Night Beat: A Shadow History of Rock & Roll

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Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Jan 4, 2000 - Music - 480 pages
Few journalists have staked a territory as definitively and passionately as Mikal Gilmore in his twenty-year career writing about rock and roll. Now, for the first time, this collection gathers his cultural criticism, interviews, reviews, and assorted musings. Beginning with Elvis and the birth of rock and roll, Gilmore traces the seismic changes in America as its youth responded to the postwar economic and political climate. He hears in the lyrics of Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison the voices of unrest and fervor, and charts the rise and fall of punk in brilliant essays on Lou Reed, The Sex Pistols, and The Clash. Mikal Gilmore describes Bruce Springsteen's America and the problem of Michael Jackson. And like no one else, Gilmore listens to the lone voices: Al Green, Marianne Faithfull, Sinead O'Connor, Frank Sinatra.

Four decades of American life are observed through the inimitable lens of rock and roll, and through the provocative and intelligent voice of one of the most committed chroniclers of American music, and its powerful expressions of love, soul, politics, and redemption.
 

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Contents

Introduction
Elvis Presleys Leap for Freedom
Beatles Then Beatles
Bob Dylans Passages
The Rolling Stones Journey into Fear
The Legacy of Jim Morrison and the Doors
Darkness and Love
The Allman Brothers Band
Songs of the Promised Land
Sensuality in the Service of the Lord
Lost Along the
The Story of Jerry Garcia the Grateful Dead
Easy Target
Grace Over Pain
The Death of the Most Dangerous
Walking the Streets of Aberdeen

Keith Jarretts Keys to the Cosmos
The Sex Pistols Public Image Ltd Joy Division
Punk Beginnings Punk Endings
Bruce Springsteens America
The Problem of Michael Jackson
Frank Sinatra
Publication Credits
Acknowledgments
About the Author

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About the author (2000)

Mikal Gilmore has covered and criticized rock & roll, its culture, and related issues for many national publications. He was music editor for the L.A. Weekly and the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, and for twenty years has worked on the staff of Rolling Stone, where he has profiled many national figures. His first book, Shot in the Heart, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

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