She's a Rebel: The History of Women in Rock & Roll [Paperback]

Gillian G. Gaar (Author), Yoko Ono (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1992

A lively history of women in rock and pop, featuring interviews with dozens of performers and a behind-the-scenes look at the music industry. From Big Mama Thornton, who topped the charts with "Hound Dog" three years before Elvis did, to Madonna, who has been topping charts for years, here is a spirited retelling of rock history. 50 photographs.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An encyclopedic narrative of the role of women in rock and pop over the last four decades, from Big Mama Thornton, who topped the R&B charts with "Hound Dog" three years before Elvis, to the female musical powerhouses of the '90s. Compulsively readable and thoroughly entertaining, this is a spirited and much-needed retelling of rock history which has tended to treat women peripherally at best. And unlike most rock journalists, Gaar knows how to do research, and how to both tell a long story with attention to detail and keep readers' attention for a long time.

From Publishers Weekly

This much-needed history and examination of women's role in the turbulent world of modern music makes a valiant attempt to be inclusive, but that is its downfall. Because she reports on not only performers, but record company publicists, a documentary filmmaker and a music attorney, and because she stretches the definition of rock & roll to include such personalities as choreographer cum pop star Paula Abdul and performance artist Karen Finley, Gaar can only cover each of her subjects briefly. Sometimes even that scanty coverage is strangely repetitive, as when she stresses several times that Janis Joplin's bad-girl image made her famous but also killed her. Chapters are divided by decade, which causes confusion, since the work of many performers has spanned more than ten years. There are interesting discussions of issues such as the difficulties that black Motown artists had while traveling in the South, as well as a humorous account of the quasi-accidental founding of Bitch: The Women's Rock Newsletter With Bite, but the end result is scattered. Gaar is senior editor of the rock newspaper, the Rocket. Photos not seen by PW 25,000 first printing; major ad/promo.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 467 pages
• Publisher: Seal Press; First Edition edition (October 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1878067087
• ISBN-13: 978-1878067081
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,762,049 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Gillian G. Gaar is a Seattle-based author. Her first book, She's A Rebel: The History of Women in Rock & Roll was published in 1992. In addition to her own books, she has appeared in various anthologies, including The Nirvana Companion, Trouble Girls: The Rolling Stone Guide to Women in Rock, Goldmine: The Beatles : Two Decades of Commentary. Digest (volumes one and two), Best of the Beatles Book, The Stranger Guide To Seattle, Music: The Little Black Book, 33 1/3 Greatest Hits Vol 2, A Survey of American Culture, and various editions of The Scribner Encylopedia of American Lives. She was editorial assistant for Krist Novoselic's book From Grunge To Government: Let's Fix This Broken Democracy! She has also written liner notes for collections by Laurie Anderson, Judy Collins, Heart, Pat Benatar, Paula Cole and Mat Kearney, among others. She was also a project consultant/liner note writer for Nirvana's box set "With The Lights Out." She has written for numerous magazines, including Rolling Stone, Mojo, Q, Goldmine, The Seattle Times, The Stranger, Option, and No Depression, and was a senior editor at Seattle music paper The Rocket.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A long overdue story, October 23, 2004

By 

Megzi - See all my reviews

This review is from: She's a Rebel: The History of Women in Rock and Roll (Live Girls) (Paperback)

This book is chock full of information about women's entire history in music. It doesn't just focus on rock music, but also includes pop, r&b, and hip hop. I bought this book mainly for the 'Enjoy Being A Grrrl' chapter, which features information about the Riot Grrrl movement which really interests me. It also focuses on modern sexism in the music industry. Some are blindingly obvious like Eminem and Woodstock '99 (which ended in numerous sexual assaults) and some of them are less unknown like Blink 182 asking female fans in the audience to 'Show us your t*ts!' on the Warped Tour. It also mention groupies and how they may feel they are "rebelling against the plastic uptightness of straight American society but their rebellion only reaffirs a social system in which women are defined by the man they are aligned with." I couldn't agree more.

Something I noticed is that there were some major artists overlooked, Stevie Nicks for example (like someone else before mentioned). I also noticed a tiny mistake where the author said that 'Sugar Baby Doll' wrote the songs 'Quiet Room' and 'Best Sunday Dress' when in reality it was actually the 'Pagan Babies' (another band that Courtney Love and Kat Bjelland had) who wrote and performed the songs. Not that this really matters, maybe I'm just being picky. My only major compliant about the book is that the author had to put in the Spice Girls and Britney Spears, which I think is a little uncalled for.

Other than that, the book is great and I especially enjoyed reading about different bands like Bratmobile and Sleater-Kinney. It makes me want to go out and buy their albums! Interesting facts like how Big Mama Thornton originally sang 'Hound Dog' before Elvis proves that women have always been overlooked in music, and this book tries to change that.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The basic text on rockin' women!, March 25, 2004

By 

Jesse Monteagudo "book nook" (Plantation, Florida USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: She's a Rebel: The History of Women in Rock and Roll (Live Girls) (Paperback)

I agree with a previous critic who complained about some of the omissions in this book. Not only are the women from Fleetwooc Mac missing but so is Chaka Khan, the most influential female R&B singer since Aretha Franklin! But except for those omissions - and the author's apparent bias in favor of those women who let her interview them - "She's a Rebel" is the basic and essential text on women in rock. At a time when the rock establishment continues to ignore women - the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has not inducted a single woman in several years - we need an author like Gaar to remind us of the contributions that women made and continue to make to our pop music. A special salute to Gaar for including in her book the often-ignored, and mostly-unknown, "womyn's music".

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't let lack of Nicks nix this book, March 10, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: She's a Rebel: The History of Women in Rock and Roll (Live Girls) (Paperback)

While I love Stevie Nicks as much as the next person, this book is very important - even without space devoted to her. Sure she is an important figure in rock & roll, but "She's a Rebel" shines valuable light on some of the less-well-known figures in the history of rock. Don't discount a book that should be essential reading to every fan of rock music just because of an omission.