Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1925210 in Books
• Published on: 1998-12-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Customer Reviews

Surprisingly good book
Dave Marsh, who as the world's biggest Springsteen-o-phile is someone whose sense of good music is seriously in question, surpasses himself in this loving and detailed examination of perhaps the greatest pop song of all time. He tracks it back to its creation by neglected R&B hero Richard Berry (no relation to Chuck) and breathlessly follows its subsequent desecration at the hands of The Wailers, Paul Revere and the Raiders and most notoriously and gloriously, The Kingsmen. Unfortunately, legal hassles prevent Marsh from actually printing the damn lyrics in the book, robbing it of what might have been its most immediately useful feature. But he cannily follows the fortune of that archetypal "duh duh duh, duh duh" riff, noting it lurking like a smelly uncle behind the glossy facade of Boston's "More Than A Feeling" and lending its "barbaric yawp" (thank you, Walt Whitman) to Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Marsh even finds praise for Black Flag's version; pity he never found praise for them when they were actually around and could have profited by it.

If Dave Marsh had only ever written this book, he'd be a great critic. Unfortunately he wrote all his other books too, dragging the curve down considerably. Still, this is the only good one. And most of us don't even have one good book in us.