I am just about halfway through John Lingan's book "Backbeats: A History Of Rock and Roll In Fifteen Drummers." Each chapter is devoted to one drummer and Lingan's arguments for each. I've been enjoying it. I loved what he had to say about Hal Blaine and Al Jackson Jr., but was absolutely flummoxed about how much he got wrong in the chapter about Ringo Starr. It was infuriating, actually. When I say wrong, I mean, literally wrong. It's as if Lingan, a drummer himself, only just heard of The Beatles and Ringo a week before writing the chapter.
For starters, "How Do You Do It" was not written by "the group's masterminds, Lennon & McCartney."
"You Really Got A Hold On Me" is not from the film "A Hard Day's Night."
How about this?
Ringo "began emphasizing his drums on 'Beatles For Sale,' especially on the proto-Velvet Underground 'What You're Doing.'"
"Proto-Velvet Undergound?"
More stuff that's wrong:
"What
Goes On," was not on "Rubber Soul" and it was not "performed live, years
earlier in the 'She Loves You' era."
("She Loves You" is an era?)
"What Goes On" was never performed live. Not once. This
is all in the first seven pages of the chapter. I mean, jeebus, how hard
is it to look this shit up?
On page 65 he says "I'm Only Sleeping" has a "plodding, chunka-chunka beat." On page 66 he says "'I'm Only Sleeping' has a lethargic, loping swing." You can see both paragraphs at the same time, if you cross your eyes a bit. Make up your mind.
And my favorite:
"And then there is the towering b-side from that era, 'Hey Jude.'"
"Hey Jude!"
Towering b-side? Was that phrase burning a hole in Lingan's brain?
"I've got to use 'towering b-side. Anywhere!"
At least my book is intentionally funny.
The next chapter on Charlie Watts isn't much better, but he did get back on track for the Kenny Buttrey chapter and I'll have something to say about that tomorrow.
But first, I'm going to watch Irwin Allen's classic disaster film, "The Towering B-Side," starring John Lemon, Paul McCaffrey, George Harrassment and Richard Slackey, with Mal Evans as "The Mayor."
27 comments:
Towering b-side from the “I’m Only Sleeping” era with a recorded drum performance that Ringo considers his best (Wikipedia) :: “Rain”. Wasn’t that hard. LOL! Glad you’re enjoying the book. :)
A review I read indicated that the book states The Beatles opened for Helen Reddy. That can’t possibly be true. Right? Lol!
Awaiting my library copy of Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run, which may prove to be nothing but, the price is right.:)
Anytime the Beatles come up from now on, I'm going to throw in "Proto-Velvet Underground" when describing any of their songs.
As a freelance professional proofreader this doesn't surprise me much. I could tell you about some real glaring mistakes. I catch a lot of them but I'm sure some slip through. But yeah, you've got to take the time to LOOK IT UP.
(fyi, Book publishers don't have the rigorous fact-checking apparatus as the better-quality magazines. They basically take the author's word for it, which isn't always reliable.)
Normally, when an author makes blatant mistakes like the one's you mention, it's time to put the book away and not take him/her seriously at all
You're right, and normally I would do just that. But as I said, I was enjoying it up until the Ringo chapter. Maybe I just don't know enough about Al Jackson and Hal Blaine to call him out on anything. I'll give it a few more drummers.
Helen Shapiro
He should have hired me to fact check his book!
Writers, please bury the word "proto." I cringe every time I see that in a review. Way over-used.
Bob in IL
Speaking of "What Goes On" have you heard the 1963 demo that's making the rounds?
I have heard a snippet. Didn't realize there was a full length out there!
"What Goes On" is on the UK version of 'Rubber Soul,' so he's right about that one. But everything else you brought up is not just wrong but astonishingly so. It's like, every extended work of nonfiction is going to have a few errors, it's nearly inevitable. But if you're writing about music you do not want to fuck up your Beatles facts. Especially the easily checkable ones.
I wonder if just typed Ringo Starr into Chat GPT. Burn that book.
I should have just looked that shit up!
;)
Honestly, I knew that, but somehow had "Act Naturally" on the brain.
Has fact-checking ever been easier than it is today?? Weird.
LOVE the photo!
Where have you been? Facts don't matter any more.
Jeez, I’m gonna have to get this book. It sounds like an unintentional tribute to Mark Shipper’s parody masterpiece PAPERBACK WRITER, which is still the greatest book about rock ever. 😎
I didn't mean to comment as Anonymous earlier....I was the "What Goes On" guy. I have no idea if this book was written with AI but those mistakes are so obvious and so obviously stupid it's easy to imagine it was. And these people are a scourge. Some fuckin moron on another site actually proposed that Mark Lewisohn speed up his Beatle bio writing process by (paraphrasing here) 'taking all his information, digitizing it, entering his prompts (?!?) and letting AI write it.' Or better yet, digitize all the Beatles songs, enter prompts (?!?) and let AI spin the info into an endless new series of NEW Beatles songs. Only minus heart, soul or intelligence. "I read the news today, yeah! yeah! yeah!"
"Proto-Velvet Underground" and The Beatles: not a combo I would have ever thought of.
Also? What human with functioning ears, brain and even a vague grasp on pop culture would imagine that the cheery, melodic "What You're Doing" has anything in common with the Velvets. However, the aforementioned "What Goes On" does share a title with a VU song. So maybe the AI machine got confused?
"However, the aforementioned "What Goes On" does share a title with a VU song. So maybe the AI machine got confused?"
A-HA! Very interesting point.
I wanted to point out this tidbit, as well. This is from the chapter on Clyde Stubblefield, where he also mentions James Brown's other amazing drummer, Jabo Starks:
"There's no arguing here: Starks-Stubblefield was the greatest tandem drumming team in pop music history. My dark horse runner-up: Jim Sclavunos and Thomas Wydler of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds."
I'd like to add, I think Marlon Brando is the greatest actor in film history and my dark horse runner-up is Al (David) Hedison.
Hey -- you got something against "Voyage to See What's on the Bottom"? 😎
Seriously -- who is the guy who wrote that book?
with Mary Hopkins in the Shelly Winters roll?
Clearly a misprint. He meant 'ProTools Velvet Underground', because Ringo was using his time machine to not only check the future of rock n roll, but also...um....the future of rock and roll.
C in California
Hahahahaha
Check the publisher. Was it put out by The Onion?
Post a Comment