London Evening Standard 23 DEC 2002

The rockers who are still rolling along

Pete Clark picks his hits and misses
from this year's pop music books

WHEN I look back on the year as it relates to popular music, I find, to my surprise that it is dominated by an ancient relic called Ozzy Osbourne. The Popstars culture may be screeching for attention in the corner, but the ageing heavy-metal merchant takes centre stage with a destructive lifestyle which is paradoxically competition.
Naturally, there have been books. Ozzy Knows Best by Chris Nickson (Headline, Ł9.99) is closely tied into his now infamous MTV series, and is full of rather arch tips on "How to be an Ozzy Parent". However, there are some interesting lists, including one of all the man's tattoos, and a handful of decent quotes.
Ozzy: Unauthorized by Sue Crawford (Michael O'Mara Books, Ł14.99) is a more conventional biographical work for those who have not yet overdosed on the antics of John Michael Osbourne. It also poses one of the great rhetorical questions of all time
― Ozzy Osbourne: hellraiser or health freak?

   There are still, it might surprise you to learn, some people who are serious about pop music and never mind the trimmings. Fifteen years after a demise still widely regarded as untimely, the Smiths continue to exert an influence which is delicately poised between benign and baleful. The Smiths: Songs That Saved Your Life by Simon Goddard (Reynolds & Hearn, Ł14.99) ploughs through 81 songs ― including such forgotten masterpieces as Untitled Instrumental (Streatham #1)
― and tells you everything you wanted to know about it.
   My personal favourite labour-of-love of the year is another mine of information, this one more wide-ranging but much more obscure. Roadkill on the Three-Chord Highway by Colin Escott (Routledge, $19.95/Ł12.69) is a series of essays on some of the practitioners of rockabilly, country and early pop. Escott is ridiculously well-informed, but has the knack of passing on information in the casual manner of one who was there when it happened.

Roy Orbison is probably the best known name here, but the real thrills come with the likes of Wanda Jackson, who could have been a big star but was a bit too much of a home girl ― a fact which did not stop her having a fling with Elvis Presley.
Where there is pop music, there will always be lists. It sometimes seems that we only listen to music in order to be able to grade it later. Silliest of this year's batch is X-Rated: The 200 Rudest Songs Ever! by Howard Johnson (Carlton, Ł6.99). In fairness to the author he has done exactly what he promised. The only problem is that the 200 most sex-obsessed minds in music don't prove to be much of a turn-on in the lyrics department, which is no real surprise.
Thank heavens then for This Is Uncool: The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk and Disco by Garry Mulholland (Cassell, Ł17.99). I can't quibble with much that is included here and there is the bonus of a smartly produced hardback ― mini coffee table, you might say ― with lots of colour

pictures of the singles' sleeves we have known and loved.
Finally, a reminder of a couple of books I reviewed earlier in the year. Andrew Loog Oldham's 2Stoned (Secker Ł17.99) is the second installment of his autobiography, and the one which deals with his tempestuous tenure as manager of the Rolling Stones in the Sixties and its aftermath. If there is a book which better captures the particular spirit of those times, I haven't read it.
The perfect companion piece is Bill Wyman's lavish Rolling With the Stones (DK, Ł30). The whole world knows that Bill Wyman kept a meticulous diary, but the early attempts to render it in book form were deadly dull. All that was needed to make it work was a couple of thousand pictures.

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