After a loud rock show, nothing complements short-term hearing loss better than a good book about music, unless it’s someone to reassure you that the constant doorbell ringing is only in your head.
Here are a few literary offerings that I’ve been picking my way through in random fashion in recent weeks and months:
Skydog: The Duane Allman Story ($24.95, Backbeat Books): Lots of Central Florida references in this new biography by Randy Poe, a former executive director of the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Duane and Gregg Allman, of course, spent their formative years in Daytona Beach, going to classes at Seabreeze High School and getting into rock ‘n’ roll in the post-British Invasion Era. Playing in a band called the Escorts, the Allman brothers (lowercase b) opened for the Beach Boys in 1965 at a local baseball stadium.
Beyond the early history, Skydog offers insightful recollections of the Derek and the Dominoes recording sessions, the eerily similar motorcycle accidents that killed Duane Allman and bassist Berry Oakley in 1971 and ’72, respectively. There’s also a quick overview of Duane Allman’s most famous guitars and gear, including a note that the screaming Allman-Eric Clapton guitar coda on “Layla” was produced by two of Fender’s smallest amps (a Princeton and a Champ) with studio mikes right on them.
Read the Beatles (Penguin, $16, due in November): There are enough books on the Beatles “to fill the Albert Hall,” as John Lennon once said about those 4,000 holes in “A Day in the Life.” This new one is a compact, but complete, reader with essays on the band spanning its career, demise and the members’ various solo efforts.
Edited by June Skinner Sawyer, the pieces are divided into two sections: “Together” and “Apart.” The former includes Bob Spitz’s account of the band’s triumphant Liverpool homecoming after the eye-opening stint in Hamburg, Germany. There are also the Village Voice film review of A Hard Day’s Night and reviews alternately panning and praising Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the New York Times’ Richard Goldstein and Robert Christgau in Esquire.
My favorite in the “Apart” section: Philip Glass’ New York Times obituary of George Harrison and Anthony DeCurtis’ appreciation of the band through his post-Beatles portraits of Yoko Ono, McCartney and Harrison. It’s a book that one can open to any random page and find something cool.
Lovesick Blues: The Life of Hank Williams (Penguin, $14): This is actually the paperback edition of a biography originally published in 2005. Like Williams, author Paul Hemphill also hails from Alabama, and he frames this well-paced narrative with his childhood recollections of his father’s appreciation for Williams’ music.
The book chronicles the roots of his sound, a combination of blues and gospel, and the start of his perilous drinking habit as a young teen. There’s also a dramatic account of the singer’s death at age 29 in the backseat of his powder-blue Cadillac on New Year’s Day 1953. It’s a story that makes his mournful songs all the sadder.
Clapton’s Guitar (Free Press, $25): Writer Allen St. John stands amid the wood shavings as Wayne Henderson, a master luthier in rural Rugby, Va., builds “the perfect instrument” for the blues icon. Along the way, Henderson emerges as a colorful character who leavens his skill with homespun philosophy.
A favorite: Asked how he makes a guitar, Henderson says something along these lines: “You start with a pile of wood and then you carve away everything that isn’t a guitar.”
Expert endorsement: On a recent visit to the Guitar Factory in College Park, Orlando-based custom-guitar builder Doug Montgomery had a paperback copy of Clapton’s Guitar perched on his sawdust-covered workbench. These guys don’t host a book club, if you know what I mean, but they know a good story when they see one.
Conversations With Tom Petty (Omnibus Press, $24.95): I’ve recommended this one before, but I’ll do it again: Author Paul Zollo conducts a book-length Q&A; with Gainesville-born Petty, and the result is a biography rich in musical detail. Petty recounts his childhood meeting with Elvis Presley, who was in Ocala to film Follow That Dream, assesses the effect of Heartbreaker Howie Epstein’s heroin-related death, and recalls a 1987 fire sparked by an arsonist at Petty’s California home.
The last 100 pages or so feature Petty’s song-by-song recollection of his music, including a final chapter on his new Highway Companion. He’s a rock star, but he’s also an articulate, thoughtful guy.
