The worst unauthorized biography of a musician or band you've ever read

Oh, yeah. I bought a Troggs book he did where he kept referring to how Reg Presley made a ton of money when "Love Is All Around" got covered in the '90's.

I started a Ringo bio of his and donated it after only a few chapters.

 

Is this a representative example? is there a lot of these kinds of mistakes? You may be right, but I gather Heylin meticulously does (or tries to do) his research. Given the pages and pages he's written I Dylan (and the evasions of his subject) I'm sure he's made mistakes. But it doesn't seem to make sense that he'd deliberately ignore his own research.

 

My father has a paperback edition of the Goldman book on John Lennon. On the back cover, it's written that Lennon died dramatically on December 8th, 1979.

I feel entitled to be doubtful of pretty much everything else stated in that book.

 

Jagger Unauthorized by Christopher Anderson

I'm only about three chapters into it, but, the author keeps making the same point over and over and over: Jagger is gay, and slept with guys all throughout his career, including Brian and Keith. Its tiresome, and obsessive.

Stairway to Heaven by Richard Cole

If you thought Hammer of the Gods was bad.....

 

I remember seeing that Jagger Unauthorized book years ago and saying, "Do I wanna read that? Nah!" It seems my instincts were correct.

Cole's book I have read, and it basically tells every story from Hammer Of The Gods again, but more poorly written!

 

He clearly did not ignore his own research...why in the world do you think that? His research was clearly inadequate, the information gleaned from it was therefore incorrect, and the conclusions he drew were therefore worthless.

I imagine he decided that Dylan's behaviour was perverse and went looking for evidence. An incomplete bootleg of the Town Hall provided enough evidence to prove his point.

It's bad research allied to a tabloid brain.

 

The Jagger book is also somewhat infuriating in the way the author equates Jagger = Stones. As in a description of Altamont, describing the setlist, its "next Jagger sang" instead of "next the Stones played". So far, the entire book has been like that - that Jagger IS the Stones and everybody else, even Richards, two-bit support cast.

 

...Which leads me to good old Albert Goldman, and The Lives Of John Lennon:

As sleazy, critical and opinionated as TLOJL is (I haven't read the thing in twenty years or more) when you consider the amount of actual research Goldman put into it -the notes and interview sources in the back of the book are immense, as I recall- there has to be at least some truth to his claims in the book. Thing is, in a lot of ways Goldman smashed the Lennon 'myth' in ways that only Lennon himself could have dreamed of or appreciated. Sure, Goldman pi--ed off a lot of Lennon fanboys/girls with his tome, but I don't recall any of his sources -or Paul or Yoko, for that matter- suing him for libel or misrepresentation, either.

Quite frankly, I remember liking the Goldman book a lot more than Ray Coleman's "John was God and could do no wrong" Lennon bio. That friggin' book was so fawning and sycophantic I thought I was gonna puke...[/QUOTE]

I think that this is a good post. However, I don't think that Goldman ever spoke to Yoko, the Beatles or George Martin at all for the book. Those are pretty good folks that would have had some important insight on Lennon.

Goldman's book did shed new light on the retirement years, and how dark that they at times were for Lennon. Goldman's book shed no light on the amount of creativity that Lennon still enjoyed while "retired." I honestly feel like Yoko and company didn't sue Coleman because Yoko had the Imagine documentary coming out just a few months after Goldman's book and her lawyers probably told her to just let the book fade once Imagine comes out. In a way it did.

Coleman's book is glossy but it does talk about the creation of the music far more than Goldman's book. Goldman's book was written to be a character assassination. And yes, I have read both.

 

His Elvis bio also got really bad reviews. Apparently he was into character assassination in both books. I haven't read either one, but I have read parts of both. They seem to be very highly opinionated with Goldman asserting his highly critical opinions as fact.

 

According to police records, Manson was also serving a 2-year sentence for parole violation during the Monkees auditions, so he couldn't have auditioned for the Monkees although Micky Dolenz insisted that he was there.

 

I remember reading Geoffrey Giuliano's bio of George Harrison, Dark Horse, in the 90s, but I don't remember a lot of the details. At the time, it didn't seem like outright character assassination, but more like balancing the pros and cons of George the person with Giuliano's opinions of his music. I do have all of his unauthorized Beatles interview CDs on Laserlight. Those are actually pretty interesting.

 

Brian Wilson's autobio Wouldn't It Be Nice wasn't exactly unauthorized, but Brian disowned it later since it was heavily ghostwritten by Todd Gold as well as heavily influenced by Eugene Landy. Mike Love sued Brian for character defamation, and most of Brian's family members were portrayed very negatively while Landy is portrayed as a savior. It's an interesting read, but their are other Beach Boys bios that are better and more balanced.

 

Brian Hinton's Both Sides Now, a biography of Joni Mitchell, is awful and, at times, unintentionally hilarious. At one point, he alludes to James Taylor's transvestism, citing the lyric, "Pack your suspenders," from Joni's song "See You Sometime" as evidence. Except suspenders means a completely different article of clothing on either side of the Atlantic.

 

I did read Goldmans ELVIS book and glanced at pages at book store of LENNON. If Goldman had the balls, he would have printed the book while Lennon was still alive.

 

Right, what I'm getting at is to what degree is his research faulty? Should all of his books be dismissed, or do they just contain the occasional error?

Since he was given access to studio logs and the tape vault, presumably Columbia Records, not too mention Dylan's people consider him a somewhat serious writer. Are they wrong?

 

The author was a complete mudslinger. I saw him on a talk show once and and did not buy that book based solely on that interview. Apparently, he did the same to Elvis Presley so Paul McCartney wouldn't have a thing to do with him.

 

There was a great interview that I saw with McCartney on tv right after Goldman's book came out and the book talked about in 69, Lennon gave McCartney a painting that he had created. Then a few weeks later, they had an argument and the book claimed that Lennon marched over to McCartney's house and put his foot through the painting! McCartney said that story was crazy because it never happened. Lennon never even gave him the painting to begin with.

The book also claimed that Lennon had a brief fling with Linda after her and McCartney were together? Come On!

 

I had the Albert Goldman book, back in my high school daze. I remember reading half of the book, decided it was garbage, and threw it in the trash. The overall tone was extremely negative, which really put me off. Goldman was really going for the character assassination angle, and it showed. As I saw it, Goldman was just making a pathetic attempt to put himself over at the expense of Lennon.

 

He did, though, didn't he?

 

Sure, but he seems to shoehorn it into every chapter for no real reason.

 

It's not hopeless, but a lot of it is just Bockris being nasty. And there's lots of "according to close friends..." which i found a bit tabloid-ish.

 

I don't know if it's authorised or not, but I was very disappointed by James Gavin's Chet Baker biography Deep In A Dream. Written like a tabloid with lots of attention to drugs and domestic violence, but next to nothing about the music.

 

Everybody's Lucifer by Tony Scaduto is pretty unintentionally funny at times.

 

Correct, Goldman never spoke to any of those three who, unsurprisingly, were the three people who publicly denounced the book upon its release.

What I remember most about that Dark Horse bio was Giuliano claiming that George and his friends spent the early eighties (i.e. the Gone Troppo era) binging on cocaine, yet no mention was made of George's indulgence in the devil's dandruff in the mid 70's. On the one hand I'd like to say Giuliano simply got his timelines mixed up as far as Hari's drug use went, but I think he was just looking for sensationalism. Which leads me to:

That claim was not made in The Lives Of John Lennon but rather in Geoffrey Giuliano's horrid Lennon In America book. The supposed Lennon/Linda fling was the prologue, as I recall...

I could be wrong since it's been years since I read it, but I want to say the "Lennon smashed Paul's painting" urban legend first appeared in Peter Brown's trashy The Love You Make Beatles bio...a book which, now that I think about it, also belongs on anybody's "worst music bio" list!

 

Those days of true remaindered books are increasingly fewer in the ebook era as publishers are loathe to print more than what might sell and,I suspect,there are contract options that make bulk bidding on unsold inventory a thing of the past.A shame really,'cause the remainder bins back when there were outlets were a source of true bargains of some great music reading.My two volume slip case version of Peter Guralnick's Elvis bio cost me well under ten bucks.I have a few De Capo Best Music Writing anthologies that were dirt cheap and there's always a few diamonds in those.And while Nancy Sinatra's love letter to Dear Old Dad is a hard read,the super duper version came with a multi label,multi CD set of selections chosen by Nancy and cost me well under twenty bucks.