Clinton HeylinRecensioni

Sadly not as good as I wanted. Confusing characters, jumps around too much, probably too long... Admittedly, I probably am looking for some sort of bootleg guide, but he moves too quickly past the historic first era of vinyl bootlegs and gets too deep into the legal aspects.

This book is meant to "chronicle the evolution and influence of Springsteen’s E Street Band as they rose from blue-collar New Jersey to the heights of rock stardom." (That's straight from the book jacket.) What it really is is a poorly written, thinly sourced, morally bankrupt hatchet job that denigrates and belittles the artist it's meant to celebrate.

How did I hate this book? Let me count the ways …

1. The book has virtually no original reporting in it at all. Nearly every page has one or more paragraph-length excerpts of interviews of Bruce Springsteen from other printed sources.

The author did not speak to Bruce or, as far as I can tell, anyone except Bruce's first producer/manager, who Springsteen ended up suing in the late 1970s to get released from a bad contract, and the original drummer in the band who was fired after punching out another guy in the studio. Naturally, both of those people are portrayed extremely positively; the author takes the side of the producer/manager (Mike Appel) to an almost laughable extent. Seriously, I have read a fair bit about the lawsuit and that whole period and nothing I've read ever claimed that Springsteen was completely blameless in what happened, but this guy makes him seem like some combination of Machiavelli and Lenny from 'Of Mice and Men'.

2. The author repeatedly asserts that none of Springsteen's recordings with the E Street Band come close to replicating the magic that they conjure in a live show. Fair enough; that's a common assertion by rock critics and fans all over the world. But the author seems to feel that simply asserting that as his opinion is sufficient; he offers absolutely nothing to try to explain what it is about the live Springsteen concert experience that so thoroughly has captivated and mesmerized fans and critics over the past 40 years. By contrast, Springsteen biographers [[Dave Marsh]] and [[Peter Ames Carlin]] both managed to convey the magic and the mystery that happens when the E Street Band comes together on a stage in front of an audience.

3. In the album by album chronology of the book, the author repeatedly mocks and denigrates the process by which Springsteen, his band, and his subsequent producer/manager Jon Landau (who is clearly held in the highest contempt by the author) managed to produce albums that have sold tens of millions of copies and been listed by respected critics* as among the very best rock records ever produced.

* A sidetone: Every critic who ever wrote a complimentary review of one of these albums (i.e., disagreed with the author's viewpoint) is a sycophantic fool; writers who voiced reservations or criticism of Springsteen or his albums are portrayed as bravely speaking truth to power.

The author criticizes the song choices, the recording process, the sequencing of the songs on the albums, the choice of cover art — pretty much everything. With every album, he has a list of songs that are supposedly so superior to the ones that made the final cut that only an idiot would have left them off the record. Some of these discarded songs, which were later released on a boxed set, are amazing cuts, no doubt about it. But the author curtly refuses to take into account the fact that they were not included because they did not fit the mood or theme of the album being recorded, as Springsteen (you know, the guy whose name is on the record) conceived it.

4. Some of the songs that the author holds in highest esteem have still never been released in any official way, either as B-sides of singles or in the compilation set of unreleased songs called "Tracks". So how does the author know these unreleased tracks are so great? How did he happen to hear them? By purchasing illegal bootleg* records of studio sessions that were stolen from Springsteen and then sold to fans. This is where the morally corrupt charge comes in. The author makes no apologies for buying studio bootlegs; indeed, he seems to feel that he and other Springsteen fans are entitled to hear everything the man has ever recorded, whether he himself felt it was suitable for public listening or not. And that's just wrong.

* There are two types of bootlegs when it comes to music: There are live bootlegs, surreptitious fan recordings of concerts that are traded or sold among fans, and there are studio bootlegs, which are copies of the tape that is recorded during studio sessions when albums are being produced. Some people think all bootlegs are wrong. I have a more nuanced viewpoint which is important to this review. I have a number of live bootlegs, of Springsteen and other artists, and I don't apologize for it. To my mind, the difference is that those live bootlegs are recordings of public performances; in other words, the music was meant to be heard by fans. Studio bootlegs, on the other hand, are recordings that the artist for whatever reason chose not to release to the public. Some of those unreleased recordings might even be superior to material that was officially released but that is irrelevant; the point is that the artist did not intend anyone to hear them outside of the studio and therefore fans and even self-important writers have absolutely no right to listen to them, let along make someone else rich by purchasing them.

5. For a book with the subtitle "The Glory Days of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band" there is virtually nothing about the individual members of the E Street Band. If they are so important (and they are) why does the author ignore their contributions? The relationships between Bruce and Steven Van Zandt, and between Bruce and Clarence Clemons, are legendary. For all this book tells you about them, they might as well have met via classified ad.

6. I left this one for last because I freely admit it's a petty criticism. The book is just poorly written. The author (who is apparently British) uses words like "gotta" and "gonna" and "ain't" repeatedly in the narrative of the book ad apparently without irony. If the rest of the book had been worthwhile, this would have resulted in no more than the occasional eye-roll and a footnote in the review. But the rest of the book is crap, and thus I'm piling on with this final gripe.

If anyone reading this is interested in a decent, objective biography of Bruce Springsteen that doesn't shy away from criticizing him or his actions when it's warranted but also manages to explore all the reasons why and how he became one of the biggest and most acclaimed rock and roll singer-songwriters of his generation, I'd recommend [12789068::Bruce] by Peter Ames Carlin. As for this piece of dreck, it's the rare music biography that isn't suitable either for diehard or casual fans.

Since a teacher labeled me a Dylanologist in junior high—hey, cut me some slack, this was even before middle schools existed—I’ve read dozens of Bob books. Now, this book’s author, Clinton Heylin, has written ten books just on Dylan, and many more about rock and punk music. I was already experiencing a certain gravitational pull from this, his latest Bob book, when a knowing relative gave it to me for my birthday. Why would he write another one, when he’s known by many to have written one of the definitive books on Mr. Dylan, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades? Simple, because in 2016, Dylan sold his personal archive to the George Kaiser Foundation in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After that $22 million sale, the foundation asked Heylin to come and assess the materials. Seemingly, the very definition of a kid in a candy store. Combining that with other materials from Sony Music and Dylan’s office, he realized that he had a whole other world of information with which to correct the record. Anyone familiar with Dylan, knows that, not only does he never want to do a song the same way twice, but he has never wanted to give the same answers to the flood of questions about himself and his music. The owner of a Woodstock café owner who had exposure to Dylan, once said of him. “He’s got so many sides, he’s round.”

The book goes through time in chapter bites of a few months, from 1961 to July of 1966, when the man disappeared after his famous/infamous motorcycle accident. When he finally came back after that crash, his appearance was different, the sound of his voice had changed, and his songs were different. But readers won’t be able to read about that from Heylin, until he publishes the second and final volume of this revision. What a tease. If I could line up for it now, I’d be tempted.

Heylin does slide in much information about Robert Allen Zimmerman’s early life and music evolution throughout this book. Each chapter begins with some pretty fascinating and revealing quotes from Dylan himself, the people he played with, outsiders, music critics and insiders, as well as both hostile and enthusiastic members of the press. The author has a clever way of reflecting his subject with his own humor and word play. I should also say that if you haven’t read much about Dylan, be prepared to see a young man treat people badly as he’s finding his way in a world around him that is changing constantly … in short, he can be a real ass. With the press he could be extremely hostile, coy, non-responsive, or playing any of many different games. The reader has to always remember that the times were changing, as this was all new territory … they were revolutionary times. In the beginning, Dylan was a sponge in how he was absorbing everything from accents, musical stylings, lyrics and expressions, even the clothes he wore, before he became a true American original—and one who loved nothing more than to be constantly changing his spots.

Dylan himself might be the least reliable source of all, because as he says in Martin Scorsese’s film, Rolling Thunder Revue, when asked about the 1975 tour, “I can’t remember a damn thing.” On the other hand, considering the abundant amounts of drugs in circulation around and within Dylan, maybe that line is purely factual. Before his history was a known entity, he loved to tell people that he was from New Mexico. As Dave Van Ronk once said, “You never could pin him down on anything. He had a lot of stories about who he was and where he came from, [but] he never seemed to be able to keep [any of] them straight.”

It’s always easy to write Dylan off as being way past his discard date, but like his 2020 album Rough and Rowdy Ways topping charts in both England and the states, it’s unwise to ever doubt that he can still connect with music fans.

The New York Times said of Heylin, “The only Dylanologist worth reading.” I find myself much the richer for having read the book. I’m as fascinated by Dylan as I ever have been during all the different stages of my own evolution … since that junior high classroom. Vicky, my choice of a life and business partner, and my wife of over thirty years, spent many hours and miles in our car singing along with me and Bob. I always figured that it was going to be a rough day for the two of us when the news of Dylan’s eventual death came our way, but now that Vicky has died, I’ll face that day very alone, unless he outlives us both. I’m left with a simple question, who will be the last man standing from our traveling trio?

Great eccentric biography

Halle-fuckin-lujah. I finished this damn thing. Why would it take me nearly three months to complete a single book? Glad you asked. I was getting the itch to read a music history book--something I did regularly as a teen in the '90s, but an activity that fell largely by the wayside when the internet really became A Thing and also aided by the fact I spent my late-teens to 20s working in rekkid stos and got a lot of it just from hangin' out with friends. But I wanted to do it right. I wanted to experience as much of the music as possible, to get a sense of the progression, and listen to every album mentioned as I went along. This was SUPER rewarding, but extended read-time like a bitch. There was the relatively swift rise and fall of the proto-punk bands, so I could knock those out pretty quickly, but then there was the incubation period, then a mad flurry of releases, then a few detours into other off-topics, then Heydin would just blithely name-check an entire catalog--all this meaning I would have to stop reading for a week at a time so I could listen to every damn thing listed before moving on. Also, I had other shit to read. And a life.

But, as I said, the experience was a rewarding one and a process I'll be sure to repeat in the future. It was a pure joy to go back and listen to a crapload of albums languishing on my shelves (and fill in the holes thanks to my BFF's inclusion of me on her Google Play account--besos, Kate!). There were so many old favorites, but it also gave me an opportunity to experience bands that somehow slipped my radar or I didn't give a chance when I was younger or ones that I didn't care for then but found I adore now (also ones I realized I just can't--so sorry, Blondie, I really tried). The context Heydin provided along with some of his opinions (usually stated as fact) also allowed me to think a little more concretely of why I like or don't like this or that album/band/style, etc.

While I enjoyed the experience, I can't say I was always thrilled with the actual book. Heydin's prose is frequently campy--at first it was cute, but it began to wear. As stated before, there were points where his opinion were equated as fact, points where he was just kind of whiny, and points where he just wanted to brag about what he's been doing (hello, "Postlude"). But you also can't expect a punk history to not be rife with bias, and these observations did prompt me to get in my own headspace about the topic at hand, so it wasn't a total loss. Another curious notion I got from this book was that Heydin REALLY wanted to write a history of the Cleveland punk scene, but didn't have enough for a whole book. I mean, it was cool to learn more about our Ohioans' contributions, but damn...when he details every last thing about what was happening in that scene (Jesus, did I need to spend that much time with Peter Laughner?), then glosses over a prominent NY band or sub-movement, then gets super sloppy with the ending, I was about ready to poke my eyes out. Reading the book in 2017, too, came with a different perspective in the over-a-decade since the publication of this revised edition, with more heavy-hitters biting the dust (I still weep for you, Lou Reed and Scott Asheton) and considering the advent of the monumental [b:Just Kids|341879|Just Kids|Patti Smith|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1259762407s/341879.jpg|332242], among other events.

In the end, this book clearly got me to think on some shit and gave me some really fun listening parties. I am stoked to re-re-read Just Kids and finally hunker down with M Train before a return trip to NY, probably do that John Doe history of LA Punk at some point, and continue on this slow read path of music histories.

One of the first LP record albums I purchased as a teen was Bob Dylan‘s Greatest Hits. The included poster hung in my bedroom. I also had the 45s of Mr. Tambourine Man and Rainy Day Women 12 & 35, now in my jukebox.

I knew a few facts about Bob Dylan. Very few. Clinton Heylin’s biography The Double Life of Bob Dylan: A Restless, Hungry Feeling 1942-1966 was a madcap, twisted, crazy funhouse ride of a story. I hated Dylan and he broke my heart.

Dylan’s determination to succeed was relentless. He was a poser. A user. A dissembler. Adept at reinventing himself.

He was a huge sponge soaking up everything and constantly writing, typing away on his typewriter, oblivious to all around him, locked into his own world as he wrote. He wrote more than he could remember.

Heylin’s depth of knowledge of all things Dylan enables him to sniff out the fake from the factual, shaking out truth from fiction. Dylan himself was a master magician at covering up his past. Other people who were ‘there’ tell conflicting stories.

Dylan arrived in New York to be embraced by the folk music scene, paying homage to Woody Guthrie in his hospital bed, and finding good souls to give him a couch or a place on the floor to crash. Leading lights of the folk music world championed him. He wrote iconic protest music that became the background music of the time. Blowing’ in the Wind. The Times They Are A Changin’.

Well, you know, it seems to be what the people like to hear.~Bob Dylan

quoted in The Double Life of Bob Dylan by Clinton Heylin
Was it genuine, arising from Dylan’s soul? He later said it was what was ‘in’. And when he was over it, he did his own thing, scandalously adopting the next big thing in music. He went electric. The audiences wanted the ‘old Bob Dylan,’ booing him across the world. In response, he turned up the volume.

Then there is the issue of talent. He arrived in New York a mediocre talent on the guitar and harmonica, with that gravely singing voice. As Bobby Zimmerman, a Minnesota Jew with a Sears Silvertone guitar given to him by his mother (the same guitar my mom bought me in 1966), he played a good rock and roll piano and admired Hank Williams. Then he heard the Kingston Trio recording of Tom Dooley. (Oh, yeah, I sure remember that one, and I have my aunt’s 45 on my juke box.) It was his first reinvention. Now, he was doing the folk thing because it was ‘in.’

He had a lot going against him but he also had a lot going for him. Self confidence, for one. The ruthlessness artists need to succeed. And something else, a charisma that grew on listeners and brought them under his thrall. Leaving protest folk, his lyrics represented a personal iconography that we can’t always translate into logical language, filled with images and references that elude us while invoking an emotional response. In other words–poetry.

The book ends in 1966, Dylan a mere twenty-five and already burned out by the cage of fame, living on the edge, fueled by alcohol, drugs, physically and psychologically worn to a skeleton from an overindulgence of the senses, at a breaking point. And another chance to reinvent his life.

Details of his career are unrolled, the recordings, the record deals, the shows. The entire culture is laid out, the shifting alliances, the sharing and stealing of songs, the late night poker games and alcohol and drugs. And of course, the women he loved and the women who loved him, the hearts he broke.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

If you're interested in Bob Dylan's music, the people who performed it alongside him, the songwriting process, etc., then you'll enjoy this book to some extent because Clinton Heylin is interested in those things, too, and writes about them at length. But enjoyment will soon give way to profound annoyance: I guarantee it. Heylin is a pompous ass, and if there's anything more irritating than his constantly proclaiming that Dylan was the Jesus of the twentieth century (and that every other folkie--up to and including Pete Seeger--became hopelessly passé when Dylan went electric at Newport in 1965), it's the fact that he goes on to second-guess every artistic decision made by Dylan during the '80s and '90s. Heylin considers himself nearly as important and clever as he believes Bob Dylan to have been, and doesn't try to conceal the pleasure he derives from sniffing his own farts. In other words, when Heylin says that traditional folk music disappeared down a "whirlpool of irrelevance" after Dylan's first electric performance, what he means is that he has no use for traditional folk music. That he can't or won't acknowledge the difference, and is intent on equating his opinion with objective fact, is the problem with this book. Who was he trying to impress? Bob Dylan himself? No, Dylan probably never bothered to read Behind the Shades. Bobby Neuwirth, maybe? That's a sad thought.

The author did his homework, and the goods are here...but when I said "profound annoyance," I wasn't exaggerating. You've been warned.

Great over view of Van Morrison and his life Album by Album up to 2002. VM opened up new avenues of reading and thought and his late 80's stuff was so good. I listened to it while working in the woods during winter in northern Maine. lt always brings me back to those days. So he is a bit of an eccentric obsessive type. But he did pour it all into his music.

Clinton Heylin does an outstanding amount of work and research using numerous interviews, transcripts, and documentation to chronicle the entire account of Bob Dylan's conversion to Christianity, the writing of the songs this produced and more importantly, the construction of the band, rehearsals and concerts in this 3 year period along with the change in Bob Dylan and the complete dedication he had, willing to sacrifice his reputation, esteem and finances to present the Gospel he had come to believe to those who would attend his concerts and buy his albums, not just in those three years, but even continuing on for the rest of his career, songs and concerts for the rest of his life. Another book which tackles this same thing, though in a much less thorough way, is Bob Dylan: A Spiritual Life by Scott Marshall. If you are a Bob Dylsn fan, or are interested in the message of the Gospel as presented in song and raps by Bob Dylan, this book is the best you will find. I am even more of a fan than i was before reading this book, recognising the passion and power he expresses and the crafting of some incredible songs. Also, the confirmation to my opinion, that his live concerts of these songs were much better presentations of this music than he was able to get onto the 3 albums he released during this time. To really get a feel for this incredible music, you should get the Bootleg 13: Trouble No More box set containing 8 CDs and a DVD of his rehearsals and some of the best of his live concerts during these years.

Friday afternoon in Cleveland, WMMS on the radio, 5:00 comes around as the opening cords of Born to Run sound. It's the weekend. I knew that the weekend started all through the late 1970s and early 80s because The Boss was playing, Cleveland's patron saint of rock and roll. Even today, the 80s are long gone, WMMS died and was reborn, Cleveland is long gone for me, but still as I ride into my weekend every week with Born to Run as the first song on my playlist.

E Street Shuffle is a history of Bruce Springsteen and not so much the ever changing East Street Band. Heylin covers Springsteen's up bringing in a less than perfect blue collar environment which many long time fans will appreciate. For others, this book is a good history of Springsteen and younger readers may be surprised to know that Springsteen's professional music career predates Born in the USA by more than a decade.

Followers of Springsteen familiar with The Promise will recognize the detailed history of the events between Springsteen and Appel. Heylin also covers the giving music to Patti Smith, Natalie Cole, and Gary US Bonds. Great detail is given to the making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, and the struggles to make Nebraska and Born in the USA. The painful process of song writing and making an album for Springsteen differs greatly Keith Richards protrays it in Life.

There is something to learn for just about everyone. As a fan of both, I was surprised to learn that Patti Smith snubbed Springsteen on several occasions in New York. Darkness of the Edge of Town is portrayed much differently than I remember the album, one of my favorites It is surprising the tremendous amount of music that Springsteen had for his albums and all the new music created while trying to cut a new album. The book is a very detailed account of the rise of Springsteen through Born in the USA.

The writing style is clear and concise. Although not individual cited in the text, there is a detailed bibliography. There are also quoted sections inserted into the text that provide support and first hand description of the events. Heylin also mentions the the other rockers in the era that were Springsteen's peers: Patti Smith, Lenny Kaye, The New York Dolls. Important players in pulling American rock music up from the disco era. Minor complaints come from sneaking song lyrics as part of the text, it may seem clever to some to use song lyrics as your own text, I found it a bit too much. The chapter titles, however are great “Songs About Cars and Girls” and “Something in the Night”. Also an index would be a nice addition to the book (which may be included in the final edition). All an all an excellent, in depth book.

Dylan's method of recruiting female singers at times reflected his new proximity to Hollywood and its mores--preferring the casting couch to the microphone.

2.3 stars

Burton likely notes in a footnote the case of death by excess. They eat cookie dough while burning in sulfur in a famed poem. What about the greedy biographer? This is all too much, set lists stacked like cases of tinned peaches, page-long screeds against the effrontery of other biographers: oh, the audacity -- one images an empurpled Heylin clenching his fists at the shelves of Dylan Studies.

There is much to gained and then-- there is simply too much. Most popular forays into Dylan have it about right---feel free to end the study after the Basement Tapes. You can pull up the stakes there and worry about undue omission. All of Dylan's work is remarkable, even the shit. I don't care about his cavorting or his Jesus Time. I just don't care.

It's one of those that you just have to skip around and read about the songs your curious about!

This book relates a sequence of events in chronological order stitched together from contemporary sources, live performance tapes and after-the-event interviews. It covers the genesis of the Sex Pistols themselves, their gigs, early recording, their management, friends, enemies, fans and hangers-on. Other bands and musicians of the time do form a part of the wider chronology (as do other sometimes self-appointed movers and shakers of the time).

Some of the sources seem anything but reliable: occasionally they are acknowledged as such. 1970s music journalists for example, were constantly opining in a sometimes feverish way, often desperate to cultivate a personal style, were busy trying to make or break bands, and weren't known for their objectivity. The after-the-event accounts to me seem to fall under the category of "unreliable memoirs". They may not be intentionally be misleading, but human memory's a funny old thing, particularly if you fervently want to claim "I was there".

While it doesn't apply to this book itself, the oft-quoted example of this is the number of people claiming to have attended a specific Manchester Sex pistols gig, now revered as a defining moment in the development of British punk and New Wave or indie music. The small number of people who actually attended doesn't seem to tally with the numbers who have later claimed to have been there.

For a music scene that thrived on the moment, and was often all about provocation, "attitude" and reaction, it gives an impression and flavour of an intense period that may have meant a lot to a very small group of people. However, I was sometimes left wondering if I really cared that much about what "really" happened - or how some of the people quoted were to claim it did happen after the event.

In the end, I think it falls into the category of music book that can be summarised as "Everything you never knew you to wanted to know about.... and definitely didn't in some cases" - a quality it shares with Everett True's book on the Ramones.½

Another book about my favorite band, the Beatles.

It's an older one, issued upon the 40th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper, and I read it during the 50th anniversary.

The book attempts to place the album in the context of 1967, so includes the Beach Boys, Kinks, the Who, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones and all the usual suspects.

Problem is that the writer can't decide what he ultimately feels about the album. He seems to be among those who say that Sgt. Pepper killed "pop" music - which is ridiculous. He also spends the last chapter blasting anybody who considers it one of the best albums ever released.

The writer's style is also a hurdle - too clever by half full of puns, inside jokes and references that miss the mark.

It was a timely read (it jogged my memory about Sgt. Pepper), but I didn't really get anything new from it. Just some slings and arrows from somebody who apparently believes he's above liking Sgt. Pepper.

See more of my reviews at Ralphsbooks.

Good chronicle of the early years of the American Punk scene.

If you are interesting in the recording sessions of most of Bob Dylan's career, then this book is for you. Heylin needs to do an updated edition as Dylan is still active in the studio.

A reasonably good read although it became a bit formulaic through NET days in the 80s and 90s. I learnt a lot about Dylan even his early years that I found interesting. Heylin sets the wrong note at the start with an introduction which for the most part consists of a sneering dismissal of all preceding bios of the Bobster. Best to leave that to others to judge, in my view.

At several points he also left things dangling, eg at one point in 1968 he says Dylan had a third son but there is no record of such a son in the divorce prceedings nor is there any record of this son being bar mitzvahed. However, later on he refers to Dylan being photograghed at the son's bar mitzvah. Very sloppy stuff in some places.

Nonetheless, I still felt Heylin conveyed a well-rounded impression of Dylan, as song-writer, performer and private person. Overall, could have been better but still a good read.½

Not at all what I expected – I guess I should have looked at it a little more carefully before buying. Sometimes those of us who love books and reading as much as I do have our “auto-buy” module switched on when we see a title, an author, or a dust jacket that strikes us in a particular way.

The book was useful, and I am glad I added this bit of arcane knowledge to my bank. Heylin tells the story of the publication of Shakespeare’s sonnets. I always thought they were published under his direction, but apparently not. The author offers a plausible explanation for Shakespeare’s distance from the original collection.

Not for the everyday reader, but certainly for any professional who cares about Shakespeare as the grteat writer he really is. 4 stars.

--Jim, 7/12/10

Since the beginning of time, music fanatics have attempted to collect, preserve and share (and sometimes profit from) 'rare' music,. This book documents the early attempts to make available these live recordings, alternate studio takes, and edited 'throwaways' of popular as well as as classical music. 'Bootleg' also discusses the legal history, and 'pirate' ethics of the characters involved in these somewhat 'illicit' activities. A fascinating history of this significant, yet misunderstood piece of the recording history...that continues into the 21'st century.½

A great read if you enjoy bootlegs. Traces their history and highlights the "famous" ones.

Reasonably good survey of the press reception to the band through its history, ranging from the hostile to the hyper to the overly-enthusiastic to the sane. Not all the clips and interviews hold up; a good many seem to have been written in an acid-baked haze. The best pieces are the ones by the great Lester Bangs, who understood the band perfectly and liked what he saw.