Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life: A Book by and for the Fanatics Among Us [Hardcover]

Steve Almond (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 13, 2010

Drooling fanatic, n. 1. One who drools in the presence of beloved rock stars. 2. Any of a genus of rock-and-roll wannabes/geeks who walk around with songs constantly ringing in their ears, own more than 3,000 albums, and fall in love with at least one record per week.
 
With a life that’s spanned the phonographic era and the digital age, Steve Almond lives to Rawk. Like you, he’s secretly longed to live the life of a rock star, complete with insane talent, famous friends, and hotel rooms to be trashed. Also like you, he’s content (sort of) to live the life of a rabid fan, one who has converted his unrequited desires into a (sort of) noble obsession.

    Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life traces Almond’s passion from his earliest (and most wretched) rock criticism to his eventual discovery of a music-crazed soul mate and their subsequent production of two little superfans. Along the way, Almond reflects on the delusional power of songs, the awkward mating habits of drooling fanatics, and why Depression Songs actually make us feel so much better. The book also includes:
 
• sometimes drunken interviews with America’s finest songwriters
• a recap of the author’s terrifying visit to Graceland while stoned
• a vigorous and credibility-shattering endorsement of Styx’s Paradise Theater
• recommendations you will often choose to ignore
• a reluctant exegesis of the Toto song “Africa”
• obnoxious lists sure to piss off rock critics
 
But wait, there’s more. Readers will also be able to listen to a special free mix designed by the author, available online at www.stevenalmond.com, for the express purpose of eliciting your drool. For those about to rock—we salute you!

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The goofiness and magnetism of rock is celebrated in this exuberant memoir. Rock critic and memoirist Almond (Candyfreak) describes himself as a drooling fanatic of rock and roll with a morbid passion for obscure bands, arcane record collections, and proselytizing his musical tastes. This freewheeling mix tape recounts the central role music played in his relationships, sexual encounters, and life transitions, while sprinkling in idiosyncratic lists, from Rock's Biggest Assholes to Silly Names of Rock Star Spawn, and tragicomic exegeses of songs great and terrible. His rock-critic gig enables his obsessions, giving him cover to profile, hang with, and otherwise stalk rockers while gazing into the bleak underside of their lives, the desolation in which... art continues to bloom. Almond deftly straddles the line between intellectual and fan. He's canny about the ways rock stars manipulate their idolators, yet happy to be seduced by them. He veers smoothly between funny, cruel takedowns of rock fatuity while registering its emotional impact (the song I Bless the Rains Down in Africa may be the lovechild of Muzak and imperialism, but you can't help sort of digging it). Almond's snarky, swoony counterpoint makes for a hilarious riff on the power of music. (Apr. 13)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Almond makes clear from the start that he’s no rock star, just a guy who obsesses over music he can’t play. Dreams of rock stardom danced in his adolescent head, but he soon realized, watching Springsteen’s 1975 concert film at London’s Hammersmith Odeon, that he’d never make it and better get used to it. So he and like-minded friends became “Drooling Fanatics”—“the sort of guys and dolls who walk around with songs ringing in our ears at all hours.” If you’ve read Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity (1995) or seen the movie, you know the type. Almond fills the book with gratuitous lists (e.g., of bands shamelessly overexposed by the “alternative” press) and the neurotic urge to overshare personal details. It isn’t enough that he’s an obsessive listener. He needs others to like what he likes. Among the many pleasures his rants afford are his deconstructions of bad pop songs (e.g., Toto’s “Africa” and Air Supply’s “All Out of Love”), but really, dipping into his ramblings at virtually any point quickly becomes addictive, impertinent fun. His hilarious musings seem to contain elements of both Hornby and David Sedaris, but he’s truly a character of his own idiosyncratic making. --June Sawyers

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1 edition (April 13, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400066204
• ISBN-13: 978-1400066209
• Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 0.9 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #370,344 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars There is no shame like the shame of realizing that you too know all the lyrics to a Styx album May 6, 2010

By your neighborhood librarian

Format:Hardcover

Apparently all my contemporaries are writing right now. I just found out, for example, that Carrie Bradshaw (and, one assumes, Candace Bushnell) is/are just about exactly my age. In her book "The Carrie Diaries," she references Jimmy Carter and the Gremlin.

But Carrie Bradshaw listens to Aztec Two-Step, and right then and there I knew she could never be my friend.

Steve Almond knows what I'm saying here. Steve Almond gave up on a woman after a weekend of bananas sex because she listened to Air Supply - on purpose.

I know that Steve Almond is also just exactly my age, because HE references Aztec Camera, whose song "Oblivious" remains one of the most incandescent pop songs I know. It's got that androgynous 80's croon but on top of friendly, jangly guitars - and then you notice the line, "I see you crying and I want to kill your friends" and you start paying a little more attention.*

And that makes Steve Almond and I the same age because Aztec Camera was not together for terribly long, had one or two little MTV hits, and is one of the VERY few acts of that era who have not regrouped and gone on tour. Presumably, groups like The Jesus and Mary Chain, who were so charming to begin with**, have realized in their maturity that the world NEEDS their music, and they have a DUTY to provide it. One doesn't like to assume that they are back together, rather, because the tattered college students who liked them in 1983 now have the cash to fly to Iceland to see them play.***

Steve Almond's new book, in case you had not intuited this, is footnoted and rambling and studded - no, packed - with pithy little insights, analyses, and summations of bands and artists.

"...let me cite Duke Ellington, who once famously declared that 'there are only two kinds of music: good music and bad music. And by bad music I mean specifically the song "(I Bless the Rains Down In) Africa" by Toto.' Ellington died two years before Toto formed as a band, which speaks to his prescience."

But the book isn't about music. No? Whoops now I've pissed you off. No, ok, it's about music. But it's about how music affects us, and by us I mean the kind of repressed kids who have fallen between the generations - boys who weren't supposed to have emotions until times changed and all of a sudden they were expected to. Or girls who grew up on a feminism that couldn't yet incorporate vulnerability.

Steve doesn't oversimplify people in this way - I did that. Steve takes it from the other angle - he has noticed that the people most fanatical about popular music are the ones who have trouble integrating their emotions into their life. He posits that people who slam on the headphones and squeeze their eyes tight to hear every breath of Carolina Chocolate Drops doing "Hit 'Em Up Style" are looking for an intensity that they wish existed but fear to attempt.

Huh. Sounds pretty accurate, if memory serves. I would suggest to our boy Steve that he have a kid, but he's done that. His daughter was two at the time of publication - unless he's seriously emotionally retarded, I suspect that if he had waited a couple years he would not have been able to write this book except as a nostalgia piece. Kids allow one to access one's emotions with some fair expedience. In fact, it's probably the birth of his daughter that allowed him to express the ways that music has fulfilled his needs all these years.

All right, I think I'm done here. I laughed out loud at this book. There are some crystalline memories, some song references that bring me RIGHT THERE alongside him, some entertaining swearing, and - I hate to admit it because ok, emotion-y things still make me itchy - some insights that beat anything I learned in therapy.

Still not completely sold on Bob Schneider though.****

*Don't believe me about Aztec Camera? [...].

**I "saw" them in Cleveland, behind a veil of chemical smoke so thick that I had to watch the show from a crouch. They played their entire set with their backs to the audience, I guess so that they could see their instruments.

***I don't, but my friend Eric did, to see the Flaming Lips whom yes I realize have been together the whole time but let's face it most people lost track of them between the Vaseline song and "Do You Realize" showing up in a Mitsubishi commercial.

****Steve's massive mancrush, also the mancrush of my friend Leslie Miller, who may actually BE Steve - they like all the same music, and where Steve wrote a book about candy, she wrote one about cake (the delightful dessert, not the unpleasant band). Although Bob Schneider is ALSO exactly my age, and undeniably attractive, so I guess if we need a new Loudon Wainwright III, Bob could be it, because Rufus kind of isn't.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Rawk April 22, 2010

By Bookpimp

Format:Hardcover

Another fantastic piece of non-fiction from Almond. I am a long-time fan and cannot wait to pass this, along with the soundtrack, to a few close friends. Perfect for fans of Chuck Klosterman, or of Almond's early work. If you don't have a sense of humor, you may wish to pass this one by...

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Testify May 10, 2010

By Voice of Chunk

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

OK, I'll state the obvious and say that ROCK AND ROLL WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE is a must-read for serious music fans (aka Drooling Fanatics) everywhere. With his trademark blend of self-deprecating humor and razor-sharp intelligence, Almond celebrates the famous (Springsteen, The Police), the, um, infamous (Styx), and the criminal-that-they're-not-more-famous (Ike Reilly, Chuck Prophet, Dan Bern, Bruce McCutcheon, Nil Lara, Dayna Kurtz, Bob Schneider, Gil Scott-Heron, etc. etc.).

But just as a good movie is more than its soundtrack, this book is more than the musicians it praises. In the end, Almond's a passionate, honest storyteller who uses music to explore deeper truths about love, family, friendship, loneliness, disappointment, joy, ambition, and human connection. The sections about courting his now-wife Erin, trying in vain to influence his children's musical tastes, and roadtripping with friend The Close are particularly moving. In short, this book is for anyone who turns to the written word to feel more alive.

Some reviewers are calling ROCK AND ROLL WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE a nonfiction version of Nick Hornby's HIGH FIDELITY, and I guess the comparison sort of works on a few surface levels: It's true that HF's fictional Rob and R&RWSYL's nonfictional Steve both have massive music collections. Both Rob & Steve use music to help define pivotal life experiences. And both compulsively compile mix tapes/CDs to express their feelings to and make connections with others. After that, the connection's pretty thin. A more apt comparison is Hornby's lesser-known essay collection SONGBOOK, which explores his obsessions and life experiences more directly than anything else he's published. As a result, it's Hornby's most soulful, personal book.

Likewise, ROCK AND ROLL WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE is as soulful and personal as anything Almond's published before, and that's saying a lot. (For a sampling of Almond's Hey-Soul Classics, check out his tributes to Kurt Vonnegut and Barry Hannah as well as essays on fatherhood in 2007's essay collection (NOT THAT YOU ASKED).)

Almond's biggest complaint about music is "you can't eat it." The same could be said of ROCK AND ROLL WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE. We all find salvation wherever we can. For some it's rock and roll. For others it's great books...like this one. Testify.