Music Books you would love to read but...

... you can't read?

 

The Beach Boys and The California Myth - David Leaf

I've been looking for this one for decades. In 1995 when Brian Wilson's I Just Wasn't Made For These Times CD soundtrack came out, there was even a note promoting the book. I thought for sure it was on the verge of being reissued but to my knowledge this never happened.

 

The Beach Boys and the California Myth was updated in 1985 and retitled The Beach Boys, an "enlarged edition of David Leaf's The Beach Boys and the California Myth, first published in 1978."

Unfortunately, this edition is also out of print and expensive.

 

The Ian Hunter book used to be fairly easy to find in secondhand bookshops in the UK, that's obviously changed.

 

I have a roomful of books right now, some old, some newer, and some read and some not. Mostly americana subjects like The Band, R Robertson's new book, some Dylan, etc along with a few Coltrane titles, some Miles Davis, Life by K Richards w/ a few other Stones titles, Linda Ronstadt, Leonard Cohen among others. Just knocked off Calling Me Home 2012 about Gram Parsons, a simple but fascinating read, that covers mostly how he came to be the 'Cosmic American Music Cowboy', and less about his 'star-powered' years. The magic lies in the meticulous study and interviews he conducted with all of his Florida childhood friends to the many musicans, including Roger McGuinn, and then some. I have Ben Fong Torres and Myer's books about GP on the way. I have a lot of reading
to do which will influence what I listen to a great deal, but that is the additional fun part.

 

May Pang - The Lost weekend

A bit voyeuristic I'm guessing but it seems like a missing piece of the Lennon jigsaw. But not paying the silly prices it is going for!

 

You can get the Hunter book pretty easily through interlibrary loan; probably at no charge. That's not true of Derek's book but it's available (with access restrictions) in a few libraries.

I'd like to read Neil Aspinall's book that was never written.

 

I would so love to finally get a copy of that book. Quite a lot of it is up on books.google.com, but much is omitted - though that hasn't stopped me from reading through what's up there anyway, more than once.

 

It's great, I bought it when it came out. Never been reissued it seems.

 

New Edition Of Ian Hunter’s Definitive ‘Diary of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’

A new edition of the Ian Hunter book came out recently.

 

I bought my copy in 1999 for $50 from an online bookfinder. First edition. I thought it was a very expensive indulgence at the time.

Two books I really want to read are Ian Hunter's Diary Of A Rock and Roll Star and Matovina's Without You: The Tragic Story of Badfinger. Those are two books that really shouldn't be out of print. They should at least be available on ebook.

Oh, look! I'm halfway there!

 

I would've thought that Diary of a Rock 'n' Roll Star would always be in print somewhere given its classic status, but I see the 2000 edition I bought new less than a decade ago is already selling at collector's prices. Good that it'll be apparently back in print shortly.

 

My pleasure.

 

So short stories are cool. What are you into? Carver, Salinger, Chekov?

 

Lately, I've been revisiting the short stories of John Cheever.

 

It's alive and well

Ian Hunter: Ian Hunter - Diary Of A Rock N Roll Star

 

I have it. It's a great book, if you don't mind the author reminding you how great Brian Wilson is every other sentence. It could have been half the length if you removed all the fawning.

My copy is a hardcover. I had no idea they were so expensive.

 

I got a battered copy of "Papa John" from the US but having gone to all that effort I haven't actually read it yet.

 

The Johnny Horton biography.

 

Lot of music books I'd love to read, but...





(wait for it...)










I CAN'T READ MUSIC-!

(Geez, how did this take three pages to come up...!)