The least authoritative rock reference book ever published!
FOR THE KINKY
USA $10 UK £8 CANADA $13 EU €9
Paypal: jnmfiction@gmail.com
“The funniest rock'n'roll writer OF ALL TIME
— Barney Hoskyns
The UK’s most decorated rock biographer and archivist
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I began writing about rock in Rolling Stone’s infancy, and along with St. Lester Bangs, became one of the co-kings of the magazine’s reviews section, this — insanely! — while also trying o become one about whom reviews were written. I was a minor rock star myself for a short while there, a pal and confidante of the likes of Pete Townshend and David Bowie. In a snit after Rolling Stone spoke unkindly of my own recording debut, I sneaked over to Creem, and continued to disarm, provoke, and even infuriate in equal measure. But don’t believe me. Believe Ira Robbins of Trouser Press:
"One of the most illustrious and provocative of my forebears in the rock writing swindle, a man who has continued to write and make music for more than a half-century, John Mendelssohn has had an incredible life. Hs story is an all-star cavalcade of loathing, brilliance, and disaster in and among the lions of popular music."
Rolling Stone described my Rhino Music-published 1995 autobiography, I, Caramba, as “like Portnoy’s Complaint as written by Pete Townshend.” (I couldn’t make heads or tails of. that either!) I continued performing original music even after the loss of my looks in a tragic aging accident, and then, during the darkest days of theCOVID pandemic, resolved to write the least authoritative, but most fun rock reference book ever published, mixing wild re-imaginings with lurid tales of the genre’s most resplendent megastars with amusing excoriations of all that had come to make me wonder, “What are they doing to the music that I used to love so much?
[Robbins again:] In Rock N’ Droll, Mendelssohn has tossed his own tale in a mixer with an uproariously inventive fictional chronicle of rock and pop that offers both Pythonesque farce and "wait, did that really happen?" uncertainty. Laugh-out-loud funny for those in the know and confounding to anyone hoping for a reliable lesson in the history of rock, this is what we old-timers (the ones who didn't take drugs) used to call a "mind-fuck." And I mean that in the best possible sense.
The Guardian’s Caroline Sullivan: “Rock N’ Droll,is every hilarious bit the equal of his fabled writing for Creem and Rolling Stone.” Not to be outdone, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Pam Grady gasped, “The history of rock ‘n’ roll as you’ve never seen it or imagined it emerges out of John Mendelssohn’s fever dream of a book.”
Funniest rock ’n’ roll writer OF ALL TIME that I am, I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy reading Rock N’ Droll, as I think countless tens of thousands of rock and even rawk fans will be too.
The story of one man's evolution from a traditional male dom with fierce high heels and long glove fetishes into an avid worshipper of glamrous older women. Sometimes funny, sometimes suspenseful, and always sexy!
USA $10 UK £8 CANADA $13 EU €9
Paypal: jnmfiction@gmail.com
In this 17,000-word novella (whose brevity is reflected in its price), two proud feminists learn to embrace their innate submissiveness in the bedroom with lovers who help them come to recognize their submission as indicative of strength, rather than weakness. Must reading for any woman ashamed of her inclination to deference. SEE VIDEOS.
USA $7 UK £5 CANADA $9 EU €8
Paypal: jnmfiction@gmail.com
John Mendelssohn is a law unto himself, and then some. His memoir/ polemic, Rock N' Droll, is every hilarious bit the equal of his fabled writing for Creem and Rolling Stone.
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— Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian
The history of rock ‘n’ roll as you’ve never seen or imagined it emerges from John Mendelssohn’s fever dream of a book. Never has the phrase “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend” rung more true – and more right.
— Pam Grady, The San Francisco Chronicle
The funniest rock 'n' roll writer OF ALL TIME. Barney Hoskyns, Rock’s Back Pages
My first attempt at the book's cover!
[PUNK] Naturally, most of punk was utter crap, but that didn’t make it much different from other subgenres. Most rockabilly was below average, and most folk. That’s why the very talented (or the very lucky) get the gigantobucks! The only difference was that punk not only abided, but in fact demanded a certain level of obnoxiousness. Instead of actual talent, the key things one needed were a sense of entitlement — why shouldn’t I be up on stage? — and shamelessness. A dollop of masochism certainly helped, as, if you make yourself throw up on enough audiences, one’s almost guaranteed to punch you hard in the kisser. Next stop, stardom!
[THE BAND] A year after groups began trading their rhythm guitarists for towers of amplification, The Band was greeted as the salvation of American popular music. While most of their contemporaries were dressing as Indians (the Bombay and chicken tikka sort) and composing flatulent concept albums about what they’d learned from their gurus, The Band looked like goatherds or subsistence farmers, and sang with authentic-seeming raggedness about someone jacking his daw, and other quintessentially North American recreations.
[CHRISSY AMPHLETT] My girlfriend took me to see her at the Warfield Theatre. Ms. Amphlett seemed to be dressed as a French maid, in a skirt so short that her stocking tops showed. She was as far beyond merely sexy as Perth is beyond Honolulu. She stood right on the edge of the stage and paid no attention to the young fans of both sexes savoring the view, at least until she decided, during one song, to enjoy a little sit-down, on the edge of the stage, with her knees far apart, and an expression of the most exquisite indifference on her gorgeous face. For a moment, the young fans looked at each other in confusion. Then a young hand alighted on the oblivious songbird’s thigh, and in a wink there were hands all over her. She paid not the slightest bit of attention. She had a song to coo.
[HOW ROCK IS DYING] Young people want to watch older musicians (like my new UK band, the Freudian Sluts) they’ve never heard of play rock and roll as much as they want to hear Ma and Pa talking about their sexual escapades. People whose own once-pretty faces have become lavishly creased will pay $237.50 to see someone whose music they loved at age 23 — . the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac in the USA, and Oasis in the UK — but won’t walk sixty feet to see persons of their own vintage performing original music.
The funniest rock 'n' roll writer OF ALL TIME. — Barney Hoskyns, Rock’s Back Pages
He knows rock from the inside, having been a distinctive performer, composer and lyricist. What he has to say may infuriate, but it always matters. Lewis Segal, Los Angeles Times
Ira Robbins
Trouser Press
One of the most illustrious and provocative of my forebears in the rock writing swindle, a man who has continued to write and make music for more than a half-century, John Mendelssohn has had an incredible life. Neither a Candide nor a Zelig, his story is an all-star cavalcade of loathing, brilliance and disaster in and among the lions of popular music.
In Rock N' Droll, Mendelssohn has tossed his own tale in a mixer with an uproariously inventive fictional chronicle of rock and pop that offers both Pythonesque farce and "wait, did that really happen?" uncertainty. Laugh-out-loud funny for those in the know and confounding to anyone hoping for a reliable lesson in the history of rock, this is what we old-timers (the ones who didn't take drugs) used to call a "mind-fuck." And I mean that in the best possible sense.
-- Ira Robbins, Trouser Press
