15 favorite music books

Inspired by Ethan Iverson's list, in turn inspired by Pitchfork's list, here are 15 of my favorite books about music. Like EI's selection, this is simply the result of a quick bookshelf scan, but unlike that list, this one does include memoirs, biographies and the like.

As Serious as Your Life
Valerie Wilmer
I still remember the thrill of discovering this in Labyrinth Books in Morningside Heights. "Holy shit, there's a whole book about free jazz?!?"

Forces in Motion
Graham Lock
I've gushed about this one before. A tender and informative duet between author and subject (that being Anthony Braxton).

Chronicles, Volume One
Bob Dylan
A magical and terrifying tome. People say it's obscure, but it's totally clear. Tells us more than we ever thought we'd hear from the horse's mouth.

Shakey: Neil Young's Biography
Jimmy McDonough
Another one I've praised to the heavens. A constant spray of mindblowing information. The essential guide to one of our most essential artists.

Steve Lacy: Conversations
Jason Weiss ed.
A series of startlingly lucid interviews with one of the great jazz philosophers.

This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of the Band
Levon Helm with Stephen Davis
The straight dope about one of my most beloved bands. You'll never watch The Last Waltz the same way again.

Miles Beyond: The Electric Explorations of Miles Davis 1967–1991
Paul Tingen
This book has a philosophical patina that can be off-putting, but push through and you'll find a painstakingly detailed, step-by-step study of this crucial period, all tied to the Miles disocgraphy. Great interview material.

Rockers, Jazzbos & Visionaries
Bill Milkowski
One of my favorite interview books. Zorn, Laswell, Fripp, Quine, the Marsalises, Tony Williams, Jimmy Smith and a ton of others.

Spiderland
Scott Tennent [33 1/3 series]
Does exactly what a history book should: Tell you a ton that you don't already know. Some prior thoughts here.

Miles Ornette Cecil
Howard Mandel
An oblique book, incorporating new and previously published material, but it has its own logic. A record of decades spent ruminating on (and interacting with) three masters. Prior thoughts here.

Mean Deviation: Four Decades of Progressive Heavy Metal
Jeff Wagner
A no-nonsense encyclopedia of a favorite subgenre. Prior thoughts here.

The Jazz Ear
Ben Ratliff
Probably my favorite jazz book. Sit-downs with the masters that double as definitive portraits. Prior thoughts here.

Precious Metal
Albert Mudrian ed.
Speaking of definitive portraits. 25 classic extreme-metal albums get the Behind the Music treatment. Some of these records you'll know; others you'll be thrilled to discover. Prior thoughts here.

Notes and Tones: Musician-to-Musician Interviews
Arthur Taylor
Intimate, hard-hitting conversations. Taylor, a master jazz drummer, interviewed his peers and they rose to the occasion. I'll never forget, e.g., Hampton Hawes's profane musings.

Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original
Robin D.G. Kelley
Kelley lays it all out in a readable fashion. This is the kind of book that should exist for every major figure in politics, sports, the arts, whatever, i.e., the place you go first. Prior thoughts here.

P.S. I've only just started it, but the new Bob Mould book is really cool.

A man needs a "Shakey": Neil Young's bio

I need to say something very simple here: Thanks to Jimmy McDonough for writing Shakey. I'm not quite through yet, but I'm reading this book—a 2002 biography of Neil Young—with such awe. It's exactly the kind of work that one wishes existed re: every artist one loves.

It's unauthorized in the strict sense, yet with full access. McDonough interviewed Young himself exhaustively, but maybe more importantly, he interviewed just about everyone who ever worked with Young and brought their opinions to NY for consideration. It's a true 360-degree portrait. (More than 300 interviews—MORE THAN 300!) And all the personality study is in service of the music. There's not a single song or album or bootleg discussed here that you don't want to run out and hear. And McDonough tells it to you straight: what's worth checking out and what's not.

Some of the reviews quoted on the book jacket have been really bothering me. Two of them use the word "maddening." One of them says "unmanageable" and "overzealous." Overzealous? Would we prefer our biographies of monumental artists to be merely zelaous, or underzealous? And what exactly is maddening about leaving no stone unturned? About doing impeccable research and synthesizing it into something lengthy (but not unreasonably so, given that we're dealing with a four-decade career here) and eminently readable? As for unmanageable, how exactly? Maybe if you'd rather read a capsule review or a blog post.

It's so wonderful to check this book out and so sad to think about how alien it seems from most writing on the internet, i.e., most writing that people read. There's no need for a curmudgeonly rant here, but there's something so pre-internet about this book. McDonough flew out to all corners of the country to visit with the major players in Neil Young's life. He worked this thing out over something like a decade, even wrangling with Young's own mixed signals, which nearly sunk the project. This is not a deadline-driven thing. It was obviously open-ended in the best sense.

It might sound "overzealous" but I think this is a heroic act: to try to make sense of a life, specifically one that is not one's own. Not a life that's worth more than other lives, but simply one that is public, that has touched a lot of people as a result of what it has yielded.

What I'm saying is that every great, public artist—every great, public human, really—deserves a Shakey, a passionate and more importantly READABLE primary-sourced guide to the person and the work and the complex solar system of friends, associates, lovers, nemeses and whatnot that made it all possible. A work that's grounded in the facts but that doesn't burden you with them. A scrapbook compiled by a true fan with the wherewithal to speak objectively.

And now, back to the 1991 NY & Crazy Horse triumph, Weld...