2025 Reading - Part I

The Beatles, Lennon & Me

By Pete Shotton and Nicholas Schaffner

1983

By this point, I think I've read nearly every book on the Beatles that contains any worthwhile information (there are a zillion Beatles books out there, but only a small percentage really have anything of value to add to the conversation). This was one that I had neglected to get under my belt up until the start of the year.

For those who don't know, Pete Shotton was John Lennon's childhood best friend, and the two of them remained incredibly close up until the breakup of the Fab Four (or somewhere around there, I don't 100% remember. I read this in January). There is lots of fascinating insight Shotton's memoir offers, as he had a perspective very few did: he knew Lennon pre-fame, and got what mostly seemed to be an unguarded version of the famously-guarded musician. To wit, many of the stories here (especially concerning their teenage years) are pretty ribald and peppered with curse words and stories about bodily fluids that come from the nether-regions, which, again, is pretty rare for a tome concerning the Beatles. If you wish to know John Lennon's record for honking it in one day, you're in luck!

Two pretty infamous Beatle anecdotes originated from here, that you've probably heard by now if you care anything about the Mop Tops-- the groupwank sessions, of which Pete was a participant (I am weirdly proud to let you all know that despite not having read this book, I did know about that years before it made headlines recently-ish), and the allegation that John and the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein had some sort of sexual encounter on their oft-speculated-about trip to Barcelona together. The latter here spawned a well-regarded short film!

I would consider it essential Beatles reading, even if the information volunteered here doesn't have much to do with their creative process (although Shotton does claim he contributed a line to Eleanor Rigby) or artistry or history outside of what Shotton was privy to. If you want to see the most mythologized figures of 20th-century pop culture humanized, this is a good place to go.

Sick on You: The Disastrous Story of Britain's Great Lost Punk Band

By Andrew Matheson 

2015

There are two books that I read this year that had the greatest impact on me; one is this one (and the other we won't be getting to in this instalment).

I had been meaning to listen to the Hollywood Brats' album for quite awhile, and finally did so at the start of this year. I was blown away. For my money, it's one of the best pure rock 'n roll albums ever recorded. The sound of that record is the sound I've always wanted to hear from rock music, Stones-influenced sleaze glammed out to the extreme. The New York Dolls, one of my favorite bands of all time, are the only other group who hit this sweet spot for me just as perfectly (the Dolls are often a point of comparison for the Brats, although in this book Matheson claimed they weren't influenced by them at all-- which I don't buy). Why did they just make one proper album? How did they presage the explosion of punk rock by a couple of years? Where did these guys come from, and where did they go?

The band's founder and frontman, Andrew Matheson, answers all these questions here with a vivid and hilarious narrative style. He walks us through the band's origins, when he arrived in the UK as a teenager armed with nothing but a wad of cash, some records and a guitar (which he was promptly semi-swindled out of). We follow the Hollywood Brats' struggle to exist in the first place, and after that, their struggle to not implode in on themselves. Young an' rowdy rock an' rollers who keep seeming to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, despite their talent. I won't spoil the many tales that comprise their journey, but I would be remiss not to mention the fact that Cliff Richard of all people lets the band stay in one of his mansions while he's not using it, and what ensues reads like a debauched episode of The Monkees on crack.

The Brat's album is phenomenal, but was released after their demise. Malcolm MacLaren tried to revive the group shortly after but Matheson turned him down, causing the impresario-in-training to focus his attention to his other going musical concern, the burgeoning Sex Pistols, whom the Brats influenced. The Clash and several other seminal punks took more than a few cues from the Brats, yet they remain relatively obscure unlike their peers in this sense such as the Velvet Underground, the Stooges and so forth-- a secret for those who want to seek it out. It's a shame.

A further shame is that Matheson passed in May of this year with little fanfare. The Brats' drummer Louis Sparks (maybe the heart of this book) also departed a few years back, and the sole piece of info I could find about that was his obituary on a crematorium website. The group sorta-reformed (and released a single) in 2019, but it looks like the story has come to an anti-climactic end. Do yourself a favor and listen to their album if you haven't. Keep Brat-dom alive, it deserves it.

Dead Man's Curve: The Rock 'n' Roll Life of Jan Berry

By Mark A. Moore

2021

I mentioned this book in another post, so I will reiterate: it's the definitive tome on Jan Berry and Jan & Dean in general. Exhaustively comprehensive, sometimes to a fault, it covers everything one should know about the massively-underrated pop duo and then some.

Jan Berry is an unsung genius of 1960s music, so if you are unfamiliar with why I make such an assertion, I would point you in the direction of this book. You'll gain an appreciation for just how much the guy accomplished and pioneered in such a short window of time, starting with his professional-quality DIY recording studio he built in garage as a teenager.

Hank Williams: The Biography

By Colin Escott, with George Merritt and William MacEwen

1994

A captivating account of the life of one of country music's Mount Rushmore figures. Does a good job of separating fact from fiction, especially in regards to sanitized narratives that were pushed (predominantly) by Williams' ex-wife Audrey Sheppard after his death. Quite tragic overall, the man had some real demons and never seemed to be quite able to get it together long enough to reach stability (although this is well-known by now). I don't have too much to add here, really. If you're a fan of country this is an essential story, and if you're not I would wager you'll still find it a fascinating tale.

Ginger Geezer: The Life of Vivian Stanshall

By Lucian Randall and Chris Welch

2001

The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah band have been a favorite of mine for many years, and Vivian Stanshall was an artist like few others both within and outside of it. One of the great British figures of the 20th-century, his boundlessly creative and unique artistry gets the retrospective it deserves here. Much like the Hank Williams book mentioned above, this is a musician whose story ends in tragedy and who seemed rather tormented during his life. The book doesn't shy away from any of this, it's a warts-and-all portrait of Stanshall. 

What I truly enjoyed about it is that it analyzed Stanshall the artist and human being on his own level and truly engaged with what he left the world, rather than treating him like some kind of wacky cartoon character or novelty act like many recollections of the man often do. Randall and Welch are clearly two people who had a sincere appreciation of Stanshall's body of work and his specialized place in the history of the performing arts.

Walt Disney: The Triumph of The American Imagination

By Neal Gabler

2001

When we hear the name "Walt Disney" nowadays, we don't really think of a person. We think of an entertainment company that is practically omniscient by this point. If we try to envision the man who bore that name, what we see is still not so much a human being but a symbol. Someone who was effectively turned into a mascot for themselves.

If you ask ten different people for their opinion on Walter Elias Disney, you will likely receive ten different points of view. He was "Uncle Walt", the jovial storyteller who wanted us to know that it was okay to believe in magic, because he was going to bring it to us. He was "Disney", the cold and calculating media conglomerate that easily vanquishes anyone who stands in its path to world domination. He was an innovator; a forward-thinker who was completely obsessed with the idea of progress and wanted the world to be its best self. He was a close-minded crank who eventually developed some stubborn and backward notions, seeming threatened by anything that he couldn't understand. He created a studio that was a haven for artists, a mecca with a "one-for-all and all-for-one attitude" where he worked hand-in-hand with creative talent to realize a shared vision. He was an unreachable boss who handled the idea of his staff unionizing disastrously and made enemies of many of them when they were forced by his own stubbornness to go on strike. He was a friend to everyone and wanted the whole world to be included in his whimsical fantasies, regardless of race or creed. He was a symbol of American imperialism whose works include racist and regressive moments dotted throughout.

What's the truth? How did this walking contradiction, who simultaneously represented the best of us and the worst of us, exist?

Author Neal Gabler pulled off quite a remarkable feat: he was granted completely unrestricted access to the Disney archives in order to write this biography, and Disney the company had absolutely no say over the final product. As a result, we get what has to be the most well-rounded, three-dimensional portrait of a guy who seems so impossible to pin down. Gabler's overarching theory, which I agree with, is that Walt Disney was a man who was hurt by the real world many times and consequently aimed to create a world of his own where everything would be just to his liking. 

This results in Walt's most admirable qualities: the constant drive to blaze forward, to pioneer new technologies and take the medium of animation further than anyone could have possibly conceived of it going before. The care and craftsmanship he personally poured into projects such as Snow White, Fantasia and Steamboat Willie as he took each and every frame under his microscope a dozen times, made the impossible a reality, opened new horizons for artists and brought joy to countless people. It also resulted in his worst qualities: whenever an issue presented itself that seemed incongruous with his fantasy world, he wanted no part of it. He sided with some nasty characters during the Disney studio strike of 1941, and viewed the animators trying to get what they were owed as a personal betrayal. He named names during the McCarthy hearings after becoming paranoid that the entity of communism was gunning to take his studio away from him and would possess certain employees in its effort to do so. The most apt demonstration of this is when he wanted to create a movie that would promote racial equality and he personally went above-and-beyond to get its star, James Baskett, an Academy Award in 1948, a time when racism was even more deeply-ingrained into American society than it is today. His desire for harmony amongst mankind was genuine, yet he still viewed the world through the simplistic lens of the pop culture he was familiar with, offering a foolish view of what those who weren't white were like-- the resulting movie was Song of The South, an Uncle Tom-ish picture that is frequently cited as a symbol of everything backwards and bigoted about the Disney studio's body of work, attempting to treat the black characters as dignified but coming across as condescending.

Gabler's biography is the definitive word on Disney as far as I'm concerned-- the research was clearly exhaustive and it comes across in the detailed final product. Yet it's not merely a mechanical reciting of the events that happened that happened throughout Disney's lifetime; it manages to be an engrossing, living and breathing portrayal of a man who poured his blood, sweat and tears into creating a kinder world for himself to live in, yet often failed to establish meaningful connections with the people around him in doing so, frequently shutting himself off in the bubble that world he had constructed allowed him to stay in.

This is it for part one! Part two will be up... I dunno. Soon I hope. I'm busy!

Playlist: Blow Your Mind With Jan & Dean!

Nowadays, when you hear the names "Jan & Dean", it's typically as a quick footnote in discussions about the Beach Boys. They were America's Band™'s brothers-in-arms during the early days of what would become known as Surf Rock, and Brian Wilson had his first no. 1 single with them, as he co-wrote Surf City. They're cast aside as a mere stepping stone in the trajectory of one of the 21st century's greatest songwriters-- which, in all fairness, is one helluva shadow to be steeped in-- but at the end of the day, they were left behind in the Boys' dust and teenage symphonies to God; a nostalgic memory of a simpler scene where the only concerns were hot rods and hot dogs and two girls for every guy.

Is this all they were? I would argue an emphatic no. Jan & Dean actually have quite the interesting and even innovative history/catalogue under their belts, one that was stopped in its promising tracks by a tragic accident. 

Did you know? That Jan Berry began his recording career in his garage in 1957, at the mere age of 16, when he assembled a professional-quality recording studio there on his lonesome?-- one of the earlier D.I.Y. efforts! His production credits don't end there; once he was a popstar proper, he was one of the first to "play the studio", as they say. He was instrumental in assembling the Wrecking Crew, the team of studio musicians who would play on several of the most important recordings of their era, and in general he took a forward-thinking approach, pioneering different techniques that no less than the aforementioned Brian Wilson himself credited as a major influence on his own then-burgeoning interest in producing his own music. 

This is a tangent, though. If you'd like to read more about the life and career of Jan Berry, I highly recommend Mark A. Moore's comprehensive tome Dead Man's Curve: The Rock 'n' Roll Life of Jan Berry (admittedly, if the book has a fault it's that it spends a bit too much time dwelling on the minutiae here and there, even for my obsessive self. But it's still a great and definitive read). 

If this was the case, you may scream at me through your screen, hoping to inflict psychic damage on the author of this post, then how come I've never heard any of these allegedly mind-blowing Jan & Dean songs? Where do we go beyond Surf City?

Guess what! I've compiled a concise, not-too-long playlist that gives you a little rundown of what the duo were capable of in their prime. At the bottom of this post, you'll find a link to this playlist on Spotify, but here are the tracks/links to them on YouTube (I'm using uploads that seem to be official, but if you're ever reading this and they appear to be taken down, just give me a holler in the comments and I'll try to rectify that).

Without further ado!

Blow Your Mind With Jan & Dean

The far-out sounds of two boys who drove beyond Surf City

Girl, You're Blowing My Mind - Jan & Dean

Kicking off this mixtape is the track that inspired its name. Believe it or not, like the often-entwined-in-this-story Brian Wilson and his SMiLE, Jan & Dean had their own semi-lost ambitious psychedelic masterwork that us diehards stubbornly insist would have changed some things had it come out. The album is called Carnival of Sound, and it's available on streaming nowadays, and I would definitely recommend you give the full thing a listen at some point. Girl You're Blowing My Mind introduces the album just as it does this playlist, and it serves as a wonderful welcome into the universe Jan was trying to create. A wild soundscape that beckons you forth towards a story of sitars and trippy atmospheres and, of course, girls.

I Can't Wait To Love You - Jan & Dean

This is my personal favorite Jan & Dean song (and one of my favorite songs in general). It's the one that made my ears stand up and give the duo a more thorough look in the first place. A lovely, mid-60s jangle-pop ode to the adrenaline rush romance can give ya. Easily on par with what the hip acts of the moment (The Byrds, The Lovin' Spoonful, and yes, the Beach Boys... have I mentioned them here yet?) were doing in 1966. The record it stems from, Folk 'n Roll, is another LP of theirs I'd recommend listening to in full at some point. It's a strong effort (save for The Universal Coward, a bafflingly out-of-step with the times attack on those opposed to the draft, that Dean refused to help record. Supposedly it didn't represent Jan's politics either, but rather his provocateur streak, and he penned it just to be a shit-disturber in the rock 'n pop scene), and copies on vinyl aren't too hard to come by since it's not a very rare or sought-after album. I have it in my record collection, in great condition too, courtesy of some random milk crate in a flea market.

Where Were You When I Needed You? - Jan & Dean

Another cut from Folk 'n Roll, this time a cover. This song originated with the Grass Roots, a garage-ish band assembled by songwriters P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri as a vehicle for their efforts, that is nowadays probably best-remembered for including The Office's Creed Bratton at one point. J&D's rendition of the song is my favorite take on it, complete with snarling proto-Johnny Rotten (I sort of kid, I doubt he ever heard this) vocals and a recurring bouncing bass-motif. Jan's orchestration and production skills really shine here.

Move Out Little Mustang - Jan & Dean

Co-written by-- not sure if you've ever heard of him-- Brian Wilson. One of the "car songs" that were in vogue for a moment there in 1964, hovering around the point in time when four lads from Liverpool would take a plane over to the US of A and change the music scene forever in their wake. This track has a trancelike, almost cosmic groove to it that suggests the more ambitious pastures Jan (who didn't write this one, but produced it still) and Brian would be headed for shortly.

I Know My Mind - Jan & Dean

We return to Carnival of Sound for a song with a tragic undercurrent to it. In April of 1966, Jan would be critically injured in a car wreck that left him with serious brain damage. Miraculously, throughout the years he was able to recover his faculties to a point where he could speak, sing, write and produce again.  Over the next few years, he would attempt to record much of CoS. It's been theorized that I Know My Mind was a statement from Jan on his condition-- I can't do quite as much as I used to, but I'm still here. A mellow, reflective sound and pace defines the track.

Laurel & Hardy - Jan & Dean

Another moment from the Carnival sessions, this time much more joyous in nature. Jan pays homage to his comedy heroes Stan and Ollie (even including a soundbite from the two towards the end), insisting that they are timeless and will remain as such, even after both men had shed their mortal coils. Perhaps I'm biased as a fellow fan of the two, but I think Jan's assessment has still proven correct, even here in the big ol' 2025. Oh, by the way-- there is a demo recording of the tune with Jan's friend and Monkee-er around Davy Jones singing guide vox!

I Found A Girl - Jan & Dean

The introductory song off Folk 'N Roll and another great, exuberant jangly tune about love. This one surges with excited energy, as the boys rush into the studio to tell us the happy news.

The Joker Is Wild - Jan & Dean

So enamoured by the 1966 take on Batman with Quahog's own Adam West was Jan, that him and Dean put out an entire album paying tribute to it, drenched in the camp and humor that defined that take on the not-so-Dark Knight. It's sort of hit-and-miss (and a little racist during some parts of the spoken-word Goon Show-esque segments), but is a quirky artifact of the time that does have a couple of stand out moments. In my opinion, this song that pays tribute to the Joker before he lived in a society, complete with cackles and some circus-like moments to boot, is the best offering off the record and yet another great showcase of Jan's skills as a producer and arranger.

Love and Hate - Jan & Dean

Back to the Carnival for Jan's blunt assessment of the two sides that lurk within all of us. It definitely seems to have been inspired by the times, which in this case would've been the trippy transitional era between the acid-soaked, idealistic Love Generation, and the crash back to reality helmed by those who insisted The Dream Was Dead in the wake of Altamont and a chorus line of the hippie heroes dying off in quick succession. The conflict makes itself known here by alternating the song between urgent, anxious thundering crashes in the chorus and a more blissed-out psychedelic approach in the verses, soaring out over the chants of "HATE! HATE! HATE!" from just before, encouraging us to let love L-U-V win out no matter how tough it may be.

Bucket 'T' - Jan & Dean

Like Move Out Little Mustang, we find the duo with one foot in the hot-rodding camp of yesterday and the other foot stepping towards tomorrow. An infectious ode-- this one co-written by Dean!-- to the vintage (even then) modified Ford Model-Ts, complete with a catchy chant that will be stuck in your head for the rest of the week and a guitar tone that seems to somewhat anticipate more psychedelic sounds that were to come. This track was a favorite of Keith Moon's, who took lead vocals on a cover version recorded by the Who during sessions for A Quick One.

The Beat That Can't Be Beat - Jan & Arnie

Readers who have been paying attention-- there will be a quiz on this-- might have noticed a stranger's name in the place of where Dean's is supposed to go above. This was a song recorded before there was officially a Jan & Dean, during a brief period of time when Dean was in the army and Jan's high school classmate Arnie Ginsburg was therefore his Garfunkel of choice. This one hails from 1958, and is one of the fabled tracks cut in Jan's garage studio (with some overdubs at Radio Recorders in Santa Monica). It's a blend of doo-wop and rock 'n roll energy that precedes the Beach Boys by a few years (note the wonderful harmony stack here! Surely Brian took a note or two), that I've always felt was overlooked in favor of the fun-but-inferior ode to boobs Jennie Lee.

Fan Tan - Jan & Dean

Our final foray into the Carnival of Sound (for now-- again, go listen to it in full!) is Jan's tribute to... gum. Apparently he really liked this brand of gum and decided to write a song about it in all its glory... the original perfume flavor! I've never had Fan Tan gum (I believe it's been discontinued), and I had never even heard of it prior to listening to this. I am morbidly curious what the "perfume flavor" was like. Is there a deodorant flavor as well? Flavors aside, this is a delightful song that seems to swell and swirl around you as you listen, with some gleeful orchestration and harmonies. Singing the praises of gum.

Dead Man's Curve - Jan & Dean

Closing out our compilation is the one that very well may have been Jan's crowning achievement, a song that would loom over their legacy like a spectre. Dead Man's Curve was Jan's production masterpiece, using sound effects and tight, meticulous orchestration to propel it forward and tell a story. The tale of a cocky hot-rodder who dares to race on the infamous, and real, road that's a magnet for accidents. Looney Tunes voice maestro Mel Blanc had a pretty serious car accident there two years before this 1963 track was released-- and thankfully recovered fully, but had to record some of his dialogue as that modern-stone age neighbor Barney Rubble from his hospital bed as he recuperated. And three years after the release, Jan himself would too face a near-fatal fate, the one that put him out of commission for quite some time and stopped an ambitious, promising artist in his tracks, on that very road. 

"You won't come back from Dead Man's Curve..."

Thankfully, Jan proved his own lyrics wrong and progressed quite far after nearly meeting his maker. He pressed on and continued to create, his drive unstoppable as ever, with mixed results. In 1978, Dead Man's Curve became the title of a made-for-TV biopic about him and Dean that... isn't great. (But features the world's most beloved rock star Mike Love, in a cameo as himself! Wow!) Whatever you may think of the film's quality (and accuracy, which has been called into question many times), it sparked a resurgence of interest in the duo and brought them back together. Jan & Dean performed and recorded together on and off until Jan's passing in 2004.

As promised at the start, the Spotify version of this playlist is right below: