This Must Be the Place: The Adventures of Talking Heads in the 20th Century
Bad rock biographies are so commonplace that they’re hard to get angry about. Few people expect to find great writing when they pick up straight-to-paperback volumes like Martin James’s Moby: Replay or the pocket-size sketches of Beck, Tom Waits, and Elvis Costello in the “Kill Your Idols Series.” Pop fans buy books about their favorite musicians to immerse themselves in the artist’s glow; all they ask is a decent spread of facts, presented in the correct chronological order and spiced with a little backstage intrigue. People don’t read Stephen Davis’s Led Zeppelin bio Hammer of the Gods for its prose, insights, or critical acumen (this guy thinks the band’s best record is Presence, for Christ’s sake). They read it to find out about the Shark Incident. (If you have to ask: it was a snapper, a groupie was involved, and she didn’t mind.)
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Not to mention the single-sentence paragraphs.
