Customer Reviews

The Guys Who Wrote 'Em

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This book is a great read. It was fun and easy to follow. I highly recommend it for any songwriter, aspiring songwriter, or any lover of post-war popular or rock music.

It would have been nice however, if there was more content from the actual interviews instead of the narrative/commentary format that it's in. Eagan wrote this book from correspondences of e-mails with the respective interviewee(s) in each chapter; it gives the feeling that he researched and compiled information on each songwriter in this book and then proceeded to assemble it with chronological anecdotes.

From a songwriter's or aspiring songwriter's point of view, more about the songwriters' writing process would have been a great plus. Some chapters went more into depth on this than others. However, I don't feel that this lies so much with the author but with that of the songwriters: some of the songwriters would make the reader think that divine inspiration or a gift from above was needed, where Barry Mann said not to wait wait for inspiration to come.

Unfortunately this book suffers from either poor editing, proof-reading, or both, as the the many "misprints" are quite noticeable to anyone: The Brill Building in New York is at 1619 Broadway not 1615 (p. 62).

What would have put this book over the top would have been an index at the end. It would have been great to have this for cross-referencing and searching for specifics.

I hope this book will be republished in the future without the misprints and with recommended index added. Again, I highly recommend this book as it is a great read.