Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

It's the typical rock and roll story arc: youngsters form a band, tour and party, find fame, then eventually self-destruct. Always captivating, and somehow I never get tired of reading it!

This time it's fictional, but that's sooo easy to forget while reading this one. The book's written in the typical music bio style of quotes drawn from interviews with those involved. The players don't agree about what happened exactly, and we get multiple perspectives on the drama.

The Six is a 1970s group led by Billy Dunne. He recruits his brother, another pair of brothers, and a couple other musicians (including a female keyboard player), and they eventually get some notice as a straight-forward rock band. They get along, they fight, somebody has a crush on the girl.

Daisy Jones is a wild child with a killer voice and the face of an angel. She wants to be a star, but she doesn't want to sing somebody else's words. Plus, she's got major rock star "habits," even before the fame. Eventually, somebody decides The Six and Daisy should work together.

You think you know what will happen, but you can't be sure - no Wikipedia to check the stories, and there's no YouTube clips to watch because THIS IS FICTION! (Continually, I wanted to actually hear these songs!) And there are surprises along the way.

I loved this one a whole lot. It's like "A Star Is Born" mixed with the juiciest rock bios. Love, ego, drugs, and flashes of genius. Divine.

Let's Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording with Wilco, Etc. by Jeff Tweedy

In an honest, funny look at his life, indy musician Jeff Tweedy opens up about his family, his career, and how his brain works. It's fascinating!

It's no secret I love a good music bio, and what separates the good from bad is honesty and introspection. Tweedy owns it here, with a self-deprecating humor that certainly entertains. He's thoughtful about his creative process without being precious about it, and he reminisces about former friendships, band breakups and makeups, and even how his marriage works.

Confession: I will read this book again, on audiobook, because Tweedy narrates it himself! (I couldn't wait, so I read it on paper first.)

A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

In a series of short stories we discover one man's effect on popular music in the past, the present, and the near future. Also, we see the world around him and it's interconnectedness.

Bennie was a punk kid in a rotten band who couldn't get a date. Bennie is a record company owner navigating a new world of tech. His long-time assistant takes care of everything - and pockets quite a lot, too. Her best friend in college met a terrible end. Her son is interested in pauses during songs.

This book won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and I have no idea why I have not read it until now. It's all the things I love: music, fandom, quality writing, interconnected short stories.

The Haters by Jesse Andrews

Three teens ditch out of jazz camp to hit the road and try their luck as a band: Wes and Corey are enthusiastic but merely average players on bass and drums - Ash, on the other hand, is exceptional as a blues fusion guitarist and songwriter and singer and instigator and dream girl ...

It's a fantastic road trip book with relatable characters and the kind of accidents and happenstance that occur on an ill-planned youth odyssey. The gang's on-going banter about band names especially rings so, so true.

This book's been getting a lot of press as a hot summer teen fiction release, and it's well worth the time.

Thank You, Goodnight by Andy Abramowitz

After the 90s band Tremble's one-hit-wonder career, the band members all drifted into boring normal lives. But when Teddy Tremble finds he's the object of ridicule in a photo displayed at the Tate Museum, his long-forgotten creative juices begin flowing anew and he decides it's time to get the band back together. It may be a midlife crisis - but does that mean it can't also be a good thing?

I loved this book. It's funny and sweet and there are some great philosophical theories on music scattered in too. Teddy's adorable, but also a bit of a self-centered asshole (typical lead singer) - and you soon learn everybody else feels that way about him, too. Their agent and guitarist both provide some comic relief, and I think this is a pretty fair peek inside the dynamics of a band and the way music gets made.

Nothin' to Lose: The Making of KISS (1972-1975) by Ken Sharp, Gene Simmons, and Paul Stanley

I don't remember a time when there was no KISS; in my life they've always existed. And for that reason, this book was very interesting to me - it chronicles their rise to fame, and the immense struggles it took for the band to build an audience and one-by-one win over the critics.

I really wanted to LOVE this book. And I do actually love it, a little - but I also thought they needed a much stronger editor (the book is an unwieldy 560 pages long). If four people said that Paul and that one guy didn't get along, all four quotes are in the book: Wouldn't we have been better served by one of those quotes, and then perhaps Paul's perspective? The book could have been about one-third shorter.

What did I love? The stories! The day the band took over Cadillac, Michigan and the reasons why. The friendship between KISS and Rush (and the animosity between KISS and Aerosmith), plus Ted Nugent's opinion on a KISS stage show. The only time Gene ever got high and the one time Paul got drunk. During the timespan this book covers, the band was a strong fierce foursome, a band of brothers - before things got ugly and the split happened. Ace and Peter are quoted extensively in the book, and while there's a bit of foreshadowing there's no ugliness or animosity in this book.

And a minor annoyance: I wished there had been a few more pictures. Most of the photos in the book are previously unreleased, which is very cool. But when they talk about the photo shoots for the album covers, I wish they'd also given us the cover (I spent a lot of time looking things up on the internet while reading this book).

Highly recommended for the KISS Army, and still recommended for more casual fans. You'll come away with a new appreciation for how hard they've worked to get where they are.

Perry's Killer Playlist by Joe Schreiber

Perry's got a new, sophisticated girlfriend, and the band's going on a European tour ... which will probably lead to a record deal. What could possibly go wrong?

This book picks up in the fall, about six months since Perry nearly got killed on prom night in "Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick." Europe is a big continent - there's no way the band will run into Gobi, right? And especially not when Perry goes looking for her at their pre-assigned "someday" meeting place in Venice.


With chapter headings that are song titles, I really want to create an actual playlist of this book; the music's a blend of hip alternative, classic punk and kitchy cheese.

Again, the action-adventure is big-budget movie-worthy. Guns get turned and the double-cross is stunning but not entirely unexpected. Fast action and quick chapters make this entertaining story zip right along.

The Lola Quartet by Emily St. John Mandel

Ten years post-high school, Gavin's falling apart. And while a series of unfortunate events threw him off-kilter, ultimately it's the news he may have fathered a child in high school that truly unhinges his life.

In the stories of Gavin's high school friends, this novel presents a multi-faceted tale of failure and disappointment and happenstance. While the characters lost touch with one another as young adults, each is tied and connected to the others by an unseen chain of people and events.

The drama - and a sort of mystery - is revealed gradually through the book. Back and forth through time and across the five main character's lives, the reader gathers clues right up until the end. What happened back then? And what is happening now? Even the last page had me rewinding a bit.

It's So Easy (And Other Lies) by Duff McKagan

This is one of the best rock memoirs I've read, seriously. Duff tells it like it was, he owns it (good and bad), and he's found a way to be funny and eloquent about his own debauched life.

There's no reason he shouldn't be dead: his pancreas exploded from alcohol abuse, and tons of his friends died from addictions and AIDS. But somehow Duff McKagan skirted the edge of the abyss and lived to tell.

If you like Guns n' Roses, you'll enjoy the story. But it's actually his writing about post-pancreatitis recovery and his family that make this story such a gem. Additionally, it's amazing how many now-famous people Duff grew up with in Seattle and became friends with in Los Angeles; but he doesn't resort to name-dropping - he really just tells his own story, but with this amazing cast of characters and cameos.

(I'm putting this one near the top of my favorite rock books list - just behind Nikki Sixx's "The Heroin Diaries" and "I Am Ozzy" by Ozzy Osbourne)

Five Flavors of Dumb by Antony John

When the band Dumb wins Seattle's Teen Battle of the Bands, they celebrate with an unauthorized gig on the school's front steps. After watching their impromptu performance, 17-year-old Piper smarts off about the quality of their showmanship and lands herself a job as Dumb's manager. It's a job she's sure she can do ... despite the fact she's mostly deaf and can barely hear what they sound like.

I loved this book - it's a new take on a familiar theme. The band comes with its predictable problems: musical direction, personnel changes, front-man syndrome, lack of talent. But Piper's stubborn insistence on making it work (namely because several other things in her life aren't working out so well) adds a different variable to the equation.