BOOKS

HARDENING ROCK

edited by

Little, Brown

Hardening Rock is decidedly the best rock photo/lyric collection to come down the pike. Chipman and his collaborators not only had access to a wealth of material from Time-Life’s photo files, and apparently enough bread to get rights to print all the lyrics, they also had a true sensitivity for rock and trashy pop music. Hardening Rock gleams where almost all other attempts have flunked.

Chipman is a bit of an academic, and both he and X.J. Kennedy in their brief introductions try to make a little more of the music than is there. It’s all offset, though, with the good taste to open the book with:

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to sing a song that tells a little story, that makes a lot of sense: A wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bam-boom” —Elvis Presley

The photo selection is the best part of it, by far. Not merely star photos, but pictures of audiences and bizarre ' ’50’s relics (the book sort of pretends that it’s about the ’50’s, though songs as current as “Dead Man’s Curve” are featured).

The photos of stars are offset in another way, too: by pictures of rock and roll performers who aren’t legendary. There’s a fabulous one of someone who might be named Tony Conn, on the floor in severe Eddie Cochran agony, knees up so close to his face that he’s nearly eating the guitar, in the throes of animal ecstasy inspired directly by the music.

The shots of stars, for all I’ve denigrated them here, know what they are there for. Elvis ends it, too, with a dynamite pic of him standing on his suitcase, waiting to come home from/leave for The Army. And there are shuddering horror shots, like a Philadelphia reunion of (left to right) Fabian, Bobby Darin, Frankie Avalon and Pat Boone. Or Boone autographing some white bucks. Somehow, Little Anthony and the Imperials sneak in three or four times, as if to say that “Shimmy Shimmy Ko Ko Bop” is a secret Chipman favorite. (And then there are the lyrics to “Norman,” guaranteed to chill your heart.)

It works, it conveys the excitement and the agony of the music and the time. Hardening Rock is a great comment on the softening of the spirit. If there were more books like it, that might not be a problem.

Dave Marsh

IT'S TOO LATE TO STOP NOW A ROCK AND ROLL JOURNAL

By

Jon Landau

Straight Arrow

This collection of articles and reviews by Jon Landau, pieces he wrote for Crawdaddy, Rolling Stone, and the Boston Phoenix over the last few years, stands up well.

In his introduction Landau introduces himself, talks about his changing (and lessening) commitment to music and his approach to writing about it, which he now sees in terms of auteur theory: find the author, the author’s vision, locate the work in the context of his previous work, try to understand what can, and what should, follow. Landau has always concentrated more on formal musical questions than have, say, Lester Bangs or Bob Christgau, and it seems this has hardened to the point where the press release accompanying the book can say, “Landau writes about rock as art.” This is hardly an illegitimate approach, since it tends to limit, and clarify, the subject matter. On the other hand, it leads straight to the museums, and one of the pieces included here, “Rock and Art,” from 1968, sums up a lot of the reasons why Landau’s current conception of what he is doing may ultimately raise false questions, as well as useful ones. At any rate, it seems to me that it’s when Landau does move outside strictly musical discussion, and attempts to make some sense out of music and its political or social context, that he has most to say. He did this well in his piece on Beggars’ Banquet (not included here — he seems to have intentionally omitted most of his stuff that was used for the Rolling Stone Record Review book, and dropped his excellent piece on Motown, “A Whiter Shade of Black,” in favor of a later, and I think much weaker article from Rolling Stone; I also would have liked to see his piece on Happy Jack, for that matter ...) and perhaps best of all in his long article on Dylan, “John Wesley Harding.” I can reduce it to one sentence: “Dylan has felt the war, and there is an awareness of it contained within the mood of the album as a whole.” This strikes me as perhaps the most intelligent thing anyone has said about John Wesley Harding; certainly, it opens up the album and makes sense out of it.

Other pieces included here that demonstrate how far Landau can go when he oversteps what I think he takes to be his boundaries are a brilliant tribute to Elvis Presley, a strong and intelligent piece on Janis Joplin’s death, and an article on the Ali-Frazier fight that says at least as much and probably more about what was going on there as the dozens of articles that flooded the press at the time.

Landau has always cared more for black rock and roll than most rock critics, and certainly thought about it more than anyone outside of Peter Guralnick, and articles on Redding, Picket, Motown and Sly give this book a balance that others have lacked.

Landau is no stylist; he writes clearly, he can get across his emotions without wearing his heart on his sleeve, though one thing his writing lacks that hurts is an ability to bring humor into it. Still, I think of this book and a similar collection Richard Goldstein put out a year or so ago. Goldstein’s collection of his columns was dull, dead, cute, over-written and well-nigh unreadable. This book is intelligent, clear, interesting, easy to read, and it can make you think. It’s not the best book on rock and roll — Nik Cohn still rules the waves as far as I’m concerned — but it’s a good one, and may open the way for .collections by other critics who deserve some time between covers, such as Lester Bangs, Bob Christgau, Dave Marsh, and — if he would write a bit more — Tom Smucker. Not to mention ...

Greil Marcus

SEVENTH HEAVEN

Poems by

Patti Smith

Telegraph Books

A few years back, Mademoiselle ran an article called something like “Bob Dylan — Greatest Living Poet?” It consisted of the lyrics to five songs from the then not-yet-released Blonde On Blonde. They read . . . not bad on paper, but they weren’t very impressive as poetry alone. But a few months later when the album was released, WHAM — genius strikes again.

The point being that there’s a new kind of poetry being made — a poetry that exists in equal partnership with the rhythm and sound of music, poetry that needs performing to make it real.

A few poets have realized this to some extent, and there are more and more readings — but Patti Smith, New Jersey swamp child and angel-envisioning rock-and-roll street punk, says that poets are killing poetry.

“The idea of reading to a bunch of people is really self-centered ... it takes a lot to get somebody off when you’re reading,” she told me. “Poets were motherfuckers in the old days! Like Mayakovsky would give a reading with blue paint all over his face, yellin’ thru a megaphone — if somebody wasn’t listening, he’d knock them off their chair . . .

Seventh Heaven

U patti smith

I figure if you’re gonna put yourself publicly, any performer better be able to stand behind his performance — especially a poet. I don’t wanna be no simp reading boring intellectual shit to a YMCA ...”

There isn’t much to worry about that on any count... as this book,her first published collection, will show. Patti is one of the first poets of rock&roll; she has a literary background, on top of that she’s placed the pulse and beat of the stereo and street — to make a modern combination with something for everybody . . . brain and boogie freak alike.

Like the song says, Patti was born in Chicago, but she arrived while her mother was at the Ice Follies, just before Sonia Henie got on the ice. Patti grew up in the swamp country of New Jersey, with equal doses of Lorca and Smokey Robinson, Rimbaud and Little Richard.

Her heros were French painters and poets — then she discovered Bob Dylan and the world of literary rhythm. She spent some time in Paris working with a street magician, returned to NYC, met and mused with singer-songwriters, and traveled some with people like Todd Rundgren and Johnny Winter — writing all the time. Her poems got more songlike, her prose got more fluid. (She also wrote for a few Rock Magazines, and got fired from one shortly after she showed up for a scheduled interview with Eric Clapton, dressed in black leather and wearing a T-shirt that said TWIST on it. She asked him his five favorite words, he told her . . . she saidthanks and split, leaving him scratching his head as she stomped down the hall.)

Her articles have appeared here and there, as have a few poems, (see especially CREEM, Sept. 1971) — but this is her only full fledged collection — and hopefully it’s just a beginning. There are 22 poems here, the oldest is “dog dream” from 1967, the newest, “Longing”, which was written the day before the book was printed (it turned out to be DeKooning’s birthday).

All of Patti’s work is heavily autobiographical, some true, some fantasy, but all very much a part of her world — and the book is dedicated to two heroes — Mickey Spillane (“the/first American writer ‘who had a prose style I could dig”) and Anita Pallenberg (“she seemed like the girl for me”). A forward ex-

plains that the book is in the domain of the bitch (a dog nosing around the ground) and the aeroplane (spirit soaring sky high). The book was originally called “Bitch”, since its subject matter is mainly women — but Patti changed it cause she thought people might think she was “a woman’s lib chick”.

The first poem, “seventh heaven” (like a Motown LP, the title cut comes first) talks about Eve and all the badmouthing she took after eating the apple:

“She bit. Must we blame her. abuse her.

poor sweet bitch. Perhaps theres more to the story.

think of Satan as some stud.

maybe her knees were open ...”

I won’t spoil it for you by quoting more, except like most of the poems here, it would help if you read this aloud — cocky, sly, and sweet. (And don’t forget the beat). In the second poem, Eve becomes “sally” who’s been “ripping it up with someone, down in the briar patch”:

“torn pants

torn pants

and juice all down your dress”

This poem could be a song — and in fact, now it is. “jeanne d’arc” is a new look at a female martyr; Patti pictures her not with mysticism, but instead sees her as an itchy virgin who wants to come before her time does. And this is absolutely the horniest poem I’ve ever come across.

There are several “actress” poems — the first, “renee falconetti”, is to a French actress (morphine addict) who went mad after playing the role of Joan of Arc; “Edie sedgewick” was a blonde wraith of Warhol movies and scenes; and you all know about “Marianne Faithfull”.

“girl trouble,” and “Judith” both

deal with girl love, and have several word puns wandering thru them — they’re also a release, as they lead into “fantasy”, a brutal man-woman love poem with a real Mike Hammer gun in it.

Patti says she structured the order of poems the way you would a record — and this ends side one. “marilyn miller” (four interesting positions of a retired child star) is “like a commercial while you’re turning the record over”, according to Patti. Side Two begins with “mary jane”, a Saturday night hustler laying down a hype, and “amelia earheart” is both word play and soaring: ing:

“my step is heavy

but i can fly like an angel

and so like a hawk am i now

my elbows flap like wings.”

“Linda” is for Patti’s sister, all air and light — “death by water” is a tribute to Brian Jones and Jim Morrison.

“dog dream” is many people’s single favorite poem — it’s in the form of a little chant, which came to Patti and friend Sam Shepard in a simultaneous dream — Patti says the poem was told to

“have you seen

dylans dog

it got wings

it can fly

her by a “Fellini-like communion child” who wouldn’t go away till she wrote it down. One verse:

“have you seen

dylans dog

it got wings

it can fly

if you speak

of it to him

its the only

time dylan

cant look you in the eye”

“Female” is pure self-knowing and growing, a record of the way she grew to womanhood — and “Longing” is the fulfillment of all that being a woman is. The last words in the book are from the few lines that Anita Pallenberg had in “Barbarella”:

“come to me my

pretty pretty”

So we fade out, and the needle’s scratching as the book ends. What’s Patti up to and who is she? This book will give you some clues — she stands more naked than most artists — but even in revealing, the secrets are like the mirror.

Patti is one of the best poets writing — but think of this book as just a sampler, damn good but only a part of her flow. A look inside the head and body of a fascinating, sensitive, complex and very creative person — this book is well worth the buck (if you have trouble locating it at your local supermarket — it’s banned in part of New Jersey — try Bookpeople/2940 Seventh Street/Berkeley, Calif./94710).

And if you ever get a chance to hear her reading her stuff, don’t miss it — she’s a real performer;

she’s got class

she’s got style

and she sure can boogie.

Tony Glover