The Girl In The Song: The Stories Behind 50 Rock Classics (2010) - Plot & Excerpts
After all these years she’s still stunning, would still turn heads including mine, I ruminate as I look at a recent image of her garnered from on-line. And in her youth she turned the heads of two of the greatest rock stars on the planet; firstly Beatle George and then later his good pal, Eric Clapton. And she inspired my favourite song! These days ‘God’ loves to hold back that instantaneously recognisable opening riff to it – teasing his audience, fiddling around with the melody for minutes until he unleashes ‘Layla’ in all its majestic glory, watching in bemusement as the punters ‘go off’. From bombastic rock perfection the song then winds down to lilting piano, before building again – and it’s all a paean to this one glorious woman. How gut-wrenching it must have been to be so in love with best mate’s wife – the pain of it all sent Clapton spiraling down to a dark place assisted by heroin. George of course couldn’t let Clapton outdo him so, from his pen, came another romantic gem ‘Something’. She certainly did ‘move’ these fellows. But even then classic love songs hadn’t finished with Pattie Boyd. About to go out one evening with now hubby Eric, Pattie casually asked if she looked okay. From that query we have the sublime ‘Wonderful Tonight’ – the most powerful reminder of all just how lucky we are to have our own goddess in our lives.This is the nutshell of just one of the stories covered in this informative delve into the background some tunes, redolent of times past, about bewitching women. Within its covers we find out that Pattie’s sister got in on the act by impacting on Donovan so much that he produced ‘Jennifer Juniper’ as a result, and then there were two of Dylan’s muses. For his mentor and lover, Joan Baez, there came ‘It Aint Me Babe’, and for Suze Rotolo, for gracing that iconic cover as well as his bed, we have ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’. There are tales of the power of famous beauties such as Marianne Faithful, Brigitte Bardot, Christie Brinkley, Caroline Kennedy, Rosanna Arquette, Angela Bowie and more. I discovered the mysteriously notorious Candy Darling inspired another of my favourite ditties, ‘Lola’ – or did she/he? You will have to peruse ‘The Girl in the Song’ to discover the identity of the Rikki who was implored ‘not to lose that number’, and the book will also leave the reader to wonder just why Cohen, in later life, snubbed the Suzanne who inspired his inspired titular song. The two collaborative authors give a potted history of these bewitching damsels and short biographies of their admirers. By its nature I suppose it has to be factual, but I would have liked a bit more ‘heart’. I guess most of these stories could be fleshed out in other places. Faithfull’s at times painful autobiography, for instance, is an excellent read. I was intrigued by several inclusions and certainly will investigate more.The opening night of this year’s series of RocKwiz featured Judy Collins and Whitlam’s leading hand Tim Freedman. It was magical to watch as she turned the tables on a flirtatious Tim, eye-balling him with those piercing azure eyes, and, at seventy plus, still daring him. She, who did so much to give the world Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell, still sends out incendiary sparks with just ‘the look’. The younger version broke Stephen Stills’ heart, and as a result the epic CSNY classic ‘Suite Judy Blue Eyes’ is ours for posterity.Gifted men have the ability to make the subject of their tributes to love resound forever. Mere mortal males do not have the luxury of the ability to do the same, but if a book such as this has any message (I think only one of the partnerships survived - Bono’s), it is to cherish these beautiful creatures who share our lives, and at every opportunity tell them that they do indeed look ‘wonderful tonight’ on the one hand very interesting to hear about the origns of those 50 (well, 51) songs but on the other hand very, very, very, very narrow in the choice of topics. only a handful of songs from the 80s and 90s, the rest all from before that and mostly out of the UK Pop scene (Beatles/Rolling Stones/Bowie) or the US Folk scene (Dylan/Crosby, Still & Nash/Baez) with many repeat offenders. The same incident was introduced twice for two different songs.Most of these tidbits can be found on the respective Wikipedia page as they are without exception well-known songs.In short: interesting but superfluous
What do You think about The Girl In The Song: The Stories Behind 50 Rock Classics (2010)?
Fun bathroom reading about various pop song heroines: Rosanna, Rikki, Suzanne, Judy Blue Eyes, etc.
—'A.A.'
Very informational, some of my favorite songs were in here. Good book for the music lovers
—fresawq
More or less interesting depending on the song in question.
—Pinkstargazer
some fun trivia, but only moderately interesting overall.
—ereader
