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Title details for Blood, Sweat, and My Rock 'n' Roll Years by Steve Katz - Available

Blood, Sweat, and My Rock 'n' Roll Years

Is Steve Katz a Rock Star?

by Steve Katz
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On paper Steve Katz's career rivals anyone's except the 1960s' and '70's biggest stars: the Monterey Pop Festival with the legendary Blues Project, Woodstock with Blood, Sweat & Tears, and even producing rock's most celebrated speed addict, Lou Reed. There were world tours, and his résumé screams "Hall of Fame" — it won't be long before BS&T are on that ballot. He has three Grammies (ten nominations), three Downbeat Reader's Poll Awards, three gold records, one platinum record, and one quadruple platinum platter (the second Blood, Sweat & Tears album), not to mention three gold singles with BS&T. All together, he's sold close to 29 million records. He had affairs with famous female folk singers, made love to Jim Morrison's girlfriend Pam when Jim was drunk and abusive, partied with Elizabeth Taylor and Groucho Marx, dined with Rudolf Nureyev, conversed with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Tennessee Williams, hung out with Andy Warhol, jammed with everyone from Mose Allison to Jimi Hendrix, and was told to get a haircut by both Mickey Spillane and Danny Thomas.
But his memoir is more Portnoy's Complaint than the lurid party-with-your-pants-down memoir that has become the norm for rock 'n' roll books. It's an honest and personal account of a life at the edge of the spotlight—a privileged vantage point that earned him a bit more objectivity and earnest outrage than a lot of his colleagues, who were too far into the scene to lay any honest witness to it. Set during the Greenwich Village folk/rock scene, the Sixties' most celebrated venues and concerts, and behind closed doors on international tours and grueling studio sessions, this is the unlikely story of a rock star as nerd, nerd as rock star, a nice Jewish boy who got to sit at the cool kid's table and score the hot chicks.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 1, 2015

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781493017423
      • File size: 4388 KB

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781493017423
      • File size: 4388 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 4, 2015
      Legendary guitarist Katz isâor at least wasâdefinitely a rock star: a pioneer of the blues-rock genre with his early 1960s band, the Blues Project; a founder in the late 1960s of the groundbreaking and hugely popular jazz-rock big band Blood, Sweat & Tears; and the producer of Lou Reed's best-selling and still-influential live LP Rock ân' Roll Animal (as well as its follow-up Sally Can't Dance, Reed's only top-10 album). Katz engagingly recounts fascinating stories in an insightful, intelligent, sometimes wistful and sometimes funny style that makes this one of the few rock memoirs worth reading from beginning to end. Highlights include his early days getting lessons from blues guitar genius Rev. Gary Davis in a "little clapboard shanty" in the South Bronx; the birth of Blood, Sweat & Tears despite Katz's contentious relationship with co-founder and Dylan collaborator Al Kooper ("Al never liked my guitar playing and I never liked his voice"); the phenomenal successâwith Kooper's replacement singer, David Clayton-Thomasâof BS&T's second self-titled LP with hits such as "Spinning Wheel"; and later, "David's transformation from soul singer to slinger of schmaltz." Katz also reveals that the audience sound on Reed's live LP was lost and then replaced by the audience track from a John Denver live LP, a priceless story for all Reed fans or detractors.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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