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November, 2006
 
Bringing It All Back Home
Musical Roots and the Roots of Music by Steve Matteo Two recent books delve into two great stories about the blues. One book is about perhaps the greatest white slide blues guitarist of the rock era and the second is a story of the making of perhaps the best album by the greatest rock and roll band in the world whose debt to the blues is incalculable. Exile On Main Street: A Season In Hell with the Rolling Stones by Robert Greenfield (Da Capo). There has been much written about the Rolling Stones’ recording of the album Exile On Main Street, the aftermath of mixing the recordings and the 1972 tour that followed. Now, here comes yet another book on the album, written by Robert Greenfield, author of many music books including Bill Graham’s autobiography, Bill Graham Presents: My Life Inside Rock and Out. Greenfield also wrote the seminal rock tour diary STP: A Journey Through America With The Rolling Stones, published in 1974 about the 1972 tour that followed the Exile sessions. It takes nearly half the book before we actually get to the recording of the album, which took place in the basement of Keith Richards’ rented villa, the Villa Nellcote in the south of France, in the summer of 1971. The book then detours to the session mixing, the pre-tour planning, and more importantly to a long recap of where the key players are today and a juxtaposition of the Stones then and now. In fact, it is the ironic comparison between the drugged-out, transition-era group of the early 1970s and the corporate, moneymaking touring machine that it has become that truly puts the album and the times in perspective. Greenfield holds nothing back with his at times biting observations and his brief pointed jabs at other Stones’ chroniclers such as Stephen Davis, A.E. Hotchner and Spanish Tony. Greenfield sets up the book like a play in two acts, with a cast of characters, both leading and supporting, complete with heroes, villains, kings, jesters, strong female leads and enough court intrigue to make the album itself almost an afterthought. The book is really more about the people than the music—or more specifically about Jagger and Richards. The stereotypes of both are magnified in dramatic and vivid fashion, and Greenfield presents Richards as his "hero." Reading this book and then going back and re-reading STP, in that order, is strongly recommended. Skydog - by Randy Poe (Backbeat). New books about musical artists who began in the 1960s are ubiquitous, but surprisingly only one full-length group history has been written about the Allman Brothers Band. Telling the story of one of the defining bands of classic rock and easily one of the best live acts, who made perhaps the greatest live album (Live at Fillmore East) ever, this book is the first, only and may ultimately prove to be the defining book on the band’s guiding force, Duane Allman. With Skydog, Duane’s significance as a musician, his too-short life and his inspiring force within the group, as well as his non-Allmans projects as a sideman are given the full treatment they deserve. Poe is from the South and brings an understanding to the music and the life of Allman that’s respectful, insightful, yet surprisingly honest. However, little is revealed about how much of an impact the loss of his and Gregg’s father had on Duane and his music, as he was murdered when they were children. The many bands and sessions that Duane participated in as a sideman, which circuitously led to the formation of the Allman Brothers Band, are painstakingly detailed, as are the influence of record producers such as Rick Hall and Jerry Wexler, the engineering of Tom Dowd and the management of Phil Walden. The importance of ABB drummer Jaimoe’s jazz influence is rightly covered and proved to be a major, if often overlooked, aspect of the Allman Brothers Band’s seminal sound. Among the most entertaining parts of the book are the impetus for the making of the Derek & the Dominoes Layla album with Eric Clapton as well as the subsequent sessions. Poe dutifully recounts the heartbreaking death of Allman at age 24, along with the eerily identical circumstances that took the life of Berry Oakley, also at age 24, roughly a year later, in nearly the same place. Both suffered the same fate of dying in a motorcycle accident. In fact, four of the six bassists of the group are all gone, which is part of the post-Duane history of the group that Poe succinctly covers at the end of the book. He also includes an informative chapter on the guitars Duane played and an exhaustive discography. Young music fans in particular will learn a lot about a figure that is sometimes forgotten by reading this richly vivid biographical portrait. |