[New York: W.W. Norton, 2000]
I could fill footlockers with the material assembled for this book. This started life as a spiral-bound reader that students picked up at the copy shop for use in my honors seminar in rock’n’roll history. My agent saw it on my desk one day and said, “Why don’t you turn this into a book?” It took five years, but that little reader (15 articles, no pictures, binding that fell apart when you turned the page) grew into this mammoth volume with wonderful glossy photos, swell design and beautiful production. And the book costs less than the booklet. Go figure. It took such a long time because I went through three editors at the publishing house — ending with Amy Cherry, the perfect editor — and a long struggle to find a “name” to put on the cover with mine, to help sell this to the masses. Luckily, Amy was able to convince America’s finest music writer, Peter Guralnick, to write the introduction.
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