BOOKS

BOOKS

TRIPS:

Rock Life in the Sixties

by Ellen Sander

(Scribner)

Ellen Sander is one of those toney oversimplifiers of rock one is continually frustrated to find in magazines like (best example because it’s most middlebrow) Saturday Review or (more chic, still anti-rock) Vogue. She’s not the worst of the lot, and she certainly is not the best, especially now that people like Henry Edwards and Lillian Roxon have begun to introduce some taste into the culture 'zines. (Ellen Willis, of course, has been there, all along,, at the New Yorker, and she is great.)

Trips begins like just another dreary rock tome, with a repetition of the standard “ ’50s as the atomic progenitor of it all” cliches. Sander threatens to begin a discussion of what it meant to be a woman in the Teenage Decade, but (like every other analytical thread in the book) that is left dangling.

For the rest, we face a fairly linear history of the ’60s, told by a (selfproclaimed) Green-wich Village insider. The result is both entertaining and infuriating.

The cult which, grew up around rock music and more specifically (and detrimentally) rock musicians produced a certain strain of rock writing which, while it is not quite press-release perfect, allows no human failures in the Big Boys . . . except certain psychic ones, which are used to either explain away particularly painful lapses in one of the IPMC (Bob Christgau^s International Pop Music Community) Stars,'or —— alternatively -v*-. to explain the magnitude of the standard wimpoid’s great triumph: the old genius-vs.-adversity parable. Thus, in Trips, w,e watch David Crosby’s moustache droop as Jorii Mitchell sings a song to Graham Nash, who’s always Willie to his friends.

Well, Ellen Sander has been there, and she epitomizes all of this, having had what tonier mags would call a “relationship” with Jac Holzman lo these many years; she’d as soon say something adverse about one of the folk-rock pets as suck a raw egg. Unless, of course, she has had an apparent falling out with one of the little devils, in which case she can be catty as hell. I also do not like what she has to say about Detroit, but that’s pure chauvinism, and besides, it keeps the myth intact, with Robert Plant walking into his Motown motel.room to find a pool of steaming blood from the previous evening’s murder slopping up the floor. Oh well, different strokes — I think Bolinas is tacky, so there.

The best thing about Trips grows out of the same rock sucker mentality, though, and that’s the eternal rock critic problem. Whether ’tis nobler to admit upfront that ninety per cent of rock musicians are assholes, or whether to swallow the dog-shit and bring home “great copy”. Maybe that’s just the difference between fantasizing one’s self a critic and fumbling around as journalist. ■

So Ellen Sander tells some fine stories: Zal Yanovsky throwing spaghetti at the marriage of his Italian friend,, John Sebastian to a Jewish girl (un-named); lots of inside dope on the Byrds; and a fine moment when Dampy Fields walks into a Village bar at 3 a.m. on the eve of Johnson’s abdication from the ’68 election, slaps a newspaper on the table and grins, “April Fool”. There is all kinds of fine inside gossip about folk/rock life in the sixties here. If you cut Trips down to that, it might be worthwhile.

Unfortunately, the last ninety pages are composed of “A Rock Taxonomy,” which consists of one sentence to one page semi-coherent descriptions of rock groups. It isn’t comprehensive, even though it pretends to be; how can a book published in 1973 contain descriptions of Peter Walker, Tim Hardin and Donovan and miss, for one example, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Grand Funk? Or, for that matter, completely ignore a genius originator like Jerry Lee Lewis?

Wait for the paperback.

Dave Marsh

MILLER'S HIGH LIFE

by Ann Miller

with Norma Lee Browning

(Doubleday) Remember those scenes in second rate gooey MGM musicals about tap dancing starlets who made it in Hollywood because they had real long legs and were such good kids? How could anyone believe those soppy sagas about grinning and cutesying it up to the top?

Well, it’s true. Ann Miller did it. Just read Miller’s High Life. She has led the most gloriously Grade D movie musical life and honey, this one is a hoot. Winking, grinning and tapping her way to fame and fortune. How could you not adore a woman who actually says, “Any woman who can buck this town on her own and still keep her legs crossed, as my mother always admonished me. can’t be all stupid or all bad.”

Whoever said a movie star had to be smart? What makes this biography such a delightful piece of kitsch entertainment is that it is obvious it was the creation of a very dizzy mind. Ann Miller’s forte always was her looks .. . and her feet, and therefore it is no surprise that this book has endeared itself to many of those who have gorged themselves on it as a sort of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls of the biographies.

We learn that “Little Annie Miller” was really born Johnnie Lucille Collier in Texas in .. . er, 1923. Miss Miller protests at great length and on innumerable occasions throughout the book that she is' fully aware her Hollywood “official” bio lists her birthdate as 1919, but that was because she always had to fib about her age in order to get into pictures. She tells us this again and again .. . and again. In one way or another, references in the book to her age seem to be endless.

After informing us that “no one in the world would ever guess that I once had rickets” and that her legs were particularly unusual because “there was no space at the top,” Ann recounts leaving her native Texas as a teenager with her mother and going to Hollywood because a gypsy fortuneteller told them Ann’s name would be in lights one day. Being an Aries, Ann always was spiritually oriented — why, she even had to stay away from Ouija boards because their messages for her were too intense. She knew that there would be a curse on her life forever, especially on her relationships with men, because of the evil things she had done to them during one of her previous incarnations when she was a lady Pharoah. Don’t you love it?

Ann ran around tinseltown when it still dazzled. She went to Ciro’s and Mocambo’s and Romanoffs at night. Among her serious suitors were Conrad Hilton and the “czar” of Hollywood, L.B. Mayer. Despite the mean things practically everybody who ever worked with this man said about him, Ann knew L.B. to be a kind, brilliant man, and a real gentleman. She could have been his “czarine,” but her mother wouldn’t let her. Ann Miller had an impeccable reputation, she tells us — always living with her mother who also accompanied her out on dates. Ann danced with Juan Peron who “stepped all over my feet like a cripple” and met General Abdel Nasser who she thought was a most handsome man but did one thing to his country that she thought was terrible — he made the belly dancers wear mesh netting to cover the space between their bras and their skirts ...

Miss Miller also made films. Among the more memorable are You Can’t Take It With You, Stage Door, Kiss Me Kate, Easter Parade, On the Town. Thrill of Brazil and Reveille with Beverly are not.

She calls herself a dingaling and a “spendoholic.” She gives beauty advice. Ann Miller is an eternal optimist about men, even after three marriages — a Hollywood golden girl, a long-legged Texan beauty rose, and she doesn’t let up for one single minute. Her tidbits about other of the Hollywood famous are priceless — whether it’s the story about Lupe Velez throwing her bust pads in the face of a too-ardent admirer, or her personal comments about Red Skelton: “He paints a clown a day and then files them away like the letters he writes to his dead son. Red is a strange man,” or Judy Garland: “She had beautiful legs and big eyes. But she had a small hump on her back which dress designers had great trouble in camouflaging, though they always did.”

Get this book, it’s a sefeam. In these days of moviestar nostalgia taken so seriously that it often chokes, Ann Miller is an incredibly refreshing change. Perhaps when talking about Hollywood nostalgia and glamour, no one can express it better than Annie herself when she says: “Maybe it’s considered tacky today but I guess I’m still an old fashioned girl with old fashioned morals and though the Hollywood I grew up in had its vices and its dens of iniquity it also had a class, a quality, an elegance and sheen that are non-existent today. I think the thing I miss most about Hollywood is those bygone days. And to me one of the stars who was most typical of that era was Sonja Henie.”

Lisa Robinson

DEATH ROCK

by Maxene Fabe

(Popular Library)

Hey! Wanna cop some real sleaze? I know you’ve been shoveled rock novels till they’re coming out your ears, but this one packs a powderkeg. Death Rock is the rock novel to end all rock novels, as it probably will. Start reading it and you won’t be able to put it down until your glittering little eyes have slid off the last page and you’ve wiped the drool off your bib .What other book you gonna find that’s got:

*A popstar antihero named Sissy Ripper who’s a badass moron.

*A campus revolutionary named Venceremos Finklestein.

*A groupie heroine who runs through a series of hilariously graphic encounters with Joe Cocker, Mick Jagger, the Who, Crosby, Stills and Nash and Dylan.

*Ben Fong-Torres of Rolling Stone, Gloria Stavers of 16 and Ed Sullivan of wilfull anachronism turning up in bit parts.

*Bob Dylan’s phone number.

That’s right, I was sitting up reading this thing the other night when I came to the part where the groupie, whose name is Ruby, gets fed up with the Fillmore and decides to go out and visit ol’ Bob on his chicken farm. En route she decides it’d be the better part of discretion to call first, so she goes into this phone booth and dials ... well, anyway, the author gave the complete number, area code and all. His wife answers and tells her to fuck off. But she goes out for a gander at the old sod anyway, runs into him in the road and asks him if he wants to ball. Sure, he sez, just as soon as I have my manager draw up the contract; then he tells her it’ll cost her a thousand bucks! This touching scene ensues:

“Gee,” says Ruby. “I could give you fifty maybe. But not a thousand. And besides, who knows if you’re still worth that?”

“What do you mean, ‘still’?”

“Well, your stock’s pretty shaky, man, since that double album.”

“Okay, then,” he says, “I’ll take the fifty.”

And that ain’t nothin’ to what happens when David Crosby tries to engage her in a marathon rap on the subject of giving head, but I’ll leave that to your delectation. The weird thing was, I jumped up and dialed that number given for . Dylan, and GAWD DAMN IF IT WASN’T THE REAL THING! It was in Woodstock, and the lady on the other end told me that indeed it had been Bob’s phone, and how the current renters get woke up alia time in the middle of the night by hasbeen folksingers and such calling for a ,touch or two; So don’t call it because you’ll waste your money and bug somebody nice, but I told her all about what I’d read and she sed, “Well, your Maxene knows her facts.”

Damn straight she does. Every word i,n this book is true or might as well be, and is more kicks than a double barrel of Burroughs. So don’t dawdle, kiddo — pick up a copy of Death Rock today! It’s the real scam on the wacky world of that fab rock music, and the best book of any kind written since Gorgonzola, Won’t You Please Come Home. At least.

Lester Bangs

NO BEAST SO FIERCE Edward Bunker (Norton)

Didja ever wonder what kind of jerk would tattoo the words BORN TO LOSE on his arm? I mean, actually go through all that pain and agony and stuff and come out with such a defeatist slogan that you’re gonna carry around on your bod for the rest of your life? Well, I’m not saying that Edward Bunker’s got that tattoo on his arm, but he’s got the consciousness for one down pat.

That’s probably because he’s spent most of his life in prison, except for the time Harper’s published an article of his and some softie decided that he was rehabilitatable and let him out to writhe No Beast So Fierce. The book done, he helped stick up a bank, and now he’s back for five at Folsom again.

Ignore the dorky social-conscienceof-the-fifties title and get the book. It’s the story of Max Dembo, lifelong con, who gets out of Folsom determined to do good, but who, through a series of circumstances he might have been able to alter, winds up robbing and killing again. It’s true that his parole officer, Rosenthal, is singularly undedicated to his task, but calling up an old junkie acquaintance and going out for a night on the town your first night out of jail isn’t — no matter how sincere the words Dembo mouths — the best way to go straight.

Once the decision is irrevocably made, Dembo steps out like a real pro. Bunker knows entirely too much about his subject, and he’s a good enough writer to convey the excitement of a criminal career vividly, sweeping the reader through petty stickups, mob bars, bank holdups, and finally the Big Job. But even getting away with the big one isn’t good enough for Dembo, and as the book closes, he’s on his way back, unsatisfied, driven by an itch he can’t scratch.

Well, Bunker’s back in jail, working on another, book. Meanwhile, No Beast So Fierce is prime movie material, if anybody out there is interested, and it’s also one of the most readable and exciting books about crime in Los Angeles since, well, since Raymond Chandler. With one important exception — Philip Marlowe was definitely, born to win. Max Dembo was just as definitely born to lose. Let’s hope Bunker does better than Dembo ...

Ed Ward

OFF THE WALL

TALES FOR THE SON OF MY UNBORN CHILD by Tom Farber (Pocket Books): The best, most certainly, of all the “Berkeley 1966-69” journals; impressionistic vignettes of lots of people (or types of people) hanging around on the fringes of the campiis (and maybe of life itself). Farber’s a powerful writer and Tales is worth a buck and a quarter for that alone. Almost a must.

RINGOLEVIO by Emmett Grogan (parts of which appeared in CREEM) is now available in paperback, from Avon. It’s still the finest book to come out of the counter-culture, it’s still the best nonfiction fiction around, and we continue to give it our highest recommendation