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“These are wonderful stories across the whole range of popular music, by one of rock’s finest journalists. As history lengthens and some of these legends move on, these become increasingly precious fragments of lives lived at the sharp edge of music.” – Richard Thompson
Trouser Press Books is proud to announce Backstage & Beyond Volume 1: 45 Years of Classic Rock Chats & Rants, the first-ever anthology from award-winning music journalist Jim Sullivan, to be published in paperback and e-book on July 21. Pre-orders are available now.
PRE-ORDER BACKSTAGE & BEYOND VOLUME 1 BY JIM SULLIVAN (DIGITAL)
PRE-ORDER BACKSTAGE & BEYOND VOLUME 1 BY JIM SULLIVAN (PAPERBACK)
With over 26 years writing for the Boston Globe and two decades more writing for national publications from Creem to Newsweek, Jim Sullivan has interviewed and reviewed countless musicians, some multiple times. Though access is often hard to come by, Sullivan was able to engage with many of these superstars on a far more intimate level than journalists usually can or do. Backstage & Beyond Volume 1 now gathers Sullivan’s writings on an array of iconic artists – 21 of whom are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – whose music came to prominence in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Over the course of 350 pages, Sullivan shares fascinating, entertaining and occasionally hair-raising profiles of Jerry Lee Lewis, Tina Turner, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Nico, Brian Eno, Neil Young, Richard Thompson, David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Warren Zevon, Pete Townshend, Ray Davies and the Kinks, Dave Davies, Ginger Baker, Leonard Cohen, Marianne Faithfull, John Fogerty, Ian Hunter and Mott the Hoople, Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music, Robert Fripp and King Crimson, Darlene Love, Alice Cooper, Peter Wolf and J. Geils Band, Joe Perry and Aerosmith, Lemmy and Motörhead, George Clinton, Tangerine Dream, Joan Baez, and Roy Orbison. Rather than simply collect previously published articles as they originally appeared, Sullivan combed his archive to find everything he wrote about each artist, reworking the original pieces into more expansive views of these legendary musicians, chronicling their changing situations, outlooks, and experiences through the passage of time and his own unique perspective. Backstage & Beyond Volume 2 — which focuses on artists spanning Ramones, Sex Pistols, The Cars, and The Clash to The Cure, The Police, Beastie Boys, Puff Daddy, and Talking Heads — will follow in October.
“My hope is that the recollections contained here trigger some memories,” writes Jim Sullivan in the book’s preface, “bring you back to where you wanted to be – backstage and beyond, as it were. And if you weren’t around then, I hope this transports you back to several golden ages of rock and roll.”
“I’ve always admired Jim’s writing and his remarkable ability to get close to artists,” says Trouser Press Books Editorial Director Ira Robbins, “even those thought to be unapproachable: Lou Reed? Nico? Jerry Lee Lewis? Wow! I’m proud to help bring Jim’s past work to as wide an audience as it deserves.”
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ADVANCE PRAISE FOR BACKSTAGE & BEYOND VOLUME 1:
“Sullivan has been really successful at getting a huge list of artists to share what makes them come up with the music we’ve been loving for decades. He has a knack for peeking under the blanket and finding out what makes musicians human – and sometimes inhuman. That’s what makes the book so much fun to read.”
– Tom Hamilton (Aerosmith)
“Jim Sullivan is an expert interviewer with an uncanny ability to connect with his subjects. In Backstage & Beyond, he brings out the humanity in a host of rock and roll icons who are too often portrayed as godlike figures. This an intimate and revealing look at many of the major personalities of the classic rock era.”
– Tom Perrotta, author of Election, Tracy Flick Can’t Win,
The Leftovers, and Mrs. Fletcher
“Jim Sullivan has been on the front lines of rock and roll for 40-plus years, armed only with a notebook, a tape recorder and a deep knowledge of the music he fell in love with as a kid… These chats and rants go beyond the surface bromides we already know about these larger-than-life personalities and unlock the deeper stories they rarely share – by turns triumphant, tragic and never less than illuminating.”
– Greg Kot, co-host of Sound Opinions
“There’s a lot of history here, and a lot of reflecting on that history. For me, it’s interesting to see the conflict many artists have as they try to evaluate their own work and its place in the scheme of things. Jim Sullivan has been able to coax some of those reflections out of a broad spectrum of artists and it’s fascinating to read."
– Greg Hawkes (The Cars)
“We may have listened to the records, experienced the concerts or wandered backstage for brief encounters, but Jim Sullivan penetrates the minds of the artists. With candor and intimacy, these musicians reveal themselves to him. He takes us beyond the revelatory to the very creative process itself.”
– Legendary Boston DJ/Program Director Oedipus
“Sullivan fashions a kind of extended narrative, from interviews, performance reviews and his own thoughts and rethoughts on the music and the musicians who make it… Sullivan’s informed commentary and the professional and personal revelations he elicits from his subjects place Backstage & Beyond several leagues above the average rock read. At this late date, that’s saying something.”
–Writer/Broadcaster Gene Sculatti (The Catalog of Cool, For the Records)
“Jim Sullivan has always been unafraid to be a fan, a friend or a foe of his subjects.
Underneath it all is an undying love of music itself.”
–Peter Prescott (Mission of Burma)
“Having been on both ends of his many years of reviews and interviews with all manner of artists – subject and reader – I am always drawn to his writing; because I know he won’t have ambushed anyone or left them (us) feeling caught out, yet still end up with insight and history shared and some great stories. With Jim’s writing, it always feels like the interviewee thinks, ‘Well, that was pretty good’ at the end. I’ll take it.
So should you. Well…you should buy it, I mean."
– Hugo Burnham (Gang of Four)
“When I was a cocky young whippersnapper of a musician, songwriter, record store employee and student of English literature out in Los Angeles, I tended to appreciate the critics as much as the artists themselves. As far as I was concerned, James Boswell was as important as Samuel Johnson and at various times I felt the same for Lester Bangs and Lou Reed. This book reads like a Norton’s Anthology, a collection, a distillation of what mattered as only the best critics with the most heart can do.”
– Steve Wynn (The Dream Syndicate, The Baseball Project)
“How has Jim Sullivan maintained his access to the coolest artists in rock and roll for over 40 years?
...He’s a mensch who knows his sh*t!”
Andy Shernoff (The Dictators)
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jim Sullivan spent 26 years writing about music for the Boston Globe. His work has also appeared in USA Today, Boston Phoenix, Boston Herald, Trouser Press, Record, Creem, New Musical Express, The Guardian, Rock and Roll Globe, LA Weekly, Rock’s Back Pages, the Christian Science Monitor, Best Classic Bands, Newsweek, Playgirl, and The Forward.
ABOUT TROUSER PRESS BOOKS:
Trouser Press Books, a division of Trouser Press LLC, is an independent publisher based in New York City that specializes in music journalism and literary fiction. Editorial Director Ira Robbins co-founded the legendary rock magazine Trouser Press in 1974 and now operates its website. For more information, please visit www.trouserpressbooks.com.
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