Customer Reviews

The Death of Rock 'N' Roll: Untimely Demises, Morbid Preoccupations, and Premature Forecasts of Doom in Pop Music

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As morbid as it seems, Jeff Pike's "The Death of Rock 'n' Roll" is a fascinating read. If you are the type who wants to know more about the rock world than who sold what to whom for how much, this book will rock your world. Pike has done his homework; you may not have even known some of the subjects were dead. But even if you did, Pike's detailing of his subject matter makes for fascinating conversation at your next cocktail party. "The Death of Rock 'n' Roll" lists its victims... er, subjects, by the type of demise they suffered (for example, "Fell Down" with Donny Hathaway and Sandy Dennis), and then sublists their endtales in chapters grouping the subjects with others in the same fields (e.g., "Oozing Crooners", with Bobby Darin, or "Beatles Bugouts" with Fab Four wannabe Badfinger). As morbid as this all sounds, Pike's prose fascinates, and even makes you laugh (if you can get past your guilt). And you'll finish reading it a little sadder and wiser. The lack of a comprehen

my one major problem with this book is pike's tendency to offer his opinion more than i would like. i would have rather read a book that chronicled the deaths of musicians without telling me which ones were talented and which were not. i am not a huge fan of queen, but i don't need pike to tell me that "they weren't that good." i can draw my own opinions, mr. pike. but for any readers who have the same fascination with rock'n'roll and death, and can ignore pike's commentary, i would certainly recommend this book.

I've read "The Death of Rock 'n' Roll" a couple of times, and I really enjoyed it. It is intelligently written, and although I may not always agree with Jeff Pike's opinions, they never seem uneducated.

The fact is, a lot of people in the entertainment business die young. If you're obsessed with movie morbidity, read Kenneth Anger's excellent book "Hollywood Babylon." If you're obsessed with dead rock stars (I am), read "The Death of Rock 'n' Roll."

Sometimes I don't know when to take Jeff seriously -- does he really believe Jerry Lee Lewis made a deal with the devil? Either way, his book is one hell of a good read, and I would recommend it to any rock fan.

This is sort of a strangely organized mish-mash of an encyclopedia, with the focus on how various musicians and rock stars died. But, it turns out, what's interesting is usually not how they died, but what Pike has to say about how they lived. He really knows his rock lore and I found that, as long as I had some idea of whom he was talking about, the stories were pretty fascinating.

Take the tragic tale of Belgium's "Singing Nun" (born Jeanine Deckers, and having taken the name of Sister Luc-Gabrielle), whose 1964 song "Dominique" became an "insanely catchy" number 1 hit here. There was even a Debbie Reynolds movie called The Singing Nun, but just a year after its 1966 release, Deckers left the church altogether and in the mid-1970s, took up with a lesbian lover, Annie Pecher. A few years later, the Belgium government tried to collect taxes on her royalties, but she had given all or most of those to the Dominican order. In 1985, Deckers and Pecher committed suicide together.

I had never before heard of any of her personal details. Sadly-though not surprisingly--a lot of the stories of the singers and musicians in the book are rather tragic. I was struck by the story of Motown Records. Certainly, its founder, Barry Gordy, made some performers wealthy people. And no doubt, a black man trying to turn a record business into the success Motown became needs to be a penny-pinching hard ass. It just seems that an awful lot of Motown's musicians were paid peanuts, and awful lot ended up essentially drinking themselves to death. And even many of the stars had tragic ends, for whatever reason.

The one fact that seems to stick in my mind is that Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones (of the Stones), Pigpen (of the Dead), and Al Wilson (of The Beach Boys) all died at the age of 27.

i wouldnt normally write a review, but i really feel i wasted my money and i hope no one else makes the same mistake

Worst book I've ever picked up