Blood, Sweat, and My Rock 'n' Roll Years: Is Steve Katz a Rock Star? - Hardcover

Katz, Steve

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 149309999X ISBN 13: 9781493099993

Publisher: Lyons Press, 2015

Synopsis

On paper Steve Katz’s career rivals anyone’s except the 1960s’ and ’70’s biggest stars: the Monterey Pop Festival with the legendary Blues Project, Woodstock with Blood, Sweat & Tears, and even producing rock’s most celebrated speed addict, Lou Reed. There were world tours, and his résumé screams “Hall of Fame” — it won’t be long before BS&T are on that ballot. He has three Grammies (ten nominations), three Downbeat Reader’s Poll Awards, three gold records, one platinum record, and one quadruple platinum platter (the second Blood, Sweat & Tears album), not to mention three gold singles with BS&T. All together, he’s sold close to 29 million records. He had affairs with famous female folk singers, made love to Jim Morrison’s girlfriend Pam when Jim was drunk and abusive, partied with Elizabeth Taylor and Groucho Marx, dined with Rudolf Nureyev, conversed with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Tennessee Williams, hung out with Andy Warhol, jammed with everyone from Mose Allison to Jimi Hendrix, and was told to get a haircut by both Mickey Spillane and Danny Thomas.

But his memoir is more Portnoy’s Complaint than the lurid party-with-your-pants-down memoir that has become the norm for rock ’n’ roll books. It’s an honest and personal account of a life at the edge of the spotlight—a privileged vantage point that earned him a bit more objectivity and earnest outrage than a lot of his colleagues, who were too far into the scene to lay any honest witness to it. Set during the Greenwich Village folk/rock scene, the Sixties’ most celebrated venues and concerts, and behind closed doors on international tours and grueling studio sessions, this is the unlikely story of a rock star as nerd, nerd as rock star, a nice Jewish boy who got to sit at the cool kid’s table and score the hot chicks.

About this title

About the Author:

Steve Katz was a founding member of The Blues Project and Blood, Sweat & Tears. He became a record producer, working with rock renegade Lou Reed, among others. Now, Katz and his wife, Alison Palmer have a ceramics shop, Alison Palmer Studio, in South Kent, Connecticut.

Review:

“My friend Steve Katz was a nice Jewish boy who became a big star. Happily he is now a nice Jewish gentleman who lived the rock’n’roll lifestyle and lived to tell the tale in this wickedly funny insight into the decadent days of the music world of the 60s and 70s. I was there – it’s all true!” —Terry Ellis Co-founder of Chrysalis Records

"Steve Katz's book opens the door on a magical time when the counterculture -- and the transformations of youth in New York, and California, and all of America -- were flowering. With a light touch and a wry intimacy, he adds to an important history: our own."
-- Sheila Weller, author of the bestsellingGirls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon -- and the Journey of a Generation

"I love love love Steve Katz's new book about Blood Sweat and Rock and Roll - a dizzying, delicious, head spinning heart-wrenching tale of the Sixties and what even those of us who were there might have missed--stories of the great band he was part of, that tore up the charts while the music rolled up the avenues of the world. Touring, the treasures and torments, faces and voices- Joni in the dark and light, Al Kooper in the day and night, Mimi in the morning at Judy's house, Danny Kalb in the aftermath of Monterey, Janis Joplin in profile. It is a great ride, both for those who were there and never saw the other side of the story, and those who weren't, and want to know what really happened in the Cafe Wha, the Gaslight, Bitter End in New York, Monterey Pop and the Woodstock that happened off-stage. Great book, great read, great life." - Judy Collins, singer, writer and survivor of the Sixties


“Katz engagingly recounts fascinating stories in an insightful, intelligent, sometimes wistful and sometimes funny style that makes this one of the few rock memoirs worth reading from beginning to end.”-Publishers Weekly (Publishers Weekly)

About this edition

• Publisher: Lyons Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 149309999X
• ISBN 13: 9781493099993
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 264