New York Dolls, The Clash, De La Soul … our selection of musical books for the holidays

If you like music and its sagas, immerse yourself now in the books that we have particularly loved this year. From Jazz to New Wave to opera and folk, there is bound to be a story for you.

“French New Wave, 1978-1988, a modern youth”, by Jean-Emmanuel Deluxe

1978-1988. Ten years that changed the face of French pop and in which Jean-Emmanuel Deluxe, journalist at Rock & Folk Where Gonzaï today and a great connoisseur of this scene. The format is austere, despite the beautiful drawing by Serge Clerc on the cover, with a necessarily reductive classification by labels: “Today stars” for artists who have moved from the underground to the Top 50 (Daho, Indochine, Bashung, Lio … ), “Founding groups” (Marquis de Sade, Taxi Girl, Rita Mitsouko…), “Girls of the new wave” (Elli Medeiros, Mona Soyoc, Pascale Le Berre…) that we could still have included in the other chapters … But the work is a mine of detailed information for those who want to find the debates, the impulses, the conflicts which shaped the time. – O.d.P.
Éd. Fantask, 256 p., 27 €.

“Mendelson: integral (1995-2021)”, by Pascal Bouaziz

A unique object. All of Pascal Bouaziz’s texts for Mendelson (including a few unpublished), covering seven albums published in the space of twenty-six years. The shortest is four lines, the longest thirty-eight pages. Stories of people who have not found the instructions for life; derailed train-trains; of memories that do not pass. Delivered raw, without the music, they keep a strong intensity. In the first part, the author retraces the history of this rock group out of frame and his own. “When a songwriter sees himself published in a book, he’s really dead, right? “ Bouaziz is nevertheless very much alive, ready for a next chapter. – F.G.
Ed. Médiapop, 304 p., € 15.

“New York Dolls L.U.V. Love” , de Bruno Juffin

With a dazzling and fleeting legend, a short book. Bruno Juffin (ex of Inrocks) gives his well-documented tale the nerve to give thanks to the electricity of the Dolls. Wild quartet of children from Queens, barely domesticated by the music industry for two albums. Bottle-fed with primal rock’n’roll, made up like dolls, mounted on heels, strapped in fishnet or imitation leopard, David Johansen and Johnny Thunders (the Jaggers and Richards of glam-punk), Sylvain, Arthur Kane and Jerry Nolan staggered onto the 70’s (mostly New York) scene like dogs in a bowling game. Their thin and flashy trace inspired Sex Pistols and Smiths, among others. – F.G.
Ed. Le Boulon, 160 p., € 18.

“Joan Baez”, by Stan Cuesta

“Joan Baez is not rock’n’roll”, writes Stan Cuesta (episodic collaborator of Telerama) in the prologue to his monograph on the Madonna of the 60’s. Yes, but “Joan Baez is a work of art”, he also says, quoting the African-American writer Langston Hughes. With a powerful voice and an underrated guitar playing, she went beyond the folk genre (and her all too famous romance with Bob Dylan) to impose a charismatic and committed personality. The originality of the book is to give the floor to French witnesses, who have known closely the author of Diamonds and Rust : artists, music and media professionals. Their voices give an intimate aspect to this very complete portrait. – F.G.
Ed. Höebeke / Gallimard, 200 p., € 25.

“Music. Traverses et Horizons ”, by Philippe Robert

Fifteen years ago, Philippe Robert published with the same publisher a Alternative route in one hundred and forty essential pop and rock albums ; followed the year after by Experimental music: a transversal anthology of emblematic recordings. This new and copious volume brings together the two approaches and lists four hundred albums with a more or less enduring cult, “A long drift” rather than just another ideal nightclub. From Jean Dubuffet to Sunn O))), we cross classics and obscures, with mainly two lines of force, one noise (avant-garde or industrial), the other folk (sometimes drawing on jazz). Far from the big machines, we walk here in the margin in the broad sense. – F.G.
Ed. Le Mot et le Reste, 434 p., € 32.

“The Clash. The Experience ”, by Maud Berthomier

Could have been one more biography of the “Only group that counts”, as he has often been called. It is much more. The experience in question here is the experience experienced by seven personalities in contact with The Clash and its music. Rock critics (John Ingham, Jim DeRogatis, Serge Kaganski), musicians (Joe Talbot from Idles, Robert Del Naja from Massive Attack), photographer (Richard Schroeder) and filmmaker (FJ Ossang), they say, through long interviews l impact that The Last Gang in Town had on them, and more generally on society, at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s. Artistic creativity, relationships with fans, political utopia, ethics, combative humanism … all facets of the Clash are scrutinized. Often touching, like Schroeder’s impromptu meeting with Joe Strummer during his Parisian getaway, and above all fascinating. – F. Pé.
Ed. GM Éditions, 144 p., € 30.

“De La Soul”, as dead as alive, by Vincent Brunner

The cursed and never-told fate of one of the most innovative American hip-hop groups of its generation, which will quickly take its feet in the carpet of glory. In 1989, in the midst of the rise of gangsta rap, the trio De La Soul tumbled against the tide with their hippie and zany style, led by a visionary producer, Prince Paul. Their story is also that, fascinating, of the sample in American rap, here told in great width. – OG
Ed. The Astral Beaver, 230 p., € 14

“John Lee Hooker, Boogie-woogie anyhow”, de Olivier Renault

A heavy guitar with an aggressive sound, a hypnotic rhythm which ravages your heart on chords of a biblical simplicity (diabolical, would have said his father, a Baptist preacher of Mississippi)… If it is easy to recognize a guitar riff of John Lee Hooker, it turns out to be more puzzling to find his way around in the approximations of his biography (was he born in 1912, in 1917 or in 1923? Was he 14 or 18 when he fled to Memphis ?) and the labyrinth of his career (he played for black workers and Yankee folk, sculled between blues, rock, jazz and boogie…). Through his interviews, he himself has muddied the waters and fueled the legend. In the footsteps of this elusive hobo, bluesman “Irregular” in search of success, Olivier Renault disentangles the probable from the improbable, reconciles facts and rumors by placing them back in history (sharecropping in the Delta, Fordism in Detroit, etc.). A portrait full of contrasts, searched with an erudite passion. – A.Be.
Ed. The Word and the rest, 286 p., 24 €.

“Chick Corea”, by Ludovic Florin

All the work of Chick Corea detailed and commented. All ? Yes, all, and there is something to make you dizzy. Because the pianist, who died in February 2021, recorded a lot, from the beginning of the 1960s to his death. With ardor and patience, Ludovic Florin undertook this colossal work. Very careful, the result can only impress the fans and give those who have not explored every corner of the jazz history of the last fifty years to (re) dive into this discographic immensity. – L.-JN
Éd. Du Layeur, 280 p., € 34.

“Around the world in 130 operas”, by Christophe Rizoud

Born in Italy in the 17th century^e century, the opera spread all over the world, and it was necessary to find places to welcome its performers and their audience. A fan of lyrical art (he chairs the webzine Opera Forum), Christophe Rizoud offers a stimulating journey in the form of an illustrated alphabet book, well framed historically and geographically, where the descriptions are embellished with anecdotes, favorites and a few scratches. Between the two stages of Aix-en-Provence and the Opernhaus in Zurich, re-imagined ancient sites parade, Italian-style theaters with boxes and gilding, more or less spectacular ultramodern rooms… What to wake up the globetrotter which dozes in every lyricomaniac. – S.Bo.
Ed. First Lodges, 320 p., € 32.

“Legendary musicians, from shadow to light”, by Marina Chiche

World-renowned violinist, Marina Chiche devoted, on France Musique, a whole series of programs to Ginette Neveu, shooting star of the violin, before broadening her subject to other brilliant sisters, instrumentalists, composers or conductors, who are are illustrated in the XIX^e and XX^e centuries without always attracting the attention of music historians. Through the destinies of thirty artists, told as if they were loved sisters, this well-illustrated collection evokes both stars such as Clara Schumann, Kathleen Ferrier or Maria Callas, and fascinating strangers, such as Hazel Harrison, Teresa Carreño or Antonia Brico. A book for all audiences, and an ideal gift for apprentice musicians. – S.Bo.
Ed. First / France Musique, 178 p., € 21.95.

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