Rock Bottom: Dark Moments in Music Babylon
Apr 2025 · Macmillan + ORM
3.9star
14 reviewsreport
Ebook
357
Pages
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About this ebook
The dark moments of rock history fascinate and tantalize like the pathos of Greek tragedy. The bottom sinks lower, the air seems colder, the bad endings--when they are bad--seem beyond bad. The unlucky practitioners of our most thriving form of communal experience seem to hit rock bottom in ways only the most glamorous among us can--publicly. The stories remain obscure, half-seen in the shadowlands. In her familiar style, Pamela Des Barres shines light on the people whose art remains the background music to our popular culture.
Des Barres asks, "What comes first, the addiction or the rock and roll?" The first apparent rock-and-roll death occured on Christmas Eve in 1959, when Johnny Ace blew his head off in a game of Russian Roulette between shows. Buddy Holly's four-seater plane crashes. Marvin Gaye's father shoots his son. Kurt Cobain puts a gun to his head. The headlines tell it all: ROCK SINGER FACES MANSLAUGHTER CHARGE, JAMES BROWN ADDICTED TO PCP, BASSIST FOR BAND HOLE FOUND DEAD. The messed-up lives, the burned-out golden boys and girls, the violence, the route toward rock bottom--Des Barres has a line on the souls of the public figures who lived desperate private lives to entertain us all.
Des Barres asks, "What comes first, the addiction or the rock and roll?" The first apparent rock-and-roll death occured on Christmas Eve in 1959, when Johnny Ace blew his head off in a game of Russian Roulette between shows. Buddy Holly's four-seater plane crashes. Marvin Gaye's father shoots his son. Kurt Cobain puts a gun to his head. The headlines tell it all: ROCK SINGER FACES MANSLAUGHTER CHARGE, JAMES BROWN ADDICTED TO PCP, BASSIST FOR BAND HOLE FOUND DEAD. The messed-up lives, the burned-out golden boys and girls, the violence, the route toward rock bottom--Des Barres has a line on the souls of the public figures who lived desperate private lives to entertain us all.
Ratings and reviews
3.9
14 reviews
Susan Pa
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January 11, 2018
Many people are left out and I don't know why. But I have to say, Kurt Cobain did NOT commit suicide. He was murdered.
3 people found this review helpful
A Google user
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October 11, 2017
What about Randy Rhodes,Bon Scott, Lynyrd Skynyrd saga,Allman & Oakley, Steve Clark,Dimebag Darrell & John Lennon? Karen Carpenter?
About the author
Pamela Des Barres is the author of the best-selling I'm With the Band and Take Another Little Piece of My Heart: A Groupie Grows Up. Her magazine articles have appeared in Cosmopolitan, Rolling Stone, Movieline, New Woman, and Details. She lives in Southern California.
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