I don’t imagine that Hail! Hail! Rock ’n’ Roll was a very hard sell to its publishers.
I don’t imagine that Hail! Hail! Rock ’n’ Roll was a very hard sell to its publishers. John Harris has been writing about music for nearly 20 years, has an acclaimed book about Britpop to his name and is established enough in the wider media world to appear on Newsnight Review. Now, he’s had the bright idea of providing a kind of Schott’s Miscellany of mostly old pop, linked by a genial Stuart Maconie-style prose, and with a heavy dollop of Nick Hornby-style fandom mixed in. Surely, the result is bound to find its way onto the shelves — or at least into the loos — of middle-aged music obsessives everywhere. After all, as both Maconie and Harris are so fond of saying, what’s not to like?
Well, as it turns out, more than you might think. Admittedly, the book does start pretty well. Chapter One is a greatest-hits anthology from some of pop’s most reliably bonkers interviewees. Keith Richards reflects on the etiquette of drug use. (‘I’ve never turned blue in someone’s bathroom. I consider that the height of bad manners.’) Lemmy from Motörhead laments the fact that his Adolph Hitler autograph is worth so little money. (‘He signed a lot of shit, man.’) The Gallagher brothers row in 1994 with such ferocity that you wonder once again how Oasis managed to stay together until 2009. (No examples remotely printable.) Nonetheless, the longer the book goes on, the trickier it becomes to ignore its overwhelming sense of laziness.
Far too many of the items (the full Live Aid set-list, the ‘clues’ in the Paul Is Dead rumour about the Beatles) seem to have been taken straight from the internet — although sometimes Harris can’t even be bothered to do that, and instead advises us to ‘Google it’ if we want to know more.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in