As Kurt Blaukopf, an renowned Austrian sociologist of music pointed out, sociologists have a tendency to pursue minutely specialized approaches and then overgeneralize about them. Fricke's prose is somewhat professorial (maybe the translation from German helped), but he seems to have a better handle on the rock phenomenon as a whole than the great majority of academics. David Szatmary's social history of rock is more meaty and interesting, but Fricke gets the big picture better.

Peter Wicke sees Rock Music as a phenomenon of social action. This phenomenon produces new experience in art, that, within the framework of a highgrade, technology-dependent mass culture. Of course, while this characteristic of rock music functions as a aesthetical developement in the history of mass culture especially, it makes possible to express the real estates of teenager's life. Peter Wicke, as an analysist and social scientist, introduces a new vision to understand, not only for the rock music, but for the mass culture as a experience of everyday-lives. I think music, as a culture, must have a support which maintain its existence. In this sense, rock music also must have any kind of support for its existence. Wicke structures the support of rock music with the need of teenagers and midea industry. This vision of social-structural idea become a yardstick to explain the social phenomenon of teenagers' rock-cult. So we, from the vision of social-dependent characteristic of rock music, understand the real estates that rock music and its industry. Now from this book, we have establish a landscape of mass culture that is dominant to our everyday-lives.

Bright would have done well to trim this book by more than half. While there's plenty of interesting detail, it gets lost in tedious description of surrounding product and people. I was also annoyed by the frequent spelling errors (not counting British English of course). In all, I read this book at first enthusiastically but in the long run simply to finish it. It's a terrible bore. That's a shame considering the intriguing subject.

For years I searched store shelves in vain looking for a quality book on Peter Gabriel. When I at last looked online, I thought I had found what I needed. However, this biography reads more like a textbook than a warm or interesting biography. The author spliced the book together using available quotes and interviews, and seems to never have talked to Peter himself. And while there are many interesting tidbits, such as the fact that a schoolboy Gabriel once made a hat worn by Keith Richards of the Stones on TV, it really drags. Even I, a serious fan, found myself skipping through many sections. Worth the read? Yes. If you think of yourself as a serious fan. An enjoyable read? Not really. In fact, you may be disappointed in your hero when you learn how distant he was from his wife and family.

Unlike some other reviewers, I found this book to be highly readable and very informative. I think Bright does a great job getting into Gabriel's motivations and interests and this makes for a very good biography.

Gabriel has so many interests outside of his own music and it's especially nice to get these viewpoints in the biography. He is involved in human rights, world music, multimedia, alternative health, and psychological therapies. These other interests do tell you more about the man than just a standard "Gabriel-released-this-album-and-toured" work.

The only complaint I have is about the some of the extremely long chapters. The book could be logically broken in better places to make keeping your place easier!

Besides the lack of fact-checking mentioned above, I was bothered by the lack of basic writing skills Webb displays. The occasional misplaced apostrophe I can ignore, but this book is rife with mistakes, the most annoying of them being the author's habit of using incomplete sentences.

However, if you're not bothered by that sort of thing, this book is a quick and interesting (if not particularly accurate) read.

Adam Webb has done a good thing by bringing attention to Dennis Wilson's wonderful music. But this book needed some decent editing and fact checking in a big way. Webb continually makes mistakes that even the novice Beach Boy fan would catch. For example by stating that Dennis was not at the "Surfin" sessions. It is well documented that Dennis was there, his voice is obviously on the recording, and he sang a lead line on the B-side "Luau". Webb also states that Dennis sang lead on "Catch A Wave". No. That was Mike Love. Webb states that Brian's song "Lay Down Burden" was on his BW solo LP when in fact it was on his "Imagination" LP. These kind of annoying errors are rampant in this book. It takes away from the believability and enjoyment factor in my opinion.

I think this book rates really well alongside Jon Stebbin's book on Dennis from last year. There is some overlap, but Webb concentrates more on the music and deflating some myths surrounding the Beach Boys most underrated member. Most people know about Dennis for his rock n roll lifestyle and association with Charles Manson, but few know that he also created an awesome body of music.

Maybe it's a little one-sided but there are some cool interviews with key collaborators and Webb writes strongly with a genuine passion for Dennis Wilson's work. If you're intruiged by what you read here I strongly recommend that you search high and low for a copy of "Pacific Ocean Blue".

This book was for me, unputdownable. Partly because I really didn't know that much about Elvis in detail, and was glad to find a recent book with all the updated information on his life and death. This book covers everything, although it seemed that it wanted to show negative things more than positive. I came to the conclusion that it was balanced, but perhaps just a little toward the negative. In the end he was really just a poor kid who didn't know what had hit him when he became an icon and his life a public feeding frenzy. It's revealed that Elvis died of a genetic heart condition, but it really seems more like Colonal Tom Parker killed Elvis by acting as though Elvis was a money making machine. I drew my own conclusions about Elvis a long time ago, however this book helped to understand the man behind the phenomenon and legend that is and always will be, Elvis the King.

Yes, much of this biography has information covered in other books, but this book pulls ALL of that information together into ONE book. Plus,it adds interviews with those who knew Elvis to give a balanced perspective of the King. No, he wasn't an angel, but he wasn't as bad as Albert Goldman's (1980) sensationized bio made him out to be. If you're a fanatical Elvis fan, you will have probably already read most of the books this bio uses. However, if you are just starting out as a "casual" Elvis fan, this is THE book to read to get started knowing about the life of King, from superstar and philanthropist to a poor boy from a dysfunctional family, warts and all. It's a fast, easy read and a book I consider a MUST for all Elvis collectors. The book doesn't hide from Elvis' bizarre side, but also takes a balanced view of his life as the one and only KING of Rock and Roll.

Others have been disappointed that this book doesn't discuss Elvis' music as much as his private life. But note the title! Taken this way, it is one of the best chronologies of his life. I have read. It was interesting to read it after having just read Guralnick's 2 tomes. In fact I was sorry Guralnick didn't have the latest info on Elvis' autopsy and cause of death. It is a great book for "beginners".

One wonders why anyone would devote an entire book to the waning days of the Beatles' studio productions. These were acrimonious times for the once Fab Four, and the individual nature of each of their songs shows that they were the product of solo artists, not a unified band, who were using the others simply as a backing group. The breakup had already occurred creatively before it was institutionalized legally and corporately. However, Mr. Doggett chooses to sift through these lackluster sessions anyway, largely through the use of previously published accounts, many of them sketchy or inaccurate, rather than conduct any first-hand archival research or fresh interviews of his own. The result is a dismal rehash of old stories about very dull recording sessions. The shopworn tales are not likely to interest anyone other than diehard Beatles fanatics, and they will have seen it all before and heard it all on assorted recordings, both legitimate and bootleg. The shabby! result is not surprising considering Doggett's shaky sources, two of whom he dedicates his work to in words so reverentially gushy they should be reserved for deities, not hacks like these.

Betty Mitchell

Perhaps a bit too exhaustive and too reverential treatment of the Beatles' last two albums. There are other books available detailing all of their albums in a single volume. This does not add much to any of the others.

The circumstances surrounding the break-up of the Beatles have been shrouded in myth ever since the group assembled their Let It Be project. Doggett's book provides a gripping and persuasive account of the tensions that wracked the group in their final years, drawing on the hours of conversations and chaotic music-making captured on the so-called Get Back tapes. This material, never previously published, allows the reader to feel like a fly-on-the-wall as the Beatles implode. Remarkably, it's Paul McCartney, usually pegged as the villain of the piece, who emerges as the book's hero - the only one of the Fab Four prepared to stand up for the integrity of the group's reputation. Doggett's book altered the way in which I looked at these sessions, and indeed the entire responsibility for the break-up of the Beatles.

This is a very simplistic "picture-book" about the dead. There are much more authoritative/informative books around about the history and sociology of the dead.

The pictures here are amazing and truly make it worthwhile for the dead fan. The story could be a lot clearer and informative.

If your looking for lyrics to R.E.M.'s songs, don't look here. This book merely list all of R.E.M.'s songs from 1983-1991 and provides a brief synopsis of each song. It also has a few cool pictures of the band, nothing more.

At first glance the deserves five stars for the sheer ability to create a comprehensive guide (it's thick!) to a large and beautiful area like the South Platt... unfortunately it must drop to three stars after actually using the guide. You must be able to think on your feet while using this guide. While it may contain large amounts of information, some of it is just wrong and even conflicts with itself. (i.e. Bucksnort Slab is on one side of the road on one map, and on the other side of the road on another) It also contains GPS locations for most rocks (another accomplishment) but at the same time it's in a format specific only to a specific GPS receiver. I'm an Electrical Engineer and it took me a lot of work to be able to convert them into something usable.

A couple of stars for the most comprehensive book out there, and probably the best choice at this time. But it definately isn't a bulletproof source of knowledge, and requires you to question the book.

I would have to agree with the anonymous writer from Florida on most accounts. I choose to give this one star instead of two because of the wasted potential this book could have been. Any amateur could have written such a simple summary of the careers of Billy Joel, Simon & Garfunkel, Eric Clapton, etc. Pete Fornatale is giving us nothing new there.

In addition, Fornatale frequently fails to even quotes the lyrics of the songs acurately. His expansion on the song's true meanings are suspect at best. As a disc jockey for many years, he could've provided some interesting insight on what each song-writer was trying to say in his song lyrics. However, Fornatale merely goes off on every possible tangent to illustrate all possible meanings each song could have. This makes the book very painful to read and quite unfocused.

On top of all the incessant ramblings, Fornatale's analysis is very questionable. In his analysis of the Rolling Stones, Time Waits For No One, Fornatale misleads the readers thinking that if you blow an opportunity to succede in life, another one will come along only with different players. Whereas that may indeed in happen in life, the song merely gives the message to make the most of all your opportunties because they don't last for you, me, or anyone. The analysis for Presence of The Lord doesn't hit the point as well. Having read a book analyzing Eric Clapton's songs, the meaning behind Presence Of The Lord is that Eric who never was a religious man just wanted to Thank G-d for the little things in life. Mr. Fornatale's lack of research caused him to miss the mark again.

The premise of this book was to show that Rock N Roll wasn't just about sex, drugs, and rock n roll. Yet, Fornatale includes the Rolling Stones song Satisfaction in this book. This signature Stones song is clearly written from the point of view of someone who is just looking for sex, drugs, and rock n roll. What about the line,"He Can't be a man because he don't smoke the same cigarettes as me". Its obvious what kind of Cigarettes he's referring to. The last verse refers to Mick trying to find some girl to score with. Mr. Fornatele, you should be embarrased to include this song as an uplifting wholesome rock n roll song.

On top of all that, the format for each brief chapter is oh so redundant. Why couldn't our author merely write a simple analysis without categorizing everything? It all sounds the same anyway.

For every good moment in this batch(there are a few most particularly pertaining to Bruce Springsteen) there are about three or four bad moments. Mr. Fornatale, I implore you to research your material before publishing your next book. Glance at this in the book store for a few minutes but don't bring it to the cash register.

When I saw the title of this book, I expected a tongue in cheek exposition of classic rock songs and their "meanings". However, rather than being humorous, this book is quite serious. It is sort of like reading a secular version of "Our Daily Bread" or other religious devotional guide. Each entry has a brief but interesting background on the artist and the song (the reason for two stars rather than one), followed by a reflection and some questions or exercises designed to put into practice the lessons taught by the songs. These reflection and question sections are overly serious and didactic, and it is the contrast between the somewhat "cute" concept behind the book, and the "preachy" tone of the meditations that makes it quite unsatisfying.

This book offers great insight and knowledge into many popular classic rock songs. Many of the life lessons and messages are obvious, such as the Beatles 'All You Need is Love' and Billy Joel's 'Just the Way You Are.' However, there are some songs analyzed by the authors whose meanings are not quite understood by the songs titles' and requires a deeper, more focsued listening. I love how the book makes mention of Bruce Springsteen's 'Badlands' in a positive manner...it truly is a song to get you moving and think positive. If you are a classic rock and roll fan, you will highly enjoy this book and the insight that it reveals about popular songs.