This interview for the Canadian Broadcasting Company by Martin Bronstein is quite amazing. During the 11+ minute interview Dylan says that his breakthrough song was “Like A Rolling Stone” and explains why.
He also says some very funny things.
Worth a listen.
—
[I published True Love Scars in August of 2014.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Last night on “The Tonight Show” the real Neil Young sat next to the Jimmy Fallon version and the two sang Neil Young’s classic, “Old Man.”
Actually, we got to A/B their performances, with Fallon’s Young singing solo at first, then the real deal showing up and blowing Fallon away.
Yeah, there’s nothing like the read thing.
Watch this clip and see what I mean.
—
[I published True Love Scars in August of 2014.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
So Shadows In The Night, Bov Dylan’s superb new album was released today.
If you haven’t gotten it yet, then you likely haven’t seen the cool photo on the back cover. Only now you have, since it’s at the top of this post.
Here’s what’s on the CD itself, which is also very cool:
At the moment, I’m wondering who the masked woman posing with Dylan is? And as Jon Pareles noted in his review of the album in the New York TImes today, Dylan is holding a Sun Records single, but we can’t make out the record.
If you know who the lady with the mask is, please enlighten me and I’ll do a post about it. Same for the Sun single.
—
[I published True Love Scars in August of 2014.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
On Sunday during the Super Bowl this ad ran for TurboTx.
Partway into the ad Bob Dylan’s “The Man In Me” kicks in. The song is off Dylan’s New Morning album and was used in the film, “The Big Lebowski.”
“The Bib Lebowski” version:
—
[I published True Love Scars in August of 2014.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
I’m thrilled that my novel, “True Love Scars,” made four best-of lists for 2014.
Perfect Sound Forever publisher Jason Gross included “True Love Scars” in his best books of 2014 list. (His list of best books is down past the music lists.)
Triple R Radio host/ Addicted To Noise Australia publisher Brian Wise included True Love Scars in his ten best books of 2014 list. (Brian’s list is down the page a bit.)
Former Billboard magazine columnist/ current “Trakin Care Of Business” columnist Roy Trakin included “True Love Scars” in his best books of 2014 list.
StompBeast blogger Matthew Duersten included “True Love Scars” in his “notable books” of 2014 list.
And while I’m at it, there’s a cool review of “True Love Scars” in the latest issue of Ragazine. Writer M. Sedlof manages to both write about my novel (he digs it) and provide some insight into my subtle approach to marketing “True Love Scars.” You can read his review here.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Goldberg’s virginal sex scenes unwind at the same racing-heart-awkward-self-conscious-anxious pace one can almost remember from those good old, bad old days when the forbidden fruit was all one ever wanted then-and-forever-after, only how to get it without letting it slip through your hands like sand, when all you ever did was what it took to make like you cared, when all you knew about caring was what you heard at home, an attitude you didn’t know you didn’t have that may have cost you big time. …
“This was life in California during the denoument days-months-years of Summer of Love, Altamont, the winding up-down of Vietnam, of Roman Polanski and Charlie Manson, Sharon Tate … of Haight and Half Moon Bay, of kids who didn’t surf, who confused and burned-out ended up discovering what the core of life is really like, deep inside, where if you’re lucky enough to find yourself before you die you might even claw your way out. It’s one kid’s story, and then some.”
Finally, the excellent blog, Doom And Gloom From The Tomb, just reviewed “True Love Scars”:
An excerpt:
“… a gonzo look back at misspent youth in the 1960s called True Love Scars — the first in a projected Days of Crazy Wild trilogy. It’s a crackling good read, fillled with humor, pathos, drug use and Dylan references (seriously, I think there’s one on every page). Some of the book is quite harrowing — The Wonder Years, this ain’t. But Goldberg’s freewheelin’ style captures a certain late 60s/early 70s vibe (think the autobiographical writings of Lester Bangs) that makes True Love Scars a pleasure through and through. Check it out.
Jason Gross’s blog:
—
[I published True Love Scars in August of 2014.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Improbable as it might seem at first, Dylan has recorded Shadows In The Night, an album of songs associated with Frank Sinatra – and it’s damn good.
By Michael Goldberg.
I hated Frank Sinatra. As a teenager, Sinatra, who was my mother’s favorite singer, represented my parents’ middle class world, a world I was desperate to escape. I wrote Sinatra off as one of those puppets, a Hollywood-invented pop star who sang Tin Pan Alley love songs, the kind that rhymed moon and June.
Silly love songs. That was what Frank Sinatra was all about. Trivial.
And worse still, I read that he hated rock ‘n’ roll.
In 1957, in the Paris magazine Western World, Sinatra called rock ‘n’ roll “the most brutal, ugly, degenerate, vicious form of expression it has been my displeasure to hear … It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people. It smells phony and false. It is sung, played and written for the most part by cretinous goons and by means of its almost imbecilic reiterations and sly, lewd—in plain fact dirty—lyrics, and as I said before, it manages to be the martial music of every sideburned delinquent on the face of the earth. This rancid smelling aphrodisiac I deplore.”
So yeah, for me Sinatra was Public Enemy #1.
Sinatra was, in my opinion, the polar opposite of my idol, Bob Dylan, the brainy rock ‘n’ roll star who had in rapid succession released three of the greatest albums ever: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde.
Dylan wrote his own songs, sang with a voice like no other, was a poet, brought the art of songwriting to a level it had never previously reached and was the hippest of the hip.
In 1965, while Sinatra was singing retro pop like “The September Of My Years” and “Last Night When We Were Young,” Dylan was spitting out such modern cubist masterpieces as “Ballad Of A Thin Man,” “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Like A Rolling Stone.”
Sinatra was ancient history, the pop singer my mother’s heart beat fast for during her teenage years as a bobby soxer.
I had no interest and no time for Frank Sinatra.
But 23 years later, in 1988, thanks to Beach Boy Brian Wilson, my attitude towards Sinatra changed. I was on assignment for Rolling Stone, writing a feature story about Wilson, who had a debut solo album about to be released. I was hanging out with Wilson at his townhouse in Malibu, and I was checking out some of his favorite CDs, which included recordings by Randy Newman and Phil Spector. There was one by Frank Sinatra, possibly In the Wee Hours or it might have been September Of My Years. Whichever it was, I listened to it there at Wilson’s place, and I opened up to Sinatra. I heard him for the first time.
I came to appreciate Sinatra, and the songs he sang, and I came to dig the often sentimental arrangements provided by Nelson Riddle and others.
Still, when I learned that Bob Dylan, BOB DYLAN, had recorded Shadows In The Night, a full album of songs previously recorded by Sinatra, my initial reaction was that of my 15-year-old self: horror.
Dylan singing those songs? Those corny Tin Pan Alley songs? How could he?
Read the rest of this column at Addicted To Noise.
—
[Last August I published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of the book. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]