He's spent decades chronicling the Boston music scene. Now he's sharing 'chats and rants'
Jim Sullivan has always been one of the Boston area’s most perceptive music writers, with an ability to unearth some of the most illuminating aspects of the creative process. That’s why today (Oct. 19) should be a notable date for curious fans of rock ‘n’ roll, and the art of music in general.
Today marks the release of “Backstage & Beyond, Volume 2: 45 Years of Modern Rock Chats and Rants” on Trouser Press Books ($25 paperback, $8.95 e-book). The companion “Volume 1: 45 Years of Classic Rock Chats and Rants” came out July 21. The two books are a look back at some of Sullivan’s favorite rock acts, and those he considers most important, with a putative dividing line of the late 1970s at the advent of punk rock and New Wave. Thirty-one artists are depicted in Volume 1, while 28 more are covered in Volume 2. The Paradise Rock Club in Boston will be hosting a launch party for the second volume on Oct. 30, from 6 to 9 p.m., with admission free and a chance to meet the author.
Sullivan’s chapters, or portraits, are both a compilation of the many times he’s reviewed or interviewed the artists, as well as a modern day updating, putting them into a 2023 perspective. There is no exact template for the chapters, and some are anecdotal, while others are crafted from multiple interviews, and most include the writer’s own reaction and initial interpretation of the music. But it is all incessantly readable, in a conversational tone that is engaging as it follows the writer as a common music fan who just happens to have incredible access.
A music writer with a wealth of experience
Sullivan wrote for The Boston Globe for 26 years, and has also written for a wide variety of publications, including USA Today, The Boston Phoenix, Boston Herald, Trouser Press and Creem. As the title would indicate, the key component in these books is the extraordinary level of access Sullivan attained. That was partly due, of course, to his years representing New England’s dominant daily paper but also due to Sullivan being willing to put in extra effort to cultivate these relationships and intelligent enough to engage the artists in such a way that they want to reveal and expand upon their work and creative process.
To put it another way, riding home from the concert in Jerry Lee Lewis’ limo, or having dinner at the Four Seasons with Tina Turner is not the experience of most music writers, and whatever advantages his byline brought, kudos to Sullivan for pushing and probing beyond the surface at every chance.
Book project was a daunting task
Simply compiling the reviews and interviews from 45 years of music coverage must’ve been a daunting task, and then assembling them into these fascinating chapters required a lot of thought and organization, but Sullivan began it in the summer of 2022 and attacked it with relish.
“It’s a combination of my favorites, and what I found were the most interesting bands and artists,” said Sullivan last week from his Brookline home. “There was not really a method to my madness, and I didn’t separate genres as I wrote. Once I got started I could turn out about a chapter a day. I wasn’t sure where some would land, and gave no thought to organizing them, but just sent chapter by chapter to my editor. I got positive feedback and kept going.”
“We planned one book, but it became obvious I was on a roll, and it was going to be a very long book,” Sullivan, who lived in Quincy from 1997 to 2005, said. “I decided I didn’t want to do a 600-page doorstop, so (I) suggested we do two. I’ve divided them into Classic and Modern. The first volume is basically artists from the 1950s-'60s and up to the early 1970s. The second volume covers acts from the mid-'70s onward, and the rough divide is the arrival of punk rock and New Wave. I hope the audiences for these books are not exclusive and can find interesting things in both volumes.”
A new look at old work
Even when accessing his older interviews and research material, going back to even before he began writing for The Globe, Sullivan did not try to just present questions and answers from decades past, but also to offer historical updates and current-day perspective.
“I remade and remodeled these stories, and put myself more into the stories,” Sullivan explained. “I wanted to make it about the artists, but also about the relationships we had. Some of them were deeper than others, such as with Warren Zevon, Ray Davies and Marianne Faithfull. Others were more superficial. But I think the strength of the books is in the interview process, whether back 40 years ago or more recently, and that helped me make it more conversational. I was reminded too that sometimes the clarity of what they were saying became more clear during transcription, and you forget that part. When you’re talking and listening, in the moment, you may not hear someone’s answer as fully as you should.”
Relationships guided book project
Among the first volume’s most remarkable chapters are the continued relationship Sullivan developed with Lewis, whose complex character led the writer to recognize the dark potential behind the musical genius. Sullivan’s take on Leonard Cohen is among the best views of that complicated poet/performer, and his work with the oft-feuding Davies brothers in The Kinks is fair and generous to both. The tales of his long friendship with Zevon is one of the most interesting chapters, outlining the songwriter's brilliance, occasional craziness, and waxing and waning popularity. His chapters on Turner and Darlene Love are warm and sensitive, up-close and personal perspectives that are indelible.
Volume 2 is heavy on the punk and New Wave movements, and while we were both fans of Slade, I’ve always felt I didn’t know that much about punk’s pioneers. Sullivan’s chapters on The Ramones, The Sex Pistols and Johnny Lydon (Rotten), and The Clash have been extremely interesting to me. He goes into great depth on other modern acts like Billy Bragg, the endlessly intriguing Elvis Costello, Talking Heads and the irresistible wildness of psychobilly’s The Cramps. His work on the early days of U2 is perhaps better known, but his analysis here is again worthwhile and engaging.
Other fans will find the chapter on the earliest renditions of The Police to be invaluable, and Boston fans will savor the chapters on The Cars and The Pixies and their origins. And in another unlikely pairing, Sullivan became close to The Pogues' brilliant-but-troubled singer Shane MacGowan. How such a transformative figure, at the heart of forging traditional Celtic music with punk, can also be so lost to alcohol is one of those heartbreaking stories that also are part of rock ‘n’ roll history. Sullivan depicts it in a way that makes you feel what it was like to be there and see it firsthand.
Speaking about Cohen, Sullivan paraphrased rocker P.J. Harvey.
“She said, ‘Music is what I do because I can’t speak,’” said Sullivan. “That is part of the reason many people become musicians, and they can’t explain what they do.”
In these two volumes, Sullivan does as good a job of helping them explain themselves as anyone ever has.
Songwriters coming to Scituate
Before she made her mark in the restaurant business, Scituate’s Kara Tondorf was an aspiring songwriter, and she’s never lost her love of the art. This weekend, her Rivershed restaurants are hosting their third annual Songwriters Fest, both at the Killington, Vermont, and Scituate locations. The event includes six of the fastest-rising songwriters from Nashville, who’ve penned some of the biggest hits on the country charts, including Kylie Sackley, Roxie Dean, Lance Carpenter, April Cushman, Tiffany Goss and Chris Loocke.
Tondorf began the festival in 2019, after a friend had started the concept with a Martha’s Vineyard event but decided to step back. The pandemic caused the fest to go on hiatus in 2020 and 2021, but it returned last year to rousing success.
“I am so grateful it has been so well received, with all three days sold out last year,” said Tondorf. “I do it on my own, and it is word of mouth; every person I meet seems to know a couple people who want to come. And we show the performers a good time, with a nice hotel, a clambake and a trip to a Sox game.”
This weekend kicks off with a Friday program at the new Rivershed in Killington and includes a special VIP event Saturday at an intimate beach venue in Scituate, with a raw bar and appetizers (tickets available to the public at $150), and the big Sunday session at Rivershed at 17 New Driftway in Scituate where tickets are $50 and $65. Check rivershed.com for more details or call 508-823-6000.
This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Book project encapsulates Jim Sullivan's 45 years of music coverage
