Blair Jackson & David Gans: This Is All A Dream We Dreamed...

We asked Blair Jackson and David Gans, co-authors or This Is All A Dream We Dreamed: An Oral History Of The Grateful Dead  what their favorite music biographies were, or if they had recent music book reads that they’d like to recommend. Here’s what the pair had to report.

 

 

Blair Jackson recommends:

 

"I am addicted to music biographies! I just finished Elvis Costello’s Unifaithful Music, which I recommend very highly. He’s a really good writer (as you might expect) and the tale is told in a very cool, sort of non-linear way. It took me two years to finally get to Patti Smith’s first book, Just Kids, but that is definitely a must-read — not much about her music, but as a portrait of her relationship with Robert Maplethorpe and growing up in the NYC art/music scene — fascinating  and well-written. I have her new one, M Train, but haven’t read it yet. Before that I read a fine Duke Ellington biography called Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, by Terry Teachout; also excellent. Older favorites include Shakey, about Neil Young, memoirs by Eric Clapton and Ron Wood, and Keith Richards’ book, Life (I love reading about England in the 1950s and early ’60s!). And of course, Dylan’s Chronicles—eagerly awaiting the second volume of that one of these days (I hope)… I could go on…"

David Gans recommends:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"It’s been a big year for Dead-related books! I thoroughly enjoyed David Browne’s So Many Roads and Bill Kreutzmann’s Deal, and right now I am getting a real kick out of Dennic McNally’s Jerry on Jerry."

 

 

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