toddler, Manzoor emigrated from his native Pakistan to the Luton, England neighborhood of Bury Park along with his mother and siblings. His father, having already moved to England eleven years prior to earn enough income to prepare for and provide an eventual home, awaited their arrival.

In the setting of contemporary British society, Manzoor was indoctrinated by his parents to abide by the tenets of his Pakistani heritage and Muslim faith. He learned that cultural obligations and expectations usurped personal preference, and that honoring one's family trumped all other secular values.

As adolescence set in and the free will of adulthood beckoned, however, Manzoor writes that he began to question his allegiance to the mores of Pakistan—a country in which he neither resided nor felt any direct bond toward—as well as his adhering to principles he didn't altogether comprehend or necessarily espouse. He clashed often with his traditionalist father over matters as significant as marriage and ones as comparably inconsequential as attending a rock concert.

It's within the context of these formative circumstances that Manzoor declares, yet fails to establish the book's purported central theme: how his fervent appreciation for Bruce Springsteen's music influenced the perceptions he harbored of his culture and his very identity. He writes that, after listening to a friend's cassette of Springsteen's songs, he immediately felt connected with and enlivened by the musician's work.

Unfortunately, he doesn't underscore this resonance with sufficient insight, instead supplying facts—such as his collecting of bootlegs and his eventual attending of Springsteen concerts—while making scarce mention of why this music by this artist meant so much to him in the first place. While Sarfraz Manzoor need not reenact some specific epiphany or offer a grand testimonial to substantiate his affinity for Bruce Springsteen's music, not explaining how or why he identified with it inevitably relegates the book's alleged premise to a mere incidental distinction.

Greetings From Bury Park contains the elements of a great story that could have assimilated cultural perspective with the power of rock and roll, but its exposition ultimately lacks continuity and breadth.

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Book Review: The Lyrics of Tom Waits - The Early Years

A troubadour tanked on hard liquor, hunched over an upright piano in a smoky bar, laments over some romantic long shot or the one that got away. He sings short stories, setting dingy late-night scenes littered with misfits and streetwise women to music. These tales of the downtrodden, written not with contempt but with genuine empathy, are the work of Tom Waits.

Published by Ecco Press, a new anthology culls the expression and poetry from roughly the first decade of this maverick artist’s career in The Lyrics of Tom Waits – The Early Years. Specifically, the material collected here covers the period between Waits’ 1973 debut, Closing Time, through 1980’s Heartattack And Vine. Also included are his lyrics from the 1982 soundtrack of One From The Heart as well as those from both volumes of The Early Years, albums that comprise songs written before his proper debut.

On their respective albums, these songs represent a symbiosis of words and music, yet, on the page, the lyrics exhibit intrinsic qualities that merit singular analysis and appreciation. Much like his literary influences—particularly Kerouac, Burroughs, and Bukowski—Waits demonstrates a fluid cadence in his verse, especially in this era of his writing. Lyrics to “Step Right Up” and “Small Change (Got Rained On With His Own .38),” for instance, read like Beat vernacular, their meter manifested through free-flowing lines and cumulative stanzas.

Waits’ literary sensibilities not only extend to his poetic phrasing, but also to the narrative arrangement of his lyrics. The stories told in songs like “Tom Traubert’s Blues” and “Ruby’s Arms” contain as much character and thematic development as a work of short fiction. Depictions of third-shift slaves, drug pushers, sex peddlers, innocent victims, and derelicts who dream unfold as well on the page as they do in song.

The Lyrics of Tom Waits – The Early Years brilliantly draws attention to an aspect of this iconoclast’s craft that deserves recognition. During this seminal era of his career, Waits blurred the line between life and art to an indistinguishable extent. In many ways, Waits personified his characters, which not only added to his distinctive music’s appeal, but also forged his legend—one that endures to this day. The lyrics collected within this anthology are the integral manuscripts of that music.

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Book Review: The Rolling Stone Interviews

Rolling Stone may not represent the voice of the counterculture like it once did, but the publication has invariably wielded privileged access to rock and roll’s elite as well as to other important celebrities and social figures. Coinciding with the fortieth anniversary of the magazine, this new compendium correspondingly presents forty of its most notable and indicative discussions in The Rolling Stone Interviews.

Many of these interviews catch subjects at pivotal points in their careers and lives, often knowingly, sometimes quite the opposite. Two of the most prominent examples come courtesy of John Lennon and Kurt Cobain, respectively. A thorough conversation with Jann Wenner in 1970 shows Lennon unleashing a contemptuous and myth-shattering depiction of life as a Beatle and the band’s recent dissolution. The text contained here comprises but a portion of the expanded transcript ultimately released as the book, Lennon Remembers, yet it succinctly conveys Lennon’s embittered state of mind at that time. In contrast, an interview conducted in early 1994 by David Fricke illustrates Cobain offering ominous and unsettling remarks when one considers his suicide a mere three months later. He speaks of his disillusionment with Nirvana’s artistic direction and mass commercial appeal as well as his frustration in coping with his tentative physical health. Both instances portray creative icons at a crossroads, albeit to divergent extents.

While not as emotionally gripping, other interviews still yield moments of telling insight and perspective. In a 1973 conversation with Ben Fong-Torres, Ray Charles explains how his varied taste in music, from classical artists like Sibelius and Chopin to country artists like Roy Acuff and Hank Snow, influenced his inimitable approach to music. In a 1992 chat with James Henke, Bruce Springsteen opens up about why he felt compelled to move from New Jersey to Los Angeles and what that symbolized for him, not only as the local hero of the Garden State, but also as a newly married man with young children. In a 2002 discussion with David Fricke, Keith Richards lets it bleed (figuratively speaking), candidly answering a myriad of questions about his infamous drug use, his much-debated mortality, and his enduring friendship with Mick Jagger. In distinguishing the Glimmer Twins’ paradoxical natures, Richards says, “[Mick] can’t go to sleep without writing out what he’s going to do when he wakes up. I just hope to wake up.”

Without a doubt, the leeway allowed to the subjects makes these interviews, and cumulatively, this book, a particularly engaging read. Even when the questions aren’t all that probing or inventive, they often yield intriguing responses. Case in point, in a 1968 interview with Jann Wenner, Pete Townshend fields a flippant question about him writing songs in his basement by launching into a description of an as-yet-completed “rock opera” about a deaf, dumb, and blind boy. With the proficiency of a politician, Townshend manhandles the moment to explain his scrupulous labor in creating Tommy, from its major and minor themes to a meticulous character analysis. One can almost picture Wenner with his mouth agape, wondering how his intended softball topic swerved radically off track.

The Rolling Stone Interviews offer comparably enlightening snapshots of various other luminaries as well at specific and, frequently, career or life-defining points in time. The responses by each subject seem genuine for the most part, but, moreover, they impart opinions and personalities straight from the source. And the sources in this book are significant.

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Book Review: Making Records - The Scenes Behind The Music

Imagine yourself facing the task of telling Tony Bennett during a recording session that he’s hit a few bum notes. Not only should you have the credible acumen for identifying such flaws, but also the knowledge of how to correct them. Fortunately, Phil Ramone has an abundance of both. One of music’s most prolific and distinguished producers, he candidly shares experiences from his career in his new book, Making Records: The Scenes Behind The Music.

While neither a strict memoir nor a technical manual, the book blends elements of the two, usually within the context of representative and applicable anecdotes.

Ramone writes an engaging account of his ascension in the music industry, from working as a studio apprentice to engineering recording sessions and ultimately producing albums and live events. As a result, the reader gains priceless insight on some landmark recordings as well as perspective on the evolution of music production over the last 50 years.

What makes this book such an enjoyable read is the producer’s unassuming way of relating his memories and knowledge. One would suspect that someone as proficient and experienced as Phil Ramone would have, by now, lost all sense of wonder in regard to how music is made. Quite the contrary, while he undoubtedly knows what he’s doing in the studio, he seems just as amazed and inspired by the creative process as any typical fan would feel.

Fans of Billy Joel, in particular, will take pleasure in reading what Ramone recollects about producing many of the Piano Man’s greatest albums. He recounts how certain iconic sound effects were achieved, like the shattering glass that opens “You May Be Right” and the reverberating helicopter propellers that bookend “Goodnight Saigon.” He explains his view on what was lacking in Joel’s first four albums—which he didn’t produce—and why that deficiency resulted in releasing Songs From The Attic. He even divulges how he would humorously blackmail Joel and his band into working whenever they got hungry or distracted.

In sharing his experiences of working with Billy Joel, Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, and a plethora of others, the consistent factor is how Ramone approached (and still approaches) each project with the artist’s intent foremost in his mind. He astutely notes that his name doesn’t appear on the covers of the albums he produces. Thus, instead of attempting to conform an artist to a certain style or standard, he respects and caters to each artist’s creative goal.

Ramone and Billy Joel, 1986, during sessions for The Bridge

At the same time, Ramone justifiably points out the credentials that he brings to the making of an album. A classically trained musician in his own right, he understands music from both sides of the glass. Even when he has worked with artists who’ve had production experience, like Paul Simon or Paul McCartney, Ramone says that he contributed a sense of objectivity that the artists found helpful.

Accommodating in his profession as well as in his prose, Ramone has graciously written a book that music fans of any age or education can appreciate. Given his expertise, he could have easily filled these pages with professional terminology related to record production. While he certainly refers to technological aspects and specific equipment associated with his work, he does so without leaving the average reader overwhelmed or confused. Rather, he only mentions something of this sort within the context of recounting a pertinent (and understandable) experience.

Making Records: The Scenes Behind The Music offers an intriguing glimpse into the art of music production, and few careers in this field have rivaled that of Phil Ramone. Now, in addition to albums, concerts, and other live events, Ramone has once again produced a quality work. And this time, finally, his name is on the cover.

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