oral history-style rock books

like The Dirt and Please Kill Me.

Want to read more.

Any recommendations?

'I Want My MTV' is instant classic

Everybody Loves Our Town and American Hardcore are both good too

Yeah, American HC was great.

Been meaning to read the MTV one - much potential for sleaze there.

kind of hilarious the histtory of grunge is by Mark Yarm.

Whiney OTM. MTV and Mark Yarm's grunge book are both terrific.

it's like if Please Kill Me was by Joey Bamone.

Punk: An Oral History by John Robb. Not usually a fan of John Robb's writing, but the majority of the book is made up of quotes from people that he's interviewed, so it doesn't really matter.

I love the storytelling craft of a good oral history - it's all in the juxtapositions, especially when it's conflicting versions of the same event. Yarm ends up saying a lot, very subtly, about the unreliability of memory.

Didn't really dig the MTV one. Got pretty repetitive after a while, though I guess they all do.

How is the Replacements book?

Annoying.

Pages and pages of people in cities and towns across the nation and around the world testifying as to when the cassette or needle dropped and they first heard the onlyest greatest band that ever mattered

And the most uses of sic you will ever see, many of them seemingly arbitrary

The Warren Zevon book, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, is pretty great.

Greg Prato wrote an oral history of grunge that came out a few years before the Yarm one. Also wrote an oral history of Blind Melon! Haven't read those, though. I am, however, very much looking forward to reading his Meat Puppets oral history.

Oh, man, Zevon book is awesome, forgot that was oral history.

Pixies oral history, of course!

We Got The Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story Of L.A. Punk.

And I agree re the Zevon one.

Gimme Something Better on San Francisco punk was pretty great. I just chanced on it in the local 2nd hand book shop.

Enjoyed Joel Selvin's book on the San Francisco ballroom era Summer Of Love though it's been a while since I read it.

Pete Fornatale's book on Woodstock was interesting. I don't rate his nephew much though.

John Robb's book on Punk Rock has been mentioned, his Death To Trad Rock was possibly even better. The weirder UK indie stuff from the 80s onwards.

Simon Reynolds's book of interviews Totally Wired is interviews so probably doesn't quite count. I did greatly enjoy it though as well as John Savage's book of interviews for England's Dreaming.

the Rough Trade oral history book was pretty captivating. IN Their Own Write too book on music journalism.

Leg's O 'Neil's Please Kill Me is a pretty much must read book if you're remotely interested in New York Punk. Thought Clinton Heylin's From The Velvets To The Voidoids was great too though that has a lot of him filling in history too

Andy Warhol Diaries - just one mouth speaking and not strictly rock but what a voice & history

there's a darby crash one that's pretty spectacular - darby's friends from early on speaking about the hangers-on toward the end are really amazing

I skimmed the MTV oral and found it repetitive AND annoying, mostly because I was music journo during those years- instead of kid watching- so I'm jaded about MTV

The Lynyrd Skynyrd oral history (compiled by Lee Ballinger) is tremendous, by far the definitive history of that band.

side question re: NYC punk & Please Kill Me

were The Misfits even in there? I know they were Jersey dudes but they played Max's and CBGB's, didn't they?

They were doing it at the same time as all those bands, but you never hear much about them as part of any scene.

Oral history of the Misfits would be awesome, but I guess Danzig is maybe too tightly wound to really do that.

The Misfits weren't mentioned in Please Kill Me, and I seem to remember Talking Heads were completely ignored because the writers hated them.

Wire's biography "Everybody loves a history" is an oral history, mainly quotes from the four members and related people - Mike Thorne etc. Very good, if you can find it.

The Misfits became better known via the later hardcore punk scene. While they played some gigs at CBGBs earlier, their albums didn't come out until later. Henry Rollins loved 'em, so that also has gotten them more linked to hardcore.

a.e. hotchner's rolling stones oral history 'blown away' is worth reading. his actual comments on the band and the era are hilariously stupid (he refers to the '60s generation as 'the jagger generation' as if that's a thing) and he has some unconvincing brian jones conspiracy theory, but he got some great interviews from marianne and anita. you also get some great great stuff from ian stewart, who calls the beatles one of the worst bands ever.

i think please kill me is entertaining, but it is a pretty weak "history of NYC punk" -- as mentioned above it ignores a lot of the main musical talents, and is focused more on gossipy stuff. fun to read, but not the be-all-end-all book on the subject.

To me, much of the best stuff in Please Kill Me is barely NYC-oriented (MC5, Stooges).

The problem I have with Please Kill Me is that, yeah, it satisfies the voyeuristic urge (as an oral history should), but in this case it comes at a price. For me at least, it left me both less attracted to and intrigued by most of the scene's characters than I had been before reading. It focuses on the shadows, so you really don't get much of a sense of the role that things like, oh, say, creativity played, or maybe even love ... of anything, be it music, freedom, energy, whatever. And of course everything gets swallowed up in the second half by the black hole that was heroin, and you're left with Johnny Thunders as the quintessential icon of the era. Maybe I should have expected all this. It's not as if I didn't know much of the history already. But let me just say that, by contrast, We Got the Neutron Bomb had pretty much the opposite effect w/r/t LA. There was plenty of nasty in that scene as well, but for whatever reason (maybe just weather?) the interviews there convey the joy (however fleeting) of subcultural invention.

Pixies oral history, of course!

thought this was the antithesis of what DL said above about the art of the oral history format - clumsy and repetitive and often dull, and marred by the regular intrusion of an unimpressive narrator.

Not a "rock" book, but Hear Me Talkin' To Ya is probably the definitive oral history music book.

John Savage's book of interviews for England's Dreaming.

yeah i was given a copy of this, without having read the original England's Dreaming, and enjoyed it, although it's pretty thick so i haven't gotten too far yet. fun to read these long Q&As with Malcom McLaren or Chrissie Hynde that go off-topic but still are totally fascinating and give a fuller picture of the time and place.

Jane's Addiction Whores is a pretty fun read, especially for the early years stuff

xpost Years ago I interviewed a couple of the Wire guys. Weeks after, they sent me a copy of the book, autographed by all four members. I thought that was pretty cool.

I'd say 'Punk: An Oral History' was superior to 'England's Dreaming'. It gives a much, much better and broader overview of things in my opinion.

New "Louder Than Hell" metal book is pretty solid. Covering a lot of nooks and crannies, underscoring some of these dudes were flat assholes, others good people. Goes out of its way to emphasize the impact of bands like, say, Faith No More in addition to the usual suspects. Plenty of expected gross stories, too.