Customer Reviews

Guitars, Bars, and Motown Superstars

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This is one book you just can't put down. It grabs you and takes you on a funk-filled roller coaster ride through LA, NY, Detroit, and all points in between!

Dennis Coffey comes to life and brings you along for the ride of a lifetime. Exploring Detroit in the 60's and 70's, he talks about the rise of Motown Records, his gigs, shows, and tells the stories that only an insider like him can tell. With wit and charm, he often makes you laugh out loud, and you catch yourself imagining just what it was like to be making history. This is the kind of biography and story telling that we need more of. The session players like Dennis have all sorts of great stories because the people they are, and the people they worked with, are so far above extraordinary that it makes for great reading.

Pick this book up, but be warned, you won't put it down anytime soon.

We need more memoirs like this. It takes you back through rock and soul glory years, from the perspective of one of the hundreds of musicians who weren't really "superstars" but were stars simply trying to make a living and make great music. Coffey's rise as a rock and Motown guitarist, his forced move along with all the Motown gang to LA by Barry Gordy, and his subsequent fall from the upper echelon of the American music scene to working on a Chevrolet assembly line reads like a great rags to riches to rags novel. A nice plus is the complete discography and a section where he tells us what guitar he used on different songs.

Under Berry Gordy Motown became a place where studio musicians usually stood in the shadows of solo stars promoted in his studios, for Gordy held stringent contracts which prevented his musicians from playing for other record companies and often denied them credit on his records. In Guitars, Bars, And Motown Superstars, guitarist Dennis Coffey tells how he escaped Gordy's tight hold on music to become a success as both a Motown musician and solo artist - and his backstage look at the Motown experience provides quite a different perspective than most. This is no fly-by-night artist: Coffey was one of Detroit's most important session guitarists in the 1960s and 80s and played for many superstars: his insights are a 'must' for any enthusiast of the Motown scene.

Dennis Coffey is the most underrated guitar player of all time, playing on over 100 million-selling singles and albums throughout his career.

His life story as told in "Guitars, Bars & Motown Superstars" is flat out fascinating. For me, this was literally a "can't-put-it-down" straight read thru!

Music aficionados, get this book and be prepared for a fun and historic tale straight from a true "Funk Brother"...

Dennis Coffey had a distinctive sound on Guitar and he made a name for himself and he got out of the trappings and stronghold that Berry Gordy had on his crew. this Book takes you from Detriot where Motown originated out to LA were it went through a major change. this book is a trip and covers alot of ground and packs alot of punch. one of the most honest and strong solid read books that you gotta read and once you do , you won't wanna put it down.