Rock and Roll is Here to Stay
An anthology
W.W. Norton, 2000
I could fill footlockers with the material assembled for this anthology. (In fact, I have, and they are part of the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.)
This started life as a spiral-bound reader that students picked up at the copy shop for use in my honors seminar in rock’n’roll history. My then-agent, David Hendin, saw it on my desk one day and said, “Why don’t you turn this into a book?”
It took five years, but that little reader (15 articles, no pictures, binding that fell apart when you turned the page) grew into this mammoth volume with wonderful glossy photos, swell design and beautiful production. And the book costs less than the booklet. Go figure.
It took such a long time because I went through three editors at the publishing house — ending with Amy Cherry, the perfect editor — and a long struggle to find a “name” to put on the cover with mine, to help sell this to the masses. Luckily, Amy was able to convince America’s finest music writer, Peter Guralnick, to write the introduction.
Read my preface, “Thoughts on a Horny Poodle”
Reviews
“The incomparable Bill McKeen’s Rock and Roll is Here to Stay is a rock classic in its own right.” —Tom Wolfe
“If rock’n’roll is your religion, this just might be your bible.” —Maxim
“If you like rock and roll, you’ll love this raunchy, rollicking anthology–great writers, great music, and astounding musicians… —Carl Hiaasen
“The anthology…succeeds in gathering some of the best pop-music writing that’s ever appeared in print.” —The Dallas Morning News
“This is as great a rock party in prose as you could imagine.” —The Buffalo News
Here’s the table of contents:
William McKeen Preface
Peter Guralnick Introduction: Falling Into Place
I. DEFINITION OF TERMS
“What we talk about when we talk about rock and roll.”
Bob Dylan Bringing it all Back Home
Irvine Welsh In Me Around Me and Everywhere
Pete Townshend Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy
Nick Hornby Looter
Salman Rushdie A World Worthy of Our Yearning
Levon Helm, Martin Scorsese and Robbie Robertson
‘And if it Dances …’
II. ANCESTORS
“Jerry Lee … beat the boogie so hard that there was nothing left of the rhythm, nothing but the sounds of the Holy Ghost.”
Charlie Gillett From the introduction to ‘The Sound of the City’
Robert Johnson Me and the Devil
Alan Lomax The Land Where the Blues Began
Bob Dylan Blind Willie McTell
Robert Palmer From the Delta to Chicago
Greil Marcus The Myth of Staggerlee
James Miller King of the Delta Blues
Nick Tosches Jerry Lee Lewis Sees the Bright Lights of Dallas
Grace Lichtenstein and Laura Dankner Fats
Bumps Blackwell Up Against the Wall with Little Richard
Colin Escott and Martin Hawkins 706 Union Avenue
Charlie Gillett The Fives Styles of Rock and Roll
III. SUPERSTARDOM
“We sing the guitar electric.”
Brian Wilson Do You Remember?
Peter Guralnick Elvis, Scotty and Bill
Chuck Berry Got to Be Rock and Roll Music
Nelson George The Godfather of Soul
Philip Norman A Good Stomping Band
Tom Wolfe Words to the Wild
Patti Smith dog dream
Charles Shaar Murray Hendrix in Black and White
Joel Selvin These are the Good Old Days
Richard Goldstein Next Year in San Francisco
Peter Guralnick Return of the King
Terry Southern Riding the Lapping Tongue
Jaan Uhelszki I Dreamed I Was Onstage with Kiss
in my Maidenform Bra
Bob Marley with Timothy White Worth Dying For
Anthony DeCurtis A Life at the Crossroads
Dave Marsh I Wanna Know if Love is Real
Joyce Millman Primadonna
Jon Pareles Precious Oddball
Gavin Martin Articulate Speech of the Heart
IV. WEIRDNESS
“Fame requires every kind of excess.”
Mae Boren Axton Testimony in the Payola Hearing
Unknown The Plane Crash
Tina Turner with Kurt Loder A Fool in Love
Dave Marsh Merchants of Filth
Maureen Cleave More Popular than Jesus
Ronnie Spector with Vince Waldron Inflatable Phil
Stanley Booth Altamont
Richard Goldstein Gear
Pamela des Barres Every Inch of My Love
Don DeLillo Free of Old Saints and Martyrs
John Lennon The Ballad of John and Yoko
Jon Savage Ruined for Life
Robert McG. Thomas, Jr. Rock and Roll Tragedy
William S. Burroughs and Devo Fed by Things We Hate
Frank Zappa Statement to the Senate Commerce Committee
Lynn Hirschberg Strangelove
Jeffrey Rotter Our Little Satan
V. PRESENT AT THE CREATION
“The tape is going and that is Bob fucking Dylan over there singing, so this had better be me sitting here playing something.”
Doc Pomus Treatise on the Blues
James Brown with Bruce Tucker The T.A.M.I. Show
Patti Smith Rise of the Sacred Monsters
Al Kooper with Ben Edmonds How Does it Feel?
Jules Siegel A Teen-age Hymn to God
Joan Didion Waiting for Morrison
Bill Graham and Robert Greenfield Woodstock Nation
Michael Lindsay-Hogg Video Pioneer
Jackson Browne The Load Out
Nik Cohn Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night
Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain Punk Apostles
Tom McGrath Integrating MTV
Jason Gross Licensed to Download
VI. SOUL
“Unless my body reaches a certain temperature,
starts to liquefy, I just don’t feel right.”
Lucy O’Brien Girl Groups
Daniel Wolff A Change is Gonna Come
Patricia Smith Life According to Motown
Jon Landau Otis Redding, the King of Them All
Robert Gordon Dan and Spooner
Jerry Wexler with David Ritz The Queen of Soul
Gerri Hershey Soul Men
Roddy Doyle From ‘The Commitments’
David Ritz What’s Going On
Rickey Vincent The Mothership Connection
Michael Gonzales My Father Named Me Prince
Greg Tate Hip-Hop Defined
VII. CRITICS
“In the twentieth century, that’s all there is: jazz and rock and roll.”
Joe McEwen Little Willie John
Robert Christgau Rock Lyrics are Poetry (Maybe)
Paul Williams All Along the Watchtower
J.R. Young Reviews of ‘After the Goldrush’ and ‘Live Dead’
Cintra Wilson Of Cock Rock Kings and Other Dinosaurs
Ellen Sander Inside the Cages of the Zoo
Dave Hickey The Delicacy of Rock and Roll
Jeff Gomez Fanzine
Lester Bangs Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung
VIII. TRIBUTES
“Because when he was alive he could not walk,
but now he is walking with God.”
Lewis Shiner Saving Jimi
Lester Bangs Where Were You When Elvis Died?
Yoko Ono Statement to the Press
Joel Selvin More than `the Piano Player’
Mikel Gilmore Kurt Cobain’s Road from Nowhere
Phil Spector Save the Last Dance for Me