Overview

Jim Sullivan spent 26 years writing about music for the Boston Globe and two decades more writing for national publications. He has interviewed and reviewed countless musicians, many of them multiple times. Access to such A-list stars is hard to come by in the first place, but Sullivan got to know many of them well enough to engage them on a far more intimate level than journalists usually can or do. The first volume of his music-writing anthology focuses on artists who came to prominence in the 1950s and '60s. Twenty-one of them are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Rather than simply collect up previously published articles as they originally appeared, Sullivan combed through his archive to find everything he wrote about each artist and worked the pieces together into a more expansive time-passages view that chronicles their changing situations, outlooks and experiences. Backstage & Beyond Volume 1 includes fascinating, entertaining and occasionally hair-raising profiles of Jerry Lee Lewis, Ian Hunter & Mott the Hoople, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Nico, Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry & Roxy Music, Robert Fripp & King Crimson, Peter Gabriel, Warren Zevon, Pete Townshend, Ray Davies & the Kinks, Dave Davies, Ginger Baker, Leonard Cohen, Marianne Faithfull, John Fogerty, Tina Turner, Neil Young, Richard Thompson, Darlene Love, Alice Cooper, Peter Wolf & the J. Geils Band, Joe Perry & Aerosmith, Lemmy & Motörhead, George Clinton, Tangerine Dream, Joan Baez, k.d lang and Roy Orbison. In the preface, Sullivan writes, ""My hope is that the recollections contained here ... trigger some memories, bring you back to where you wanted to be - backstage and beyond, as it were. And if you weren't around then, I hope this transports you back to several golden ages of rock and roll.""

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Reviews

"""Sullivan has been really successful at getting a huge list of artists to share what makes them come up with the music we've been loving for decades. He has a knack for peeking under the blanket and finding out what makes musicians human - and sometimes inhuman. That's what makes the book so much fun to read."" -Tom Hamilton of Aerosmith ""These are wonderful stories across the whole range of popular music, by one of rock's finest journalists. As history lengthens, and some of these legends move on. these become increasingly precious fragments of lives lived at the sharp edge of music."" -Richard Thompson ""Jim Sullivan is an expert interviewer with an uncanny ability to connect with his subjects. In Backstage & Beyond, he brings out the humanity in a host of rock and roll icons who are too often portrayed as godlike figures. This an intimate and revealing look at many of the major personalities of the classic rock era."" -Tom Perrotta, author of Election, Tracy Flick Can't Win, The Leftovers and Mrs. Fletcher ""These chats and rants go beyond the surface bromides we already know about these larger-than-life personalities and unlock the deeper stories they rarely share - by turns triumphant, tragic and never less than illuminating."" -writer and broadcaster Greg Kot (Sound Opinions) ""The Jerry Lee Lewis chapter (itself worth the price of admission) segues to one on Mott's Ian Hunter, whose hero was Lewis, which leads to Bowie, who made hitmakers of Mott, then to Bowie, Iggy, and Lou Reed, and... Sullivan's informed commentary and the professional and personal revelations he elicits from his subjects place Backstage & Beyond several leagues above the average rock read. At this late date, that's saying something."" -writer and broadcaster Gene Sculatti (The Catalog of Cool, For the Records: Close Encounters With Pop Music) ""This book reads like a Norton's Anthology, a collection, a distillation of what mattered as only the best critics with the most heart can do. Maybe Jim Sullivan will never write a song as good as 'Accidentally Like a Martyr' or 'Space Oddity' but he contributes his own mark on the community by shaping, categorizing, adding and subtracting focus to the ones he (and most of us) consider the greats. That's an art form all in itself. Cantankerous shrink, besotted instigator, fly both on the wall and in the ointment, Jim delivers the goods."" -Steve Wynn ""In Backstage & Beyond, Sullivan's evocative writing makes you feel like you're right there with him, drinking till dawn with your favorite rock stars, back in the days when no one could get no satisfaction! Every story feels so real, your head will be splitting by morning. Loved it!"" -singer-songwriter Jen Trynin ""In our parallel, constantly morphing and competitive worlds of rock journalism and rock MAKING, Sully is a Jimmy Page in a vast sea of timid, punter music writers. Jim has always asked and continues to ask the questions we all WISH we had the cojones to ask our music gods and goddesses and manages to do just that with a deep knowledge and sensitivity to what matters most - which is, of course, the music. His work and decades long legend speak for themselves as you shall read right here."" -Johnny Hickman (Cracker)"

""Sullivan has been really successful at getting a huge list of artists to share what makes them come up with the music we've been loving for decades. He has a knack for peeking under the blanket and finding out what makes musicians human - and sometimes inhuman. That's what makes the book so much fun to read."" -Tom Hamilton of Aerosmith ""These are wonderful stories across the whole range of popular music, by one of rock's finest journalists. As history lengthens, and some of these legends move on. these become increasingly precious fragments of lives lived at the sharp edge of music."" -Richard Thompson ""Jim Sullivan is an expert interviewer with an uncanny ability to connect with his subjects. In Backstage & Beyond, he brings out the humanity in a host of rock and roll icons who are too often portrayed as godlike figures. This an intimate and revealing look at many of the major personalities of the classic rock era."" -Tom Perrotta, author of Election, Tracy Flick Can't Win, The Leftovers and Mrs. Fletcher ""These chats and rants go beyond the surface bromides we already know about these larger-than-life personalities and unlock the deeper stories they rarely share - by turns triumphant, tragic and never less than illuminating."" -writer and broadcaster Greg Kot (Sound Opinions) ""The Jerry Lee Lewis chapter (itself worth the price of admission) segues to one on Mott's Ian Hunter, whose hero was Lewis, which leads to Bowie, who made hitmakers of Mott, then to Bowie, Iggy, and Lou Reed, and... Sullivan's informed commentary and the professional and personal revelations he elicits from his subjects place Backstage & Beyond several leagues above the average rock read. At this late date, that's saying something."" -writer and broadcaster Gene Sculatti (The Catalog of Cool, For the Records: Close Encounters With Pop Music) ""This book reads like a Norton's Anthology, a collection, a distillation of what mattered as only the best critics with the most heart can do. Maybe Jim Sullivan will never write a song as good as 'Accidentally Like a Martyr' or 'Space Oddity' but he contributes his own mark on the community by shaping, categorizing, adding and subtracting focus to the ones he (and most of us) consider the greats. That's an art form all in itself. Cantankerous shrink, besotted instigator, fly both on the wall and in the ointment, Jim delivers the goods."" -Steve Wynn ""In Backstage & Beyond, Sullivan's evocative writing makes you feel like you're right there with him, drinking till dawn with your favorite rock stars, back in the days when no one could get no satisfaction! Every story feels so real, your head will be splitting by morning. Loved it!"" -singer-songwriter Jen Trynin ""In our parallel, constantly morphing and competitive worlds of rock journalism and rock MAKING, Sully is a Jimmy Page in a vast sea of timid, punter music writers. Jim has always asked and continues to ask the questions we all WISH we had the cojones to ask our music gods and goddesses and manages to do just that with a deep knowledge and sensitivity to what matters most - which is, of course, the music. His work and decades long legend speak for themselves as you shall read right here."" -Johnny Hickman (Cracker)

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