Dear Tim My own next project is going to be a biography of Professor Longhair. Having spent fifteen years writing about four of the most famous people on earth, I long for a subject about which virtually every prospective reader doesn't already have a set of preconceptions and opinions. Here again I plan to situate the simple narrative of Longhair's life (as well as his rather spectacular posthumous career) in the social and cultural context of New Orleans and the U.S. in the decades after World War Two. On some level, this will be a book … [Read more...]

Bonus round: This juxtaposition is more insulting to a) classical audience b) comedy audience c) plumber's conventioneers … [Read more...]

This book finally compiles many of the images put out by Genesis in the 1990s, with candids from Harrison and Starr's apartment during the shooting of Hard Day's Night, the HDN set with Richard Lester and Pattie Boyd, and a fascinating trip to Liverpool where the Cavern is overrun by beat-bands such as The Undertakers. The Archers, pre-teen lads shot outside Ringo's home, look for all the world like the Fabs as they might have been, in a Liverpool barely changed since the war. The fatalism etched in the faces of Beatle parents tells a story of … [Read more...]

Dear Tim, I too have blown hot and cold with Max Weinberg - though mostly cold I'd have to say. And I would say the same about Springsteen himself. Come to think of it, this has been an ongoing thirty-year issue for me. When Springsteen first arrived on the scene in the 1970s as John Hammond's next anointed golden boy, I was unimpressed. After all, Dylan had come out with Blood On The Tracks, which struck me with the force of revelation, because the lyric-writing on that record - beginning with the astonishing opening track - raised the … [Read more...]

Dear Jonathan Gould, Yeah I was wondering if that was it: being a drummer you didn't want to come on TOO strong with Ringo... that's okay, it's subtextual, and I gushed a lot in my book. Every drummer I've ever talked to gushes about RIngo, at least the good ones do. I think he's a better drummer than Harrison is a guitarist myself, but then I'm a piano-playing composer, so any drummer with a shred of restraint floats my boat. Except for Keith Moon, who's like a keyboardist on the drums (he wants to save the world). I don't know the Duke … [Read more...]

EDITORIAL TICS Why do we have editors? To save us all from those annoying TICS that infect language like ants on birthday cake. Couple years back there was an INFLUENZA of sentences that tried to sound, well, hip, by injecting "well"s into the most obvious places to INFORMALIZE the, well, "tone" of the piece. It always came off, well, forced and made the writing seem intractably unhip as could be, but EVERYBODY was guilty of it. STOP THE MADNESS. You want "um" with that? These days you can't get through a news interview without hearing "...at … [Read more...]

Dear Tim, ...Somewhat incredibly, I haven't read Magic Circles; it must have come out right around the time I finally stopped reading and researching and staying current on all things Beatle in order to focus all of my addled attention on finally finishing my book. But now, of course, I'm curious, because you're not the first person to suggest that I really should check out McKinney's book. As for Ian McDonald, I liked the highly opinionated quality of Revolution in the Head, but I also sensed a certain hauteur (if not outright arrogance) in … [Read more...]

Dear Jonathan Gould, Whew you got a great agent, serialized in USA TODAY, man that's EXPOSURE. Congratulations on all this, very handsomely produced and marketed product. But most of all pat yourself on the back... there is so much hard work reflected in these pages, so many long library hours scouring newspaper microfilm and digesting the finer details of the ideas that were alive in the 1960s, very, VERY few people take the trouble to do not just the research the but THINKING to distill it all down into such an accessible approach to HUGE … [Read more...]