The Beatles came up in the rock and-and-roll era, when Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Elvis Presley defined cool. Their early shows were big beat bacchanals, the Brit interpretation of that crazy American sound. But it wasn't long before they were absorbing and creating more and more music - from folk to experimental, to psychedelia and hard rock, quite literally changing music forever and influencing hundreds of great bands in the process. This is the first book for music lovers that begins with the simple premise, "If you like the Beatles . . . ," and takes off from there, digging into their influences and everything that came after them, opening up new doors for listeners looking for no-risk discs to expand their collection. Beginning with the Beatles' lesser-known roots in rockabilly and Tin Pan Alley, and working through American R&B, the British Invasion, California folk, and the Summer of Love, and to the great pop and rock bands of the '80s, '90s, and the 21st century, this is a must-have for anyone who likes the Beatles, which is...everyone.
After winning the Dejur award for fiction at CCNY(later won by Walter Mosley) and the Deems Taylor award for journalism from ASCAP, my review of Bruce Springsteen's second album is published in the Sunday New York Times, launching a freelance career in which I publish an article a week in one publication or another for something like 13 years. During the same time, I produce eight books, including three young adult novels for Houghton Mifflin. "An animated funny book," hails The Horn Book about the first. "Ray is a winning narrator," says Kirkus about the second. "Wry, funny, knowledgeable and shrewd," says School Library Journal about the third.
Aside from The Disco Handbook, my best seller is The Face of Rock & Roll: Images of a Generation (Holt), which was even hailed in Creem Magazine. This was followed by When Rock Was Young ("A fine work of impressionistic nostalgia," The Baltimore Sun) and When the Music Mattered ("Notable and worthwhile, insightful and evocative," Publishers Weekly).
After creating the first music video column in USA Today, I help start GUITAR For the Practicing Musician, which will become the most successful music magazine launched in the 80s, and edit the first 100 issues. During this period Hipper Than Our Kids is published by Schirmer. "One of the best books about the boomers and their generation," said Greg Shaw.
After jumping to another dream job as a record producer at BMG, now Sony BMG, I continue writing for Musician and Entertainment Weekly and compiling annual reference books on songs for Gale Research, leading to The Rock Song Index: the 7500 Most Important Songs of the Rock and Roll Era (Schirmer) which is praised by Booklist for its "concise, often excellent commentary" and the Bomp Bookshelf "Pollock is perhaps the most important scholar of American pop music."
In 2002, I compile over 100 interviews into Working Musicians: Defining Moments from the Road, the Studio and the Stage (Harper Collins)."A marathon Phish concert of a book," (Variety). "Marvelous, compulsively readable,"(Paul Williams). In 2005, the second, greatly revised, edition of The Rock Song Index comes out (Routledge) "Music fans will find plenty of satisfaction." (Gale Reviews)
Now I have completed my latest novel, first for adults, The Next Year Effect, a fictionalized memoir (are there any other kind) based on the lives of one of the rock and roll era's most romantic and tragic songwriting couples, but more importantly, a culmination of my experiences in and out of the music business and the writing business for the last thirty years.
