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Overview
Never Mind the Pollacks, the first novel from acclaimed humorist Neal Pollack, is an epic history of rock-and-roll told through the eyes of two rival rock critics. The novel spans the decades from the 1940s to the present day, and includes such real-life characters as Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Bruce Springsteen, Joey Ramone, Patti Smith, Kurt Cobain, and many more. Pollack deploys his trademark roasting of literary pomposity, but his narrative transcends mere parody to become full-fledged social satire. He takes on the icons of popular music and their biographers, true-life rock books and historical fiction. There has never been a book quite like this one, particularly since it contains more than two-dozen original songs written by the author.
The life story of the book's main character, "Neal Pollack," is uniquely American. The only son of Jewish immigrant parents, he shows an aptitude early in life for rock criticism. Prodded by the legendary Sam Phillips and haunted by a ghostly, mysterious blues man, deeply disturbed by his mother's illegitimate marriage to Jerry Lee Lewis, he leaves his Memphis boyhood behind to become a folk troubadour in Greenwich Village. Six broken hearts, two liver transplants, and a lot of cocaine orgies later, he meets his ultimate destiny in a surprise ending that will shock anyone who wasn't paying attention to the early chapters. With Never Mind the Pollacks, Neal Pollack establishes himself as one of the most important novelists of his generation who isn't named Jonathan.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780060527914 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 09/21/2004 |
| Series: | P.S. Series |
| Edition description: | First Perennial Edition |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.65(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Never Mind the Pollacks
A Rock and Roll Novel
Chapter One
What a wonderful morning. I'd just finished reviewing the galleys of my book The Threepenny Hip-Hopera, which compares the sociopolitical roots of Chuck D's work with those of Kurt Weill's. It serves as an excellent companion piece to my oft-studied book From Bauhaus to Compton: Sixty Years of Revolution in Western Popular Music.
Then my editor from the Times arts section e-mailed.
"We haven't interviewed Sam Phillips in nearly two years," he wrote. "Our readers demand roots-music coverage."
It was the perfect research opportunity. I needed to seek verification for my still-nascent Pollack biography, to summon my remarkable powers of research, drive into that Delta dawn, and never blink at the truth. I knew that Pollack had spent part of his youth in Memphis, because I possessed this protean gem from the secret diaries he'd kept at age twelve. It was dated July 3, 1953:
I think Rocket 88 is neat/It really makes me tap my feet/They'll be dancing in the street/When Ike Turner brings the heat.
Brilliant. But I needed more.
My wife was home because her New School seminar, Rapacious Global Corporations: Imperialist Mind Control in the So-Called Third World, didn't meet on Thursdays.
"Honey," I said, "I'm gonna get an apartment in Memphis for a few months. It's for work."
"OK," she said.
"Are you gonna miss me, baby sugar?"
"Eh," Ruth said. "Not really."
"Oh," said I.
I've often written, at Harper's folio length, about Sam Phillips, spoken about him on panels, composed tribute songs to him in my mind, but I'd never had the opportunity to meet him in person. While I felt this was the insulting equivalent of Boswell never meeting Johnson, or David McCullough not meeting John Adams, I was still grateful for the assignment and the resulting paycheck.
When I encountered Phillips on a balmy Memphis night a few days later, the father of Sun Records, the grandfather of all records, really, the original benefactor of Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash, stood on the front lawn of his Memphis home in his bathrobe, his longish hair and reddish beard appearing just as they had on that recent CBS Sunday Morning feature.
"Who the hell are you?" he said.
"Paul St. Pierre," I said. "I'm here for the interview." He looked confused.
"Someone interviews me every day," he said. "I can't keep you damn people straight."
Every room of the house was full of memorabilia from a life in rock. There were gold records, and platinum ones, and records with no color at all but black, the presence of all musical color. Lyric sheets, both framed and unframed, adorned the walls. A life-size copper statue of Roy Orbison stood in one corner, across from a wax model of Howlin' Wolf. And everywhere, photos, of men fresh from the cotton fields, hillbillies hitchhiking into town, people recording, picking, playing, laughing, self-promoting, shouting into microphones and sitting on the laps of pretty girls. It was a house to be envied indeed, filled with haunting music from the dawn and twilight of the real America.
Without any prompting from me, Phillips began to talk, in a relaxed, folksy, intelligent drawl, about the birth of rock 'n' roll. As he spoke, I realized that he'd channeled, in his life, an American ethos about which I'd only dreamed, or occasionally seen in movies made in the 1970s. I realized my rock archivist's fantasy. Phillips had stood at the center of popular history. Fifty years later, he sat beside me, recounting:
"You see, the motto of my Memphis Recording Service was 'We Record Anything, Anytime, Anywhere.' Well, actually, the original motto was 'Don't Be Afraid To Record With Me Just Because I'm White,' but nobody came in off that one, so I changed it. In any case, I opened my shop at 706 Union Avenue in 1949. I wanted to bring together what I saw going on in Memphis at the time, these black and white music scenes that had more in common than even the musicians knew. All along, my mission was to bring out of a person what was in him, to recognize that individual's unique quality and then to find the key to unlock it. And one person, to me, embodied all the hopes and dreams I'd ever had for American music."
"Of course," I said.
"I'm talking," said Sam Phillips, "about Neal Pollack." Pollack had come barging out of the shadows yet again, and my imagination veered into places at once horrible and hopeful.
"Pollack?" I said.
"Oh, yes," Phillips said. "I knew him from very early on. Why, I remember -- "
"Damn Neal Pollack," I said aloud. "Damn him!"
"Neal Pollack," Phillips said, "Neal Pollack. Now there's a name I haven't heard in many years."
"But you just mentioned him."
He slapped his forehead.
"Why, that's right!" he said. "I did. Well, let me tell you the story about how Neal Pollack and I met."
My notebook and tape recorder snapped to attention. He began:
"It was early fall, 1951. I'd driven up to Chicago with my dear friend Kemmons Wilson, who was getting ready to open the first Holiday Inn. I'd made the trip to squeeze some money out of Leonard Chess, that parsimonious bastard, and Kemmons was looking for investors in his enterprise. One evening, after retiring our respective alms cups, we met at a bar on Roosevelt, just west of State. It was your typical Chicago bar, tin ceiling, autographed photos of Hack Wilson and Jack Dempsey, bitter anarchists mumbling over their pamphlets at a corner table, fat-fingered city employees ogling the working girls. We sat down. I ordered a draft beer with the density of sausage. Kemmons had sour mash straight ...
Never Mind the PollacksA Rock and Roll Novel. Copyright © by Neal Pollack. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
What People are Saying About This
“Neal Pollack seems to understand rock journalism better than virtually everyone who gets paid to do it for a living.”
“Neal Pollack’s singular method of deconstructing the popular culture is smart and knowing and pitiless and entertaining.”
“A warped, literate, wildly original and perfectly executed satire that somehow reminds me of A Confederacy of Dunces: The Musical.”