Music from Big Pink: A Novella (33 1/3) (Paperback)

~ John Niven (Author)
Key Phrases: snow cone, New York, Bob Dylan, Tinker Street (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

A fine novella...as evocative as it is gripping. -- Observer Music Monthly, Jan 22 2006

An amazing piece of work - as powerful as it is ugly. -- Greil Marcus

Niven's heartbroken rock'n'roll postcard from a past he never knew...tragic, beautiful. -- Mojo, March 2006

Product Description

The received wisdom handed down by rock scholars and historians has been that for Dylan and The Hawks this was a period of woodshedding; of quiet meditation, musical reflection and scholarly, almost Spartan, diligence. And, compared to the drug-soaked blitzkrieg that was Dylan’s 65-66 world tour, it probably was. However, life in the Catskills that year was also filled with sex, parties, hashish, pregnant locals, heroin, drunken near-fatal car crashes, fist-fights, amphetamines and brushes with the law: All business as usual for a group of young musicians who were receiving their first decent pay-packet and experiencing their first real taste of fame... Informed by extensive research and interviews with surviving Band members Levon Helm and Garth Hudson, Music From Big Pink is a factional book; a place where fictional characters rub shoulders with real people like Richard Manuel, Rick Danko and Albert Grossman, and where actual documented events thread their way through the text alongside imagined scenarios. Through the eyes of twenty-three-year-old Greg Keltner, drug-dealer, wannabe musician, bag-man and hanger-on, we witness the gestation and birth of a record that will go on to cast its spell across forty years - bewitching and inspiring artists as disparate as The Beatles, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Elvis Costello, Wilco, and The Flaming Lips.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Continuum (October 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 082641771X
• ISBN-13: 978-0826417718
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 4.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #566,755 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

• This item is part of The Thirty Three and a Third Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I applaud the author's and publisher's attempt to do something different in this series ...., August 13, 2007

By	Clare Quilty (a little pad in hawaii) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

... but the fact remains: This album deserves a more fact-based approach from the 33 1/3rd series.

Author John Niven takes a unique strategy in writing about the Band's classic debut, "Music From Big Pink."

He writes a short novel that follows a character through key events in the history of the Band during the late 60s and in rock music in general.

Anybody who loves this group is bound to have, at some point, looked at Elliott Landy's photographs of the guys hanging out at their country house in Woodstock, or read Levon Helm's biographical account of the time, and thought it must've been great to have been there.

The guys were making great music in the basement, spending their new money on booze and fast cars, playing pick-up gigs, hanging out with hippie chicks and frequently cranking out a tune with a post-crash Bob Dylan. Sign me up, I'm down for exactly all of that.

And so is Niven's fictional main character, Greg Keltner, a young dope dealer who befriends Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, Garth Hudson and Levon Helm (and -- ha ha -- gets a cool brush-off from Robbie Robertson).

Through Keltner, we get an enthusiastic (almost stalkerish) witness to the band's rise and its eventual stagnation.

But there are problems:

Keltner has an almost "Forrest Gump"-ian ability to be in the right place at the right time. He's there when Manuel offers up an early solo version of "I Shall Be Released" (at Robert Ryan's apartment in the Dakota, no less); he's there when they read their first "Rolling Stone" rave; he's there the very day the guys pack up and move out of Big Pink (which happens to be the exact same day Andy Warhol gets shot). Granted, Niven wants to hit the high notes, but after a while Keltner's timing begins to feel a bit on the nose. History dictates the story's narrative flow and so dictates where Keltner will be, which makes him seem even more synthetic.

More troubling, however, are the sections were Keltner's *not* dropping in on the Band, when he is in fact taking a chapter to attend his mother's funeral and go on a bender, or checking out a new film called "The Graduate" while ripped to the gills on LSD, or visiting his downtown smack connection (who just happens to be hanging out with Lou Reed and listening to an early pressing of "The Velvet Underground & Nico") or spending a few pages writing a song.

I realize Niven largely wants to illustrate how "Music From Big Pink" soothed the hungover heads and hearts of a lot of burnt-out hippies in 1968 and 69, but since Keltner's a fiction ... do we care about his sad and extensive family history or his floundering romantic life? I didn't so much.

In fact, Keltner's a pretty hapless contradiction -- a heroin dealer with a heart of gold.

He deals hard drugs (and, in one scene, actually gives Bob Neuwirth's snarky entourage a dose he knows is too potent), but also vomits with despair when the girl of his dreams reveals she's actually in love with Richard Manuel. Fortunately for him -- but not for the reader -- he later gets her on the rebound and it just feels icky.

Here's one of their encounters:

"She was eating fried chicken, her perfect teeth tearing meat off the bone, her fingers getting greasy and slippery while she talked and laughed. I ordered some too. She looked like she'd gotten some sun. 'You look like you've gotten some sun,' I said."

Which is to say that the writing ... could be a little tighter and a lot better. If the style and syntax were as good as the research, this would be an excellent little book for fans.

But even if it were better, I still don't think this is the appropriate venue for "faction," or the right place for some characterizations of real people that are, frankly, uniformly undercooked.

I can't help it. I want actual *information* about this great album -- I want the secrets, the liner notes, the science of John Simon (who gets two brief mentions in the current context), the genuine schematics of Albert Grossman's plotting, a deeper look at the songwriting process. Yes, I'll admit it, I want the standard, boring music book info. Music books tend to be steak and eggs. And when you order steak and eggs, you don't want a cake that looks uncannily like steak and eggs.

"Big Pink: A Novella," alas, is kind of that cake.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great piece of fiction about rock'n'roll, March 31, 2007

By	Jimmy Guterman "http://guterman.com" (MA USA) - See all my reviews

Richard Manuel's voice has haunted many people, and one of those people is John Niven, author of an outstanding novella called Music From Big Pink that came out in 2005 but I just got around to reading on a plane last week (mid-'07). Read it, please. Written from the point of view of a drug dealer who associates with the members of The Band and the general Woodstock explosion of the late '60s, it details the promise and broken promise of that time with precision, wit, and an amazing command of and love for its source material. Not since David Shipper's Paperback Writer, decades ago, have I read a piece of fiction about rock'n'roll that so captures the big themes and microscopic details that make a life lived in music -- either as a practicioner or a hanger-on -- so thrilling and harrowing. It's as open and dark as Manuel's voice on the album that gave it a title. I'm not going to describe in much or quote any of it here because I want you to read all of it without me inadvertently ruining any of it. But this is that very, very rare piece of rock'n'roll-drenched fiction that actually feels like rock'n'roll.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great, April 17, 2006

By	D. Richman "booksrock" (NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I really enjoyed this book. But be warned: if you are looking for a book that describes how the album was made don't look here. "Music from Big Pink" is more fiction than fact, and the central focus is on what life might have been like in Woodstock at the time - the parties, the drugs, the music.

What really struck me about this book was the Niven's use of evocative language. The way he described the Band songs, especially when he was hearing them for the first time, was poignant, rich, and insightful. Hearing the narrator talk about the songs really made me want to listen to the tracks; and when I did, I certainly had an enhanced experience.

Overall it was pretty good. I say buy it!