The Sound and the Fury: 40 Years of Classic Rock Journalism: A Rock's Backpages Reader - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1582342822 ISBN 13: 9781582342825

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, 2003

Synopsis

Longtime music writer and editor Barney Hoskyns decided to build an archive of articles by his favorite rock writers - like Al Aronowitz, Jon Savage, Greil Marcus, Will Self, Lenny Kaye, Mary Harron, and Nick Hornby. Thus was born the website Rock's Backpages (www.rocksbackpages.com), home to thousands of brilliant reviews and rants, interviews and overviews, that helped define music journalism over the last four decades. The Sound and the Fury is the best of this remarkable collection. With contemporary and retrospective articles on the Beatles, Otis Redding, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, Joni Mitchell, ABBA, Madonna, Ice Cube, Nirvana, Morrissey, and many, many more.

About this title

About the Author:

Barney Hoskyns is the author of Across the Great Divide: The Band and America (1993), Waiting for the Sun: Strange Days, Weird Scenes & the Sound of Los Angeles (1996), The Mullet: Hairstyle of the Gods (with Mark Larson), and other acclaimed books. He has written for GQ, Rolling Stone, Harper's Bazaar, The Observer, and The Independent. He lives in London.

From Publishers Weekly:

In 2001, longtime rock'n'roll aficionado and writer Hoskyns, dismayed at what he perceived as the overly tame "service industry" of popular-music writing, founded Rock's Backpages (at rocksbackpages.com), an online archive of articles by his favorite rock journalists, which he collects here in this lively anthology. From the site's thousands of profiles, essays and reviews, he has assembled a wide-ranging pool of work by the writers "who got me closest to what rock'n'roll was really about: the irresistible combo of sound and spectacle; of music, performance, image, attitude and ritual." Grouped thematically, the 30 pieces consider a variety of musical genres and employ an assortment of writing styles; they range from Al Aronowitz's account of the Beatles' arrival in America and Jon Savage's encounter with Nirvana to Will Self's face-off with Morrissey and John Mendelssohn's exploration of L.A. gangtsa rap. Each article sports an illuminating introduction by its author, in which he (the contributors are mostly British and mostly male) recalls the story behind the story, offering a few retrospective insights into the heart and soul of the business. The anthology is especially likely to appeal to aspiring rock journalists and music fans who, like Hoskyns, miss the days when music writing was raw, irreverent and vital.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1582342822
• ISBN 13: 9781582342825
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 480
• Editor: Barney Hoskyns