Albert Goldman - Classic or Dud?

There's no doubt that Goldman concentrated on sleaze to the exlusion of almost everything else - his 'Elvis: The Last 24 Hours' is an esp. fine example of mean-minded necro biog - but his stuff is always great fun to read, and the Lennon bk was, at the time, a much-needed corrective to the idea that JL was some kind of latterday saint. Saying that, I think his treatment of Yoko goes beyond bitchiness into outright misogyny, and his bk on Elvis is amazingly cloth-eared and snobby abt the pleasures of pop cult. The two Guralnick bks abt Elvis are much better in terms of facts, cultural reach, sympathetic understanding, etc. There does seem to be a high degree of slightly slimy self-loathing in his writing - like he feels angry that he's been duped, which is sort of silly in a critic. I mean, of course rock stars are pretty flawed human beings. And he liked the Doors, for chrissakes (but then so did Meltzer and Tosches, hey ho.)

His earlier bk on Lenny Bruce is much more sympathetic - 'balanced', even - and not nearly so interesting.

If you want a rock idol-smashing bio that's still essentially fair to its subject, Chet Flippo's McCartney is a superlative choice.

That's not the point; the point is that journalism is supposed to be an ethical practice, and people like Goldman, who rely on spurious information and flat-out CAN'T FUCKING WRITE, make the rest of the people doing it look bad. There's nothing wrong with being unfair in a critical context, or even putting a slant on the information you're presenting as long as you're actually presenting information. Goldman just SUCKED at it.

The Lennon book: this is more like it. all the stuff about Lennon's affair with Brian Epstein and his supposed bisexual debauchery in Bangkok is just wishful thinking on Goldman's part, and all on the level of "John told Yoko who told her now-estranged friend who told me this," which is why it was rightly denounced at the time. but if you read it with a critical eye, I think it comes closer to depicting the real John than any other book - with the exception of some of his printed interviews.

The second Elvis book: I like the line about "It's better to be unconscious than miserable." Richey Manic used to go around quoting that.

The rest of it: I've read Sound Bites and part of Freakshow. he's very good on disco and Michael Jackson, and while his syntax indeed resembles "someone who dictates rather than writes," I have to admit he comes up with a truly memorable turn of phrase once in a while. maybe it's just perverse, but I enjoy the way he makes the most unreal, unexpected comparisons. for example, likening the opening of I Am the Walrus to "the soundtrack of a grimly realistic black-and- white film of the late Forties" (especially effective, and right-on, considering that most people associate it with the psychedelicism of its age - with, you know, bright colors and all). it's the kind of thing almost no other rock critic would have come up with. what I like about Goldman (and what others hate) is that he writes from the perspective of an outsider to the rock culture. I like Nik Cohn and Greil Marcus for similar reasons, though they're much better writers.

So I haven't actually decided if Goldman is any good or not, and sometimes I think he's terrible. But pretentious or not, I sure prefer him to that sniffy, self-righteous little twerp Dave Marsh. (Who else could make a biography of the WHO so god-damned boring?)

Here's an interesting revisionist take on Goldman from the now defunct Gadfly: http://www.gadflyonline.com/archive/book/book-07-07-99.html

Previous posters re Goldman's antipathy towards blacks, southerners, pop-culture etc. is spot on. It was hard to stomach his absurdly lurid descriptions of Elvis sleeping in bed, Elvis eating, Elvis crying at his mothers funeral, Elvis joking with his buddies. It all smacks of some silly pre-existing bias Goldman had against the subject that he chose to write about.

Biographers are not journalists, in that there is no canon that holds them to truthfulness or a documenting of their work. Goldman's book struck some nerve at the time it was published, and got a lot of attention. Not sure why. He was a writer who decided to become a hack, got lucky and capitalized on it.

Didn't read the Lennon book or any others of his after the first one.

"On a night like theeeeeees"...for some reason it originally came out on Island here. Maybe he liked Bryan Ferry.

Oh, yeah I have that "Island" LP. It's very strange seeing Bob Dylan's name on that label.

If you read the collected pieces in Freakshow it becomes clear that Goldman didn't much care for rock or the counterculture and took delight in both baiting the hippies and appropriating some of their "gonzo" writing style (though in truth I think Goldman's shtick was derived from Lenny Bruce's confrontational style). This has as much to do with the invective hurled at him from Marcus and Christgau as Goldman's sins again Elvis and St. John. He was a Coulmbia professor writing in mainstream publications like LIfe about the new music and culture with total irrereverance -- not to mention disrespect and occ. contempt-- and compared to that the nascent rock crits were cheerleaders.

The race thing is trickier, in this case I'd say that Goldman opened himself up to charges of racism by refusing to write about black musicians in hushed pious tones. As far as the Sam Phillips anecdote that Matos mentions upthread, it's worth noting that many southerners of that period pronounced/slurred the word "Negro" so it sounded like n****r. I'll never forget being 10 years old and hearing George Wallace talk like that on TV, truly shocking.

Goldman's writing style is undoubtedly over-the-top though I can easily think of far more egregious examples of gonzo prose overkill from the 70s. whatevs, one man's meat is another's poison.

My gaydar is non-existent but Michael D is right on in speculating about Goldman's conflicted sexuality, there are passages in Disco that feel unconsciously ah enthusiastic about some of the goings-on in the backrooms and sidelines.

Last time I flipped through Freak Show I got absorbed by a 1984 piece Goldman did on Michael Jackson -- prescient, eerie.

Not sure if I understand you correctly: didn't Freakshow predate the Elvis bio by about a decade?

See maybe I'd be more sympathetic to Goldman if I cared any for Lenny Bruce or gonzo, that shit to me is like the granddaddy of 21C attention-whoredomry, emphasis on "grandaddies" not to mention "whore." Plus the way he found the counterculture beneath him while trying really desperately trying to absorb some of its aristocratic hip makes him seem less like a gadfly than a more venal version of other sixties archetypes like the hip priest or the love-beads-wearing-professor. Or, hell, the swinger.

Also, you'd kinda figure someone who'd been in the South for X amount of time researching a book on Elvis would eventually understand the distinctions between how "Negro" and "n*gg*r" sounds coming out of a Southern mouth.

I reckon its pretty accurate. It's based mostly on Fred Seaman's notes.

Fred Seaman's book is my favourite Lennon biog, and I think the best, although it only covers a period of less than 2 years.

Always fascinating how a person's temperament colours their perception of the world around them.

Fred's aunt Helen was Sean's nanny.

So, is the forthcoming Philip Norman book the "lives of John Lennon it's ok to discuss now"?

I got the AlbGol book for a pound recently, so far am actually impressed by the scale of the book, and some of the things that have been stated as "Goldman says in his book" turn out to be not so.

He does not say John beat up Stu and caused his death (he actually says the opposite), but he does say John felt guilty about it.

just said this on the shapiro thread: re goldman's disco book, is it worth reading? i've seen it for around £70 which is crazy but so does anyone here have it and fancy scanning it in?

ps. the vitriol on this thread is quite something!

I remember Phil Spector writing a pretty scathing letter to some magazine when they printed Goldman's obituary. Something along the lines of "Albert Goldman's dead? I want someone to check and make sure, because I don't trust him." It ended with "Time wounds all heels."

^^^this thread brings the lolz

ps. the vitriol on this thread is quite something!

Here is a nicely written, even-handed, clear-headed takedown of his Elvis bio: http://www.ulmus.net/ace/aceworks/presley.html.

Meant to use italics, not bold, aargh.

so excited to tear into the lennon book tmrw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY4aPAehQ4A

watching videos like that last night, and the one where he's with Hunter Davies, really repulsed me though, and yeah, his bigotry and self-loathing makes everything he writes reek, but damn this lennon book is jUICY

Goldman's origin story explains a lot:

http://vk.com/video175391573_163319014

lmfao