The story of how a greenhorn US university student obsessed with rock music eventually became one of the music industry’s best-known and most respected PR agents unfolds in Access All Areas: A Backstage Pass Through 50 Years of Music and Culture by Barbara Charone (White Rabbit, £20). In 1974, Charone decamped from Chicago to London, where she worked as a staff music writer for Sounds. As the 1980s rolled around, she transitioned into public relations, first with WEA (Warners Elektra Atlantic) and then, over 20 years later, as the co-founder of MBC PR (which looks after PR for big hitters such as Madonna, Metallica and Foo Fighters as well as many other music acts). Charone tells her story in music (but not necessarily her life, which receives, predictably, a lick of storm-resistant PR paint) in a conversational, chummy tone. If anyone, however, is expecting a gritty, tell-all expose of her high-profile clients (which, in fairness, she protects throughout like a mother lion), they will be sorely disappointed.
One person who doesn’t mind sharing, irrespective of the outcome, is Chris Blackwell. As the author (with “ghost” music writer Paul Morley) of The Islander: My Life in Music and Beyond (Simon & Schuster, £19.99), he outlines his founding of Island, the UK-based record label that was (and still is, to a degree) highly regarded for its approach to signing acts based on their creative and not commercial potential. With an upper-class background blend of aristocratic and entrepreneurial, Blackwell (“I am a member of the Lucky Sperm Club”) travelled between Jamaica and London, initiating crossover interest in ska/reggae music, taking a punt on U2 (“Bono kept on talking, never afraid to fail”), and eventually selling Island in the late 1980s for $300 million (€295m). It’s an enthralling read, rational and clever (and amusing: he didn’t sign Pink Floyd because “they seemed too boring”). In strictly commercial terms, his legacy may be the platform he gave to the likes of Bob Marley, U2 and Grace Jones, but lest we forget, it was Blackwell’s innate risk-taking that set up artistic, maverick blueprints for hundreds of indie labels to follow.
The Bowie Odyssey series (10 books covering each year of Bowie’s work in the 1970s) continues with the third, Bowie Odyssey 72, by Simon Goddard (Omnibus, £20). As a series, it’s an impressive undertaking by music writer Goddard; as an understanding of the year that brought Bowie’s name from cult to mainstream it is, perhaps even to the most clued-in fan, enlightening. If anything, the book is an object lesson in how to collate, ingest and digest details gathered from the hundreds of books written about Bowie since the late 1970s. In the hands of a less-skilled writer, the information would be there but not the prose, which sashays and swirls with all the style of a classic glam rock Bowie tune. A short book (140 pages of text) that crams everything in from the birth of Ziggy Stardust to the gestation of Aladdin Sane, Bowie Odyssey 72 is a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am addition to the best Bowie books you will ever read or need.
Alongside Bowie for the best part of the first half of the 1970s were, of course, Marc Bolan, Slade, Suzi Quatro, Sweet, David Essex and several other chart acts that were lumped under the umbrella genre of “glam rock”. Several were archetypal likely lads dressed in various layers of tinfoil, and even more were obvious bandwagon jumpers, but thanks to Glam — When Super Stars Rocked the World 1970-1974, by Mark Paytress (Omnibus, £30), wheat and chaff are separated in an orderly fashion. While respected music writer Paytress charts the “glam” credentials of Bowie, Elton John, Slade, Sweet and others, the through-line is Bolan, whose group T.Rex scored 11 top 10 UK hit singles from 1970-73, and whose appearances on Top of the Pops (he wore bright satin clothes, and spots of glitter under his eyes) effectively birthed glam rock. In tandem with expertly chronicled pop culture history is a wealth of illustrations that showcase the fashion sensibilities of a music genre often copied but never improved upon.
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You could say the same about Kraftwerk’s key contribution to electronic music, and in The Sound of the Machine: My Life in Kraftwerk and Beyond, by Karl Bartos, translated by Katy Derbyshire (Omnibus, £20), we have the inside story of why in Kraftwerk’s best moments, Bartos writes, “the compositions are a testament to our search for the poetry concealed in the sound of the machine”. He outlines his life from being a Beatles fan (hearing A Hard Day’s Night for the first time “was the moment when sound took on a new meaning”), studying at Düsseldorf’s Robert Schumann Conservatory, experiencing a performance by the American minimalist composer Steve Reich (“the music put me in a kind of hypnosis”), auditioning for the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and from there to joining, in 1974, Kraftwerk. “From the very beginning, I saw Ralf [Hütter] and Florian [Schneider] more as fine artists, later designers… They seemed to be convinced synthesisers would give rise to a new species of pop music.” Life after Kraftwerk (he left in 1990) continued, of course, but the aftertaste was bitter (“community ended, I felt, where financial interests began”). Nevertheless, Bartos plots his future solo and collaborative career course wisely, advising that whatever happens “when dealing with computers, you should never forget where the off switch is.”
Another person who has managed to stick around, despite negative circumstances, is PP Arnold, an American singer who started her career as a backing singer for Ike & Tina Turner and who subsequently experienced solo fame in London during the 1960s. There followed decades of session work, motivated as much by financial need as a rigid commitment to singing. Soul Survivor: The Autobiography, by PP Arnold (Nine Eight Books, £20), tells a captivating story of a behind-the-scenes yet highly credible performer who has endured personal tragedy and sustained a rollercoaster lifestyle (“musicians on the road are all just sex maniacs”) from the Rolling Stones to Primal Scream.
If it wasn’t so regularly amusing, Paper Cuts: How I Destroyed the British Music Press and Other Misadventures by Ted Kessler (White Rabbit, £18.99), would be depressing. Even the introduction is disheartening. Kessler, the former (and final) editor of Q, the UK monthly music magazine that sank in the summer of 2020 after 35 years as a fitful going concern, begins his memoir by writing that in 2004, the year he joined Q, “the internet still seemed like an opportunity, not an assassin”. While his life story and years at Q might not be of major interest to all but the worryingly nerdy British music magazine reader, his qualifications ring true for any avid music fan: “I could quote any Orange Juice or Pale Fountains lyric instantly. My Mastermind subject was the recorded work of The Fall, 1980-87.” Between autobiography, pop-cultural commentary, a fascinating run-in with maverick songwriter Kevin Rowland, and a sprightly epilogue, Kessler delivers a genial, insightful story. You may have had to be there for some of these tales, of course, but from signing off the dole to “searching for the spirit of rock’n’roll” in a Mini Metro, he tells and writes them well.
