Customer Reviews

The Greatest Music Never Sold: Secrets of Legendary Lost Albums by David Bowie, Seal, Beastie Boys, Chicago, Mick Jagger, and More!

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This book includes a chapter on the demos Ray Davies recorded in 1987 of the songs he wrote for the musical "80 Days". Dan is pretty thorough in his research, interviewing playwright Snoo Wilson, director Des McAnuff and arranger Robby Merkin. Very informative, and highly recommended to any Kinks fan who wants to learn more about these songs.

This is such a great idea for a book, I can't believe someone hasn't thought of it before now. LeRoy does the idea justice, as the book is thoroughly-researched (he spoke to just about everyone who is anyone) and informed. And, unlike many people who attempt books on rock music, LeRoy is a fine writer. An excellent book for anyone who is interested in popular music...and for anyone who just likes a good read!

I primarily bought this for the Juliana Hatfield chapter. Great subject with a lot of resources. The writing style sometimes leaves the story bit scattered so sometimes it's a bit tough to follow. Other than that great! Will buy volume two if Dan writes it.

Disclaimer: I bought this book to learn about Chicago's then unreleased album "Stone of Sisyphus" and I only read that chapter.

Chicago back in 93 recorded their unreleased album "Stone of Sisyphus". There were many stories floating around about this album to a point where it had become legend. I as many fans of Chicago got a bootleg copy of this album and it instantly became one of my favorites. I wanted to know more about the history of this album and how it came about and I was lead to this book by Dewayne Bailey, former guitarist for Chicago, who was interviewed for this book. It covers in detail a lot of the conflicts and it shows the love and care put into this album by the band and producer Peter Wolf who really worked to get the band back to their roots where they were creating this music and not a bunch of outsiders. If you want to get the closest thing to the true story of this album this is the book to get.

As a side note, Chicago has since released Stone of Sisyphus so it is no longer "Lost" but sadly the bootlegs sound much better and has a better mix so to me the real "Stone of Sisyphus" had not been released.

When I saw "The Greatest Music Never Sold" in Borders yesterday, I was really curious. As something of a lover of obscure and little-known music, I was hoping for some details of, in Richie Unterberger's words, "artists who never got to record at all".

Instead, too much of "The Greatest Music Never Sold" deals with albums by mainstream artists who were past their commercial prime and could not have what they wanted released by major labels. Of these, the albums by Seal, Mick Jagger and David Bowie are most especially superfluous and offer absolutely nothing that will be remotely interesting to the serious music historian. The last Style Council album, whose rejection is very well-known and was actually hardly unexpected after "Confessions of a Pop Group" was a major commercial failure, is even less interesting. Even the Jungle Brothers' story seems too much like the probably common rejection by major labels of radical music following a major musical revolution and has very little that is interesting. The same is true of Brian Wilson, whose career since leaving the Beach Boys has been full of rejected recordings.

Adam Ant's "Persuasion" and Chicago's "Stone of Sisyphus" are much more interesting, especially the conflicts between band members involved in both the making and ultimate rejection of them.

The most interesting story, Juliana Hatfield's "God's Foot", really shows the difficulties major labels have had since the tightening of budget occurring simultaneously to the "punk revolution". The way in which Atlantic asked such a high price for "God's Foot" that there was no means for Hatfield to have it released, despite very lengthy efforts to find a label is something that would make "The Greatest Music Never Sold" worthy.

Unfortunately the sidelights at the back of the book add as little as most of the chapters to a book claiming to represent the greatest music never sold. I imagine any serious critic would have grave doubts about such a claim.

I was really excited by this book as researching and attempting to reconstruct unreleased albums (think "Chrome Dreams" or the original proposed issue of "Blue) is an interesting hobby for me. Unfortunately, without the aid of the actual musician for many of the chapters the book is speculative at best. When the musicians are involved they come off as very one sided. Further complicating issues is Julianna Hatfield's remembrances in the last chapter make this chapter sturdier than the others and make it seem (along with author's introduction to the chapter) that the book may have been cobbled together simply to support this chapter.

The further issues in the back of the book are tired 2-8 page rehashes of commonly told stories that needed more fleshing out to hold interest.

If, as Mr. Leroy suggests there is a sequal to his book he might benefit by sticking more to one genre of music and getting more direct access. If impossible he might benefit from no access at all and simply researching the stories from other places and resources so as not to give the illusion of favoritism. There are many other albums (Smile, Gift Of Screws, Crystal Ball) which could, and should be further studied. Mr. Leroy could do many fans a favor by pushing his considerable talents towards these unreleased classics.