I’ve been meaning to post more on here than just the occasional drawing here and there, and I suppose this is as good a start to that as any–

Ever since 2016, I’ve been keeping track of which novels I’ve completed throughout each given year. Thus far I’ve just kept a list of them in a Google Docs file, but to brag/prove that I’m capable of reading, I’ll do a quick-ish blog post about each of the books to cap this year off.

(Fair warning: almost all of these are biographies, most of which are music biographies in particular. That’s just what I’m generally drawn to. Don’t judge me. Or do, actually. Feels like people should probably be doing that more, honestly.)

Here we go, in order:

1. “Exile on Main St.: A Season in Hell with The Rolling Stones” by Robert Greenfield

(published 2006)

Exile on Main Street is generally regarded as the Rolling Stones’ greatest album, and since I personally agree with this opinion I have no choice but to deem it objectively correct. The behind the scenes goings-on that led to Exile’s creation is one of the quintessential sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll legends; hedonism, debauchery, and above all else, incredible fucking music pushed to the maximum. Greenfield takes a very interesting approach to telling the story of Exile, drawing on traditional, almost mythological storytelling archetypes to recount what went on. In doing this, the book comes across as a fairy tale from Hell, and I mean this in the best possible way. It primarily focuses on Keith Richards (by design, the book explicitly casts him as “the hero” towards the start), so be prepared to hear significantly more about his exploits than you will any other member of the Stones. This doesn’t particularly bother me, however, both because he’s my favorite Stone, as well as you’ve just gotta realize that he was the center of all the chaos going on during that period anyways, so any history of it is gonna focus on him above all the others. This one just tells you right out of the gate that it’s gonna lean into that angle, instead of pretending it won’t.

2) “Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story” by Rick Bragg

(published 2014)

With the news of Little Richard’s death earlier this year, Jerry Lee Lewis was left the last major figurehead of early rock ‘n roll standing (yes, some other figures such as Don Everly and the wildly-underrated Lloyd Price are still around, but they aren’t exactly household names the way JLL is, on a tier of popularity alongside Chuck Berry, Elvis, Buddy Holly, etc.). This is kind of a shame, because the dude has really led the most (mostly) unapologetically-nasty life out of all of them. While I love JLL’s music, I won’t even for a moment pretend like he’s a great guy. He famously married his own underage cousin back in the 1950s, which briefly tanked his career and forced him to work his way back up to prominence, taking on sleazier, more dangerous gigs that he would respond to with his own hefty doses of sleaze and danger. While this doesn’t make for a very likeable or even defendable person, it *does* make for one of the most captivating stories in music history. This book documents all the insanity that swirled around JLL like a hurricane anchored in his own anarchy, and has the benefit of author Rick Bragg actually scoring an interview with the man himself. While this sadly means we have to sit through JLL defending his decision to wed a teenage relative of his (no, Jerry, she was *not* a proper lady just because she was “mature for her age”), it is surreal to get a first-hand account of a bizarre tale.

3) “Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs” by John Lydon (with Keith and Kent Zimmerman)

(published 1994)

Two of my favorite bands of all time, absolutely formative to who I’ve become (again, feel free to judge me here), are the Sex Pistols and Public Image Ltd. So it was inevitable that I’d look up the frontman behind both’s account of things. John Lydon, better known as Johnny Rotten of course, recounts his life pre- and during the Sex Pistols, as well as a bit of the aftermath (his Public Image Ltd. days are covered in his second memoir, which I plan on reading soon). Lydon’s take on things is refreshingly unpretentious and often hilarious, and he gets bonus points for inviting several others who were there (such as his fellow Pistol Paul Cook, for example) to provide their own accounts of the events, creating as objective an overview of things as you could possibly get from an autobiography. Get pissed, destroy….

4) “The Story of The Kinks: You Really Got Me” by Nick Hasted

(2017 version, originally published 2011)

While the Kinks are one of the first bands to be named when people discuss the monumentally-important-to-music-history “British Invasion”, they’ve also been the most overlooked, in my eyes. I’ve really been getting into them the past couple of years, and I’m convinced Ray Davies is one of the greatest songwriters to ever create a tune. Hasted gives an account of the history of both the band and the Davies brothers Ray and Dave; the two are crucially intertwined. He scored interviews with most of the principal band members, to help walk us through the drastic highs, lows, and more highs of Kinkstory.

5) “Neon Angel: A Memoir of A Runaway” by Cherie Currie (with Tony O’Neill)

(published 2010)

Back to America for our next rock ‘n roll journey… the Runaways are one of the most important bands of the 1970s. Not only did they help pioneer punk rock, not only were they one of the first major all-female rock bands, not only did they launch the legendary careers of Joan Jett and Lita Ford, but they also made some of the best damn music I’ve ever heard and released one of the most perfectly raucous live albums ever recorded. Cherie Currie, the original frontwoman for the band, recounts an often-terrifying but essential to be heard tale of incredible music and horrible exploitation. I’ll warn anybody who has trauma from past abuse or anything like that that there are parts of this that will probably be difficult to read… it was for me, and I’ve been fortunate enough to not experience anything like that in my lifetime. But Cherie put together a vivid, brave, and endearing memoir that’s far and away one of the most essential rock ‘n roll books.

6) “Moon: The Life and Death of A Rock Legend” by Tony Fletcher

(published 1999)

Ask anyone to list the greatest drummers to ever hold a stick, and if they know what they’re talking about, Keith Moon will be up there. For me personally, he’s my top pick. That his was a troubled life is well-known by this point, but Fletcher removes the sensationalism that has often plagued Moon discussions and gets right to the heart of the man and his life, creating a long-overdue humanizing portrait of the legendary mod drummer. Equal parts loving and abusive when his addictions took over, equal parts an incredible comedian/all-around entertainer and a tormented, depressed soul, Fletcher’s genuine love for his subject clearly fuelled this definitive account of the Patent Exploding Drummer.

7) “Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division” by Peter Hook

(published 2012)

Not super-long before COVID-19 barfed all over life as we knew it, I was lucky enough to see one of my favorite bassists, Peter Hook, with his current band The Light live in concert. The first set consisted of them playing the New Order albums Technique and Republic in their entireties, and the second set mostly classics from his time in Joy Division. I love New Order, but Joy Division is one of my all-time favorite bands, as I’ve found both their music and story to strike this fascinating chord with me. Hook gives us the inside scoop for the entirety of Joy Division’s brief but insanely-important history, flourished with his trademark humor (often necessary with how dark the subject matter can get). Like John Lydon earlier in this list, Hook has written a few other memoirs about his time with the Hacienda and New Order respectively, which I’d like to get to reading soon enough.

8) “Naked Lunch” by William S. Burroughs

(2001 “Restored Text” version, originally published 1959)

Hey! Look at that! The first non-biography in this list!

Burroughs is an author I had been intending to get into for some time prior to reading this, and by God, was this a baptism by fire. The story here is told from the perspective of a junkie (big surprise for the Burroughs fans here, I’m sure) and rapidly/frequently drifts into nightmarish hallucinations and nonlinear storytelling with no warning. While I was often admittedly confused as to what the hell was actually going on plot-wise, I still enjoyed reading this a lot, despite it being a difficult read at times for the aforementioned reasons. I don’t know if this makes any sense at all, but while the storyline had me utterly lost initially (I had to re-read passages and look stuff up several times), Burroughs’ writing here is among the most vivid I’ve ever read. His writing in this book could conjure these vivid mental images in my head like no other books ever had. If initially viewed as a collection of poems meant to paint a scenario in your mind before you eventually piece the plot together, this is an essential, innovative, one-of-a-kind novel. It feels like you’re detachedly floating through a hellscape, making observations but never fully being able to comprehend what you’re seeing, perhaps because your brain simply won’t let you as a protective measure. This has probably put tons of people off, and understandably so, but I personally am glad I got to witness something to horrifyingly surreal.

9) “Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto and Beyond, 1977-1981” by Liz Worth

(published 2009)

Something I’ve enjoyed throwing myself into the past year and a bit is the history of classic Canadian punk rock, primarily in Toronto (where I’m from) and Hamilton. Unlike it’s concurrent scenes in the UK and the USA, this era of Canadian punk was not super well-documented in many ways, so at times it feels like a hunt to track some essential stuff down. This oral history filled in some major gaps for me, helping me gain serious knowledge of a scene that was before my time yet connected with me deeply that I hadn’t had previously. Most of the key players here are interviewed, and at many times you really do feel like a fly on the wall that was there to witness all of it go down. And considering how utterly chaotic and frenzied that scene could be, this is saying something. The book primarily focuses on the bands the Viletones, the Diodes, Teenage Head, the Curse, the B-Girls, Simply Saucer, and the Forgotten Rebels, but gives some insight into some other important acts like the Mods and the Demics here and there. Read the book, hunt down the songs, and have one hell of a great time.

10) “Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and The Making of an American Imagination” by Brian Jay Jones

(published 2019)

Two of my personal heroes are Jim Henson and Theodor Geisel (AKA Dr. Seuss). A couple of years ago, I read author Brian Jay Jones’ biography of Jim Henson, and it was immaculately-done. I still rate it as my favorite biography. When I heard that Jones was tackling the life of Dr. Seuss next, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a copy. Sadly for my impatient ass, I did have to wait, but I eventually got a copy of the book from the library and ate it up. This gave me horrible indigestion, so I took out another copy and tried reading it instead. It was incredible. Jones clearly did his research and much more, and you truly do feel like you’ve lived Seuss’ life right alongside him by the time you’ve finished the book. The insight this gave into a genius and the what made him tick is informative and consistently captivating. A perfect character study of one of the historical characters most worth studying.

11) “A Very Irregular Head: The Life of Syd Barrett” by Rob Chapman

(published 2010)

Much like the aforementioned Keith Moon, Syd Barrett was a British rock pioneer whose life has become beyond sensationalized, albeit in a much darker manner. Chapman devotes much of this book to the much-needed task of debunking all of the oft-repeated bunk, sometimes to a fault (parts of this feel like him just writing a list of Syd rumors and going through the validity of them in an almost mechanical factor). Still, I won’t complain about that much, as it’s something that needed to happen for Syd’s sake– popular tall tales about the man that have been circulated as fact for years are often dehumanizing, making a cartoonish mockery of his mental health issues. Chapman thankfully proves several of these thoroughly wrong, from the goofy, like the story about him attempting to hail an airplane taking off as if it were a taxi, to the genuinely horrific, like the psychotic episode where he supposedly locked a girlfriend in a room for days, slipping her food and water under the door. I’d highly recommend this to fans of Barrett, Pink Floyd, and music in general– although the one other minor complaint I feel the need to warn potential readers about is Chapman’s occasional tendency to go on lengthy tangents about historical figures he feels are somewhat similar to Syd in some marginal way.

12) “David Bowie: Starman” by Paul Trynka

(published 2011)

Last year I read author Paul Trynka’s biography of the godfather of punk, Iggy Pop, so it only made sense that I would eventually get to his book about Iggy’s on-again/off-again partner in crime, David Bowie. Many key figures are interviewed here, such as the aforementioned Pop and David’s infamous ex-wife Angie Bowie, although David himself is unsurprisingly absent (he was pretty well-documented as not being a huge fan of having his personal life examined). I enjoyed Trynka’s biography a lot, it’s insightful and entertaining as any rockstar biography worth a damn should be. The only obvious disadvantage I feel the need to mention is that it was published a couple of years before Bowie’s untimely death to Cancer, so it’s consequently missing the details of the few final projects he worked on from 2011-2016.

13) “Junky” by William S. Burroughs

(2003 “Definitive” edition, originally published 1953)

We return to Burroughs for the second and final non-biography book on this list (I’m aiming for some more variety in that department in 2021). Junky is Burroughs’ first (published) book, initially released under his pseudonym Will Lee, whose POV the narrative comes from. The book is a semi-fictionalized account of some of Burroughs’ earlier adventures as a drug addict, and thus expectedly features less of the wild-fever-dream-surrealism of Naked Lunch. Junky takes almost the opposite approach, being incredibly factual and blunt, a straightforward account of the sleazy, then-unknown underworld of junk. The most captivating parts in my opinion are the character portraits of Lee’s seedy associates, each their own distinct deliquent.

14) “And I Don’t Want To Live This Life” by Deborah Spungen

(published 1983)

Closing off this list is a return to the Sex Pistols for the most utterly horrifying book I’ve read this year. If the last name Spungen sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because you’re thinking of Nancy Spungen of Sid and Nancy fame. Nancy’s mother Deborah has written an honest and often frightening recollection of raising Nancy, trying unsuccessfully despite her best efforts and then some to get her clearly-troubled child the help she desperately needed, and dealing with her tragic slaying in the Chelsea Hotel. You’ll feel exhausted after reading Spungen’s memoir as every frustrating memory is recalled in detail, and yet I still sincerely doubt it’s even one hundreth the level of stress she must have felt actually living through these events I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. She’s fairly disdainful towards the Sex Pistols, insisting they had no talent; while I love the band personally, I really cannot blame her at all considering the memories she has attached to them. She’s also of the belief that Sid Vicious murdered her daughter (albeit as a sort of suicide pact that Nancy urged him for), while I personally subscribe to the theory that drug dealer Rockets Redglare was the true culprit, but again: this isn’t the sort of thing you could ever hold against her at all. All in all, the book ends on a very bittersweet note; Nancy is sadly gone, but Deborah Spungen has famously managed to open a successful support network for parents of murdered children and is rightfully proud of that accomplishment.

Anyways– that’s it! Those are all of the novels I read in 2020 (I read probably about a million comics on top of that, of course), and I hope to up that count in 2021. I’m not really sure why I wrote all of this or who it’s really for aside from myself, but hopefully somebody reading it has some book recommendations they’re interested in now!