Dear all,
this message just to give you some info about the three volume
biography "Crosby, Stills, Nash & sometimes Young", which has been presented
in London?s renowned music bookshop Helter Skelter on September 27th, 2002.
The books contain plenty of less-known Joni and Joni-related material, so
I guess you might be interested in them.
There's also a couple of reviews which I'm adding at the bottom of this
message. Being written by Dave Zimmer (author of the authorized CSN biography)
and by Matthew Greenwald (of Goldmine and of many other great music magazines),
I'm quite proud of what they have to say.
Here's some details...
Volume 1 and 2 focus on the biography from the very beginning until 2002.
Volume 3 focuses on CSN released and unreleased music (records, CDs, VHS,
etc), their complete concert career (collectively & separately), their radio
and TV appearances, etc.
Some numbers: 3 volumes focused on CSN&Y, The Byrds (with Crosby), The Hollies
(with Nash) and Buffalo Springfield, up to date as at September 2002. More
than 1,000 pages in large format; more than 400 b&w photos (mostly never
seen before); detailed information about more than 100 albums and CDs; notes
about approximately 600 singles and promos (with 144 picture sleeve covers
reproduced in full color); details of 433 CSN songs covered by other artists;
196 CSN guest appearances on other artists? albums; a 24-page chapter dedicated
to unreleased songs, sessions and abandoned albums with hundreds of titles
and dates; 32 full-color pages with reproductions of concert-posters, tickets,
programmes, passes; an extensive bibliography including 186 books and 68
songbooks; filmography; multimedia chapter; details, set-lists and other
notes of 238 radio appearances, 634 TV appearances and approximately 8,000
concert dates (including pre-Byrds, pre-Buffalo and pre-Hollies gigs).
Currently the books are available ONLINE ONLY, and you can order them at
www.gopherpublishers.com .
For further information, reviews and photos, visit www.booksoncsn.com
Thanks,
Francesco Lucarelli
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I received my copies of the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Sometimes Young books
last Saturday (ordered online from Gopher). While I'm still in the
process of going through them, I just wanted to comment that I'm mightily
impressed. Francesco, Stefano, Lucien and Herman obviously poured their
hearts
and souls onto these pages. The decade-plus effort put into this project
shows. Remarkably, most of the quotes in the text have not been
published in book-form before. And I was happy to see insightful comments
from many "behind-the-scenes" players such as Kenny Weiss (Stills's former
manager and music publisher) as well as a lot of fresh material from CSN
and sometimes Y, plus quotes from hard-to-find articles. Also, the tone
of the
book is definitely not fanzine-like. It has a fluid, energetic feel that
makes it a great "curl up on the couch" while foul weather rages outside
kind of a read.
As for the photographs ... I've never seen many of them before. My favorites
are: young Stills shots circa the Couch Album and
Manassas, a number of Tom Davis photos, a selection of Henry Diltz photos
I've never seen, and a wonderful shot by Roger Barone of Stills before a
'76
Stills-Young Band concert in Philly.
My only mild quibble has to do with the layout of The Early Years book,
which features three separate, parallel narratives for Crosby, Stills and
Nash. I found myself having to flip pages back and forth in order to keep
up with the flow of the stories.
That said, I understand what a difficult task it is to track the guys' individual
journeys as well as the group combinations. In my book on CSN, I ended up
breaking up
the text into copy blocks, with sub-heads, in order to keep the stories
rolling forward. So I don't really know which technique is most effective.
A final comment before heading off ... ORDER THESE BOOKS! I've got nothing
to gain by saying that. These books have too much fresh content, too many
unseen photos and too many unearthed facts to do without.
Dave Zimmer (author of Crosby, Stills & Nash authorized biography)
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CSN&Y book series review
by Matthew Greenwald (Goldmine)
Crosby, Stills & Nash (and sometimes Young)
By Herman Verbeke / Francesco Lucarelli / Stefano Frollano / Lucien van
Diggelen
(Gopher Publishers, Netherlands)
A true labor of love, this exhaustive three-volume set covers the collective
and individual careers of CSN&Y in such detail that by the time you finish
reading them, you?ll be thunderstruck. Culled from hundreds of interviews
and articles over the last 35 years, the authorship team weaves everything
together in a all but seamless fashion, and this in itself is remarkable.
But aside from the text, the photo selection is equally inspiring. Hundreds
of rare shots (many never before seen), video stills and album sleeves are
liberally sprinkled throughout the books, making them a virtual page-documentary.
Volume one is a transitory, 150-page book on the members? pre-CSN (&Y)
careers in Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds and The Hollies, following their
divergent paths up to the point of conception at either Cass Elliot or Joni
Mitchell?s house (no one can yet agree on where the first performance took
place).
Volume two provides the core of the story, with CSN?s debut, Young?s addition,
group, solo/duo and re-formation history from 1968 all the way through the
recent turn-of-the-century CSN&Y events. The fast-paced professional and
personal events in these four individuals is quite an odyssey, and the writers
take good care in balancing art and life, and for the most part, eschewing
gossip.
Volume 3 (subtitled 40 Years Of Music and a Trunk Of Memories) is a completist?s
delight: a 350+ page reference guide, containing virtually every known performance,
release and recording session. This volume also contains a cornucopia of
rare album/CD and 45 picture sleeves (many of them in full color), making
it as close to a coffee table book as you?re likely to get on the quartet.
Monumental in its scope and nearly cinematic in form, this book is a feast
for fans of a band whose legend righteously stands the test of time.
Matthew Greenwald (Goldmine)
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