My Back Pages
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it, alongside a child-like sense of Little Prince
wonder (another unassuming masterpiece,
along with Coelho’s The Alchemist).
And over the years, the tips just kept on
coming. When my friend Phillip Lithman
(AKA the late Snakefinger) returned from
Australia, he had remembered my obsession
with gaslight-era horror. He bought me a
Down Under edition of William Hope
Hodgson tales. I was stunned. Over lunch in
North Beach, Ronnie James Dio swore that
the only work I would ever need was T.H.
Richard Ashcroft — one of rockdom’s
most erudite artists — urged me to read Moon
Dust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth by
Andrew Smith, which studies the loneliness
felt by astronauts — whose techniques are
being tapped back into now as we all shelter in
similarly-isolated place. Australia’s Divinyls
recommended one of their homeland’s cult
classics, Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip, after
lead singer Christina Amphlett appeared in
its film version, and the band was featured on
the soundtrack. The Psychedelic Furs’
David Bowie
White’s Arthurian classic*The Once and Future
King. He was right — it was pretty definitive.
Lydia Lunch insisted on Harry Crews’ Feast of
Snakes, about a snake-handling cult. The
Cardigans singer Nina Persson sang the
praises of Alan Lightman’s brilliant Einstein’s
Dreams, where every chapter imagines an
alternate universe with its own unique physical
properties. The first time I talked to Skinny
Puppy main-man Nivek Ogre, I told him that
my then-favorite tome was Maldoror by
Lautréamont, an 1869 work about a man pursuing
an intentionally amoral existence. There
was a surprised pause before he wholeheartedly
concurred: “That’s my Bible!”
06•2020
Richard Butler raved about Martin Amis’
London Fields. Everyone connected with Pearl
Jam —from their publicist to Eddie Vedder
himself, circa Yield — sang the praises of
Daniel Quinn’s crucial philosophical novel
Ishmael, wherein (and I know this sounds
crazy, but I assure you it’s not) a male
Silverback gorilla telepathically teaches an exhippie
daily lessons about why man, in arrogantly
thinking he’s the end product of evolution,
has doomed himself to extinction. And
we’re getting damned close. It was a treatise
so important to me that I lost count of how
many copies I’ve bought for kindred-spirit
musicians over the years.
sideshow attraction The Cardiff Giant once it
My carefully-unearthed recommendations
often boomeranged back on me. The third or
fourth time I talked to Chris Cornell — whose
shy, soft-spoken demeanor belied a rapier wit
— I brought him a copy of Leonard Cohen’s
Stranger Music lyrical/poetry anthology, hoping
he’d dig it. Next time I saw him, his thenwife
Susan Silver pulled me aside and said, “I
don’t know whether to punch you or hug you
— every morning at 3:00 a.m., Click! The bedside
light turns on, and he’s reading that
Cohen book again! He even set one of his
poems to music!” Arecording, of course, nixed
by the protective Cohen; Nobody sang his
words but him. And nobody really could,
truthfully. And when I met Cohen, I’m pretty
was shown not to be a giant at all, but a
sure I gave him a copy of Budd Schulberg’s
prescient 1941 book What Makes Sammy Run,
the ultimate showbiz-weasel yarn, where the
comeuppance is Icarus-awesome in scope.
If I loved a book, I would purchase multiple
copies for my interview subjects. Like J.T.
Leroy’s soon-to-prove-controversial Sarah,
which was — and still is — a great read no
matter who wrote it, or under what assumed
alias. Brian Molko from Placebo got my first
edition, and over a dozen more performers
received a copy shortly after that. I still consider
Laura Albert, a friend, and I saw no reason
to turn on her when the hoax was revealed. (I
mean, did people lose all faith in the 1869
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12 illinoisentertainer.com june 2020