Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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"Alice Cooper in the 1970s"/Chris Sutton [Episode 13] Jul 17, 2021

Show notes

The 1970s was the decade that saw the arrival of Alice Cooper as a major force across the media. In "Alice Cooper in the 1970s" Chris Sutton explores the story of Alice Cooper the band and Alice the solo performer from their early years through to the end of the decade. A roller-coaster ride of classic albums and singles, the songs recorded in the 1970s still dominate his live sets to this day.
The book features all new interview material from key figures including Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway and Neal Smith from the original band, Prakash John from the solo years, and Ernie Cefalu, whose company Pacific Eye and Ear designed the sleeve packaging. Several other musicians, concert promoters and even the band's first roadie have also contributed their thoughts.
All of the albums and singles from Don't Blow Your Mind, until From The Inside are examined in detail, along with related archive releases and songs that didn't make the cut. In the course of putting the book together much new information came to light that will be of huge interest to hardened collectors and new fans alike. The book is an essential guide to Alice Cooper in the decade the band helped to define.
Chris Sutton has been a fan of Alice Cooper since 1972 and the famous debut appearance on Top Of The Pops. The reunion of the band for their UK tour in 2017 stands as one of his happiest memories. He manages Smethwick Heritage Centre museum, and has written several publications for them. He has also written several plays. "Alice Cooper" in the 1970s is his first venture into music writing, with others to follow. He lives in Great Malvern, UK.
Purchase a copy through Sonicbond Publishing: https://www.sonicbondpublishing.co.uk
Listen to Chris Sutton's curated Alice Cooper playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0i5w2RmY5bs4o8W9QAF1LL?si=054960e470174895
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The Booked On Rock Music: “Whoosh” & “Nasty” by Crowander (https://www.crowander.com)

"All Things Must Pass Away: Harrison, Clapton, and Other Assorted Love Songs"/Kenneth Womack & Jason Kruppa [Episode 12] Jul 08, 2021

Show notes

George Harrison and Eric Clapton embarked upon a singular personal and creative friendship that impacted rock's unfolding future in resounding and far-reaching ways.
"All Things Must Pass Away: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Other Assorted Love Songs" will trace the emergence of their relationship from 1968 though the early 1970s. In particular, authors Womack and Kruppa devote close attention to the climax of Harrison and Clapton's shared musicianship—the November 1970 releases of 'All Things Must Pass', Harrison's powerful emancipatory statement in the wake of the Beatles, and 'Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs', Clapton's impassioned reimagining of his art via Derek and the Dominos, the band that he created from the wreckage of Cream and Blind Faith.
"All Things Must Pass Away" will provide readers with a powerful overview of Harrison and Clapton's relationship, especially in terms of the ways their revolutionary musicianship and songwriting would eclipse rock music as an evolving genre. With 'All Things Must Pass' and 'Layla', Harrison and Clapton bequeathed twin recorded statements that advanced rock 'n' roll from a windswept 1960s idealism into the edgy new reality of the 1970s.
Kenneth Womack is the author of "Maximum Volume" and "Sound Pictures", the two-volume biography of George Martin, as well as "The Beatles Encyclopedia" and "New Critical Perspectives on the Beatles". He delivers some 50 invited Beatles talks a year to audiences across the nation, while sharing his insights with media of all stripes, including National Public Radio, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Voice of America. Jason Kruppa is a music historian and creator of the "Producing the Beatles" podcast.
Purchase a copy through Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/All-Things-Must-Pass-Away/dp/1641603259/
Songs Discussed In This Episode: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6p1WYRJ5DpcaUipqyrFRIJ?si=8aedae3c1a724333
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The Booked On Rock Music: “Whoosh” & “Nasty” by Crowander (https://www.crowander.com)

"Get Tusked: The Inside Story of Fleetwood Mac's Most Anticipated Album"/Ken Caillat & Hernan Rojas [Episode 11] Jul 01, 2021

Show notes

In this behind-the-scenes look at the making of Fleetwood Mac’s epic, platinum-selling double album, 'Tusk', producers and engineers Ken Caillat and Hernan Rojas tell their stories of spending a year with the band in their new million-dollar studio trying to follow up 'Rumours', the biggest rock album of the time.
Following their massive success, the band continued its infamous soap opera when its musical leader and guitarist, Lindsey Buckingham, threatened to quit if he didn’t get things his way, resulting in clashes not only with his band but especially Caillat, who had been essential to the band’s Grammy-winning sound.
Hernan Rojas’s story recounts a young man who leaves Chile after General Pinochet’s coup to seek his future in the music industry of Los Angeles, where he finds success at one of the hottest studios in town. When Fleetwood Mac arrives, Rojas falls in love with its star singer, Stevie Nicks, and the two of them become romantically involved.
Throughout the book, both Caillat and Rojas detail not only the trials and sacrifices they made to finish the album, but also triumphs of musical inspiration and technical innovation that have made Tusk the darling of music critics and indie rockers today.
Purchase a copy through Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Get-Tusked-Inside-Fleetwood-Anticipated/dp/149304771X
Visit The "Get Tusked" Official Website: https://gettusked.com/
Songs Discussed In This Episode: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5UEfcHsyKJMjQTU52Rcfpn?si=7796527ed7464cea
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The Booked On Rock Music: “Whoosh” & “Nasty” by Crowander (https://www.crowander.com)

"Leonard, Marianne, and Me: Magical Summers on Hydra"/Judy Scott [Episode 10] Jun 23, 2021

Show notes

"Leonard, Marianne, and Me" chronicles forty years of Judy Scott's frequent summers on the Greek island of Hydra with a diverse artistic community and her friendship with singer-songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen and his legendary muse Marianne Ihlen. This memoir, based on Scott’s notebooks and journals, includes incidents in their lives and their relationship to one another—at a point when it was changing forever—that have never been discussed before.
As Cohen himself observed of this book when Scott sent the manuscript to him for his approval: "I particularly admire the detail and honesty of the piece." One of the more unique features in this recounting is the emerging acknowledgment the author confronts of her own sexuality, as she writes: "It did not take long for Leonard to recognize that I was more attracted to Marianne than I was to him, though I came to love him too in the end."
The book also describes Hydra in the early 1970s in great detail—a unique place filled with astonishing physical beauty and an incomparable atmosphere of serenity and peaceful energy. The island contained a small foreign community of like-minded creative souls, artists, musicians, writers, and their supporters and admirers. As Scott explains, "Hydra in the late '60s and early '70s was at its creative zenith. Like Paris in the '30s, Harlem in the '40s, Greenwich Village in the '50s, San Francisco in the '60s—Hydra in the '70s was the place to be."
The memoir, though it centers on Scott's most important, most impactful interactions with Leonard and Marianne, also contains several portraits of other Hydra habitués, all members of the same small ex-pat community, all close friends (and occasional lovers) of Leonard and Marianne, all uniquely interesting in their own right. Leonard, Marianne and Me is a story of a special time, place, and cast of characters—a travelogue of an enchanted island as it was back then and still is to this day, backlit by the glow of Leonard Cohen and his muse, Marianne.
Purchase a copy through Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Leonard-Marianne-Me-Magical-Summers/dp/1493059769
Songs Discussed In This Episode: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5PADkdaxWT5Q1Y3Ob3e6Pm?si=a89280a7c2e74f30
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The Booked On Rock Music: “Whoosh” & “Nasty” by Crowander (https://www.crowander.com)

"Chairman at the Board: Recording the Soundtrack of a Generation"/Bill Schnee [Episode 9] Jun 19, 2021

Show notes

"Chairman at the Board" is an intimate, funny, and absorbing look at the music business by an insider who has recorded a host of the greatest musical artists from the 1970s to today. Bill Schnee takes the reader inside the studio—behind the curtain—and through the decades with a cavalcade of famous artists as he helped them to realize their vision.
After his high school band was dropped by Decca Records, Schnee began his quest to learn everything he could about making records. Mentored by technical guru Toby Foster, mastering guru Doug Sax, and recording legend Richie Podolor at his American Recording Studio, he immediately began recording the top acts of the day as a freelance engineer/producer in Hollywood. Clive Davis soon hired him to work for CBS where he partnered with famed music producer Richard Perry. Schnee went on to record and/or mix many of Perry's biggest albums of the '70s and '80s, including those by Barbra Streisand, Carly Simon, Ringo Starr, Art Garfunkel, and the Pointer Sisters.
With his deft personal touch with musicians, he continued to engineer and/or produce the likes of Marvin Gaye, Thelma Houston (the Grammy-nominated, direct-to-disc album I've Got the Music in Me), Pablo Cruise, Neil Diamond, Boz Scaggs, the Jacksons, Huey Lewis and the News, Dire Straits, and Whitney Houston.
With over 125 gold and platinum records, and two Grammys for Steely Dan's Aja and Gaucho, Schnee has been called a living legend—recognized and respected in the industry as the consummate music man with an incomparable career that he lovingly shares with his readers in humorous detail.
Purchase a copy through Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Chairman-Board-Recording-Soundtrack-Generation/dp/1493056131
Bill Schnee's Website: https://www.billschnee.com
Songs Discussed In This Episode: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4sjwJvRRbjsIcHqLpxqCOk?si=4d96696bafba4408
The Booked On Rock Website: https://www.bookedonrock.com
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The Booked On Rock Music: “Whoosh” & “Nasty” by Crowander (https://www.crowander.com)

"Hold On World: The Lasting Impact of John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Plastic Ono Band, Fifty Years On"/John Kruth [Episode 8] Jun 17, 2021

Show notes

"Hold On World" revisits John Lennon and Yoko Ono's love affair and startling collaborations. 'John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band' was arguably the most emotionally honest album ever made. It wasn't merely another record but more like a sonic exorcism, a spiritual, public bloodletting. Lennon's album drove a stake through the heart of the Beatles' myth while confronting everything else in John's life, from Dylan to God to his glorified status as a "Working Class Hero."
Determined to rid himself of past traumas—abandonment by his father and the death of his mother, Julia—Lennon wrote the most powerful song cycle of his career, confronting fear, disappointment, and illusion, all the while espousing his love for Yoko Ono. Released simultaneously, Ono's album 'Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band' is emotionally raw and challenging. It inspired bands like the B-52s and Yo La Tengo to employ pure sound, whether shrieking vocals or guitar feedback, to express their deepest feelings.
Purchase a copy through Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Hold-World-Lasting-Impact-Plastic/dp/1493052357
Songs Discussed In This Episode: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3ji0kWOesHvIHocqnEZWmA?si=adc91ea1c2df4f4d
The Booked On Rock Website: https://www.bookedonrock.com
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Support Your Local Bookstore! Find your nearest independent bookstore here: https://www.indiebound.org/indie-store-finder
Contact The Booked On Rock Podcast:
thebookedonrockpodcast@gmail.com
The Booked On Rock Music: “Whoosh” & “Nasty” by Crowander (https://www.crowander.com)

"Babysitting A Band On The Rocks"/G.D. Praetorius [Episode 7] Jun 11, 2021

Show notes

In "Babysitting A Band On The Rocks", G.D. Praetorius tells the story of a chaotic youth producing concerts during the late 1970s and early 1980s, the summit of rock god excess. He offers humorous and insightful reflections on the excitement and insanity of the era from the eyes and ears of a fan who hit the jackpot, leaping from the back row to backstage, promoting, pacifying and occasionally partying with some of the world's biggest names.
Praetorius' adolescent infatuation with music and musicians evolves into an appreciation of performers as real people, featuring an intimate look at their foibles, failings and addictions to adoration and varied vices. Centered on a year of living on the edge with a down and out Steven Tyler and Aerosmith, the ‘Band on the Rocks,' you'll also take side trips involving many other classic icons. Chapters dedicated to AC/DC, Van Halen, Pink Floyd, Yes, Jethro Tull and more, offer unique snapshots of the artists at their peak. A more recent chance meeting with Keith Richards results in an evening being treated to the wit and wisdom of an older but no less outrageous Stone alone.
Praetorius also supplies unique insight on the stars' music and careers and provides detailed and colorful accounts of the nuts and bolts of the business of rock and roll. Many photos in the book have never before been seen publicly.
Purchase a copy through Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Babysitting-Adventures-Aerosmith-Blackmore-Richards/dp/0578190575
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Support Your Local Bookstore! Find your nearest independent bookstore here: https://www.indiebound.org/indie-store-finder
Contact The Booked On Rock Podcast:
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The Booked On Rock Music: “Whoosh” & “Nasty” by Crowander (https://www.crowander.com)

"Dire Straits: Every Album, Every Song"/Andrew Wild [Episode 6] Jun 05, 2021

Show notes

The year 1979 was an amazing time for UK post-punk pop. At the end of March, a fresh new sound entered the British top 20. "Sultans of Swing", a very wordy song with lots of driving guitar, a tight rhythm section and some killer musicianship. Dire Straits, unlikely pop stars led by a balding 29-year-old Geordie who could play guitar brilliantly, had finally arrived. Six years later, they were, for a time, the biggest band in the world. 'Brothers in Arms' sold by the truckload, one of the first massive sellers on CD. Since then, however, their star has fallen. Over exposure as the safe, boring champions of the CD age, has resulted in Dire Straits becoming, to many, the embodiment of a certain sort of benign, homogenized music. Mark Knopfler, their singer, guitarist, producer and songwriter, became a caricature of the middle-aged rocker in the minds of many. Their music remains stubbornly unfashionable, but retains its huge fan base.
"Dire Straits: Every Album, Every Song" revisits, re-evaluates and contextualizes the band’s six studio albums and two live albums, as well as EPs and archive releases. Seven ex-members of Dire Straits have been interviewed for Andrew Wild’s book, providing fresh perspective and insight. The band made a lot of good music. It’s time we remembered why.
(UK) Purchase a copy through Burning Shed: https://burningshed.com/andrew-wild_dire-straits-on-track_book?filter
(US) Purchase a copy through Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Dire-Straits-every-album-Track/dp/1789520444
Songs Discussed In This Episode: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2qFd37ed6RwjKTVRNNmeDM?si=c5bb2c903ae34dec
The Booked On Rock Website: https://www.bookedonrock.com
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The Booked On Rock Music: “Whoosh” & “Nasty” by Crowander (https://www.crowander.com)

"Driven: Rush in the ’90s"/Martin Popoff [Episode 5] Jun 01, 2021

Show notes

The conclusion to the definitive biography of the rock ’n’ roll kings of the North. "Rush In The 90s" includes two full-colour photo inserts, with unearthed photos of the band. In this conclusion to his trilogy of authoritative books on Canada’s most beloved and successful rock band, Martin Popoff takes us through three decades of “life at the top” for Rush’s Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart. Though this era begins with the brisk-selling 'Roll the Bones' and sees throngs of fans sell out international tours, there is also unimaginable tragedy, with Peart losing his daughter and his wife within the space of ten months and, two decades later, succumbing to cancer himself. In between, however, there is a gorgeous and heartbreaking album of reflection and bereavement, as well as a triumphant trip to Brazil, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, and ― some say surprisingly ― the band’s first full-blown concept album to close an immense career marked by integrity and idealism.
Purchase a copy through Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08Q2GXPHP/ref
You can also purchase a copy at Martin Popoff's official website - http://www.martinpopoff.com
Songs Discussed In This Episode: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1J3YxavF11vdSd8PRkIKa2?si=3054a15cdc564dde
The Booked On Rock Website: https://www.bookedonrock.com
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Support Your Local Bookstore! Find your nearest independent bookstore here: https://www.indiebound.org/indie-store-finder
Contact The Booked On Rock Podcast:
thebookedonrockpodcast@gmail.com
The Booked On Rock Music: “Whoosh” & “Nasty” by Crowander (https://www.crowander.com)

"Levon: From Down in the Delta to the Birth of The Band and Beyond"/Sandra B. Tooze [Episode 4] May 29, 2021

Show notes

This week the late great Levon Helm of The Band would have turned 81. He was born May 26th, 1940 in Elaine Arkansas. He sadly passed away in April of 2012. This is an interview I did for my last podcast DISCovery. It’s with author Sandra B. Tooze, who released a book last summer on Levon. The book is called "Levon: From Down in the Delta to the Birth of The Band and Beyond".
He sang the anthems of a generation: "The Weight," "Up on Cripple Creek," and "Life Is a Carnival." Levon Helm's story––told here through sweeping research and interviews with close friends and fellow musicians––is the rollicking story of American popular music itself.
In the Arkansas Delta, a young Levon witnessed "blues, country, and gospel hit in a head-on collision," as he put it. The result was rock 'n' roll. As a teenager, he joined the raucous Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, then helped merge a hard-driving electric sound with Bob Dylan's folk roots, and revolutionized American rock with the Band. Helm not only provided perfect "in the pocket" rhythm and unforgettable vocals, he was the Band's soul.
Levon traces a rebellious life on the road, from being booed with Bob Dylan to the creative cauldron of Big Pink, the Woodstock Festival, world tours, The Last Waltz, and beyond with the man Dylan called "one of the last true great spirits of my or any other generation."
Author Sandra B. Tooze digs deep into what Helm saw as a devastating betrayal by his closest friend, Band guitarist Robbie Robertson––and Levon's career collapse, his near bankruptcy, and the loss of his voice due to throat cancer in 1997. Yet Helm found success in an acting career that included roles in Coal Miner's Daughter and The Right Stuff. Regaining his singing voice, he made his last decade a triumph, opening his barn to the Midnight Rambles and earning three Grammys. Cancer finally claimed his life in 2012.
Purchase a copy through Amazon: (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YF2WGG8/ref)
Songs Discussed In This Episode: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6IojtEsB0kLcSZ17whfSNp?si=dec6b0fa23254775
The Booked On Rock Website: https://www.bookedonrock.com
Follow The Booked On Rock with Eric Senich:
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TWITTER: https://twitter.com/bookedonrock
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/bookedonrockpodcast
Support Your Local Bookstore! Find your nearest independent bookstore here: https://www.indiebound.org/indie-store-finder
Contact The Booked On Rock Podcast:
thebookedonrockpodcast@gmail.com
The Booked On Rock Music: “Whoosh” & “Nasty” by Crowander (https://www.crowander.com)

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