Voodoo Excess - Softcover

Reed, Jeremy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1907587500 ISBN 13: 9781907587504

Publisher: Enitharmon Press, 2015

Synopsis

In Voodoo Excess, Jeremy Reed charts in poetry and prose the astonishing career of the Rolling Stones—from the band’s early days in 1962 to the 50th anniversary tour in 2012 and its extension in 2013. With great originality he examines why the Stones have been a musical and cultural phenomenon, and everything public and mythical, anecdotal and apocryphal about the larger-than-life individual band members, shaping the raw material into memorable lyric poetry. This new volume is introduced by Mick Taylor, the musician who left the band only to rejoin it, to great acclaim, for their recent anniversary tour.

About this title

About the Author

Jeremy Reed is widely acknowledged as the most imaginatively gifted British poet of his generation. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Nineties, Dicing for Pearls, Pop Stars, Sweet Sister Lyric, Saint Billie, Duck and Sally Inside, and This Is How You Disappear. He has also published Heartbreak Hotel, a verse biography of Elvis Presley.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Voodoo Excess

By Jeremy Reed

Enitharmon Press

Copyright © 2015 Jeremy Reed
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-907587-50-4

Contents

Introduction: The Rolling Stones and Jeremy Reed, 
PART 1 – THE GREATEST ROCK AND ROLL BAND IN THE WORLD, 
PART 2 – THE BRIAN JONES YEARS: 1962–1969, 
PART 3 – THE MICK TAYLOR YEARS: 1969–74, 
PART 4 – MEMORABILIA/BONUS MATERIAL, 
PART 5 – THE RONNIE WOOD YEARS: 1975–, 

CHAPTER 1

    JUMPING JACK FLASH

    He's a hoodo mambo
    strutting a rumba
    white Africana
    junglishly primal
    his undertones glottaly
    South London, Dartford.
    Cool in a tiara
    or mink balaclava
    he's made up and trashy
    to strut it on boards
    like a bashy pasha
    or Berber bellydancer
    his undertones glottaly
    South London, Dartford.
    He's a symbiotic
    Diaghilev, Nureyev,
    finger-wagging exorcist
    mean-eyed mesmerist
    coming on vatic
    his undertones glottaly
    South London, Dartford.
    He's uncontestably
    freeze-framed 1960s
    gender-antagonist
    bitchy svengali
    swatch-tongued and counting
    his riches like Dali
    his undertones glottaly
    South London, Dartford.
    He's a voodoo instructor
    who won't let you in
    a class infiltrator
    a snappy alligator
    in-concert contortionist
    raunchily prurient
    but with a limp wrist.
    He's a bluesy avatar
    runway infanta
    a right to the roots star
    rock epic exponent
    his undertones glottaly
    South London, Dartford


    KEITH RICHARDS

    So laid back, living where his dimension
    touches on inner vision, that far gone
    he wouldn't notice a black spotting fly
    settle on a cheek and a second one

    glint as a double beauty mark.
    Heroin as an embalming fluid,
    a cellular rejuvenator, he's
    like Burroughs, a human experiment

    in survival. Fortified, whiskey-shot,
    the music lines are always tight, the nerves
    feel into that non-committal control;
    the man lives for the chords he generates,

    and is a kind of latter day Crowley,
    an adept of a deathless state, someone
    who guards somatic knowledge, most alive
    confronting stadia; knee boots,

Edition details

• Publisher: Enitharmon Press
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1907587500
• ISBN 13: 9781907587504
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224