Backstage & Beyond Volume 1 : 45 Years of Classic Rock Chats & Rants

Jim Sullivan, who spent 26 years writing about popular music for the Boston Globe, focuses on artists who came to prominence in the 1950s and '60s in the first volume of his anthology, Backstage & Beyond. Drawing on multiple interviews he conducted with each artist, Sullivan – a 2023 inductee into the New England Music Hall of Fame – delivers fascinating, entertaining (and occasionally hair-raising) profiles of such Rock and Roll Hall of Famers as: Jerry Lee Lewis David Bowie Warren Zevon The Kinks Aerosmith Lou Reed George Clinton Iggy Pop Pete Townshend Alice Cooper John Fogerty Tina Turner Leonard Cohen Rather than simply collect up previously published articles as they originally appeared, Sullivan combed through his archive to find everything he wrote about each artist and worked them together into a more expansive time-passages view that chronicles their changing situations, outlooks and experiences. In the preface, Sullivan writes, “My hope is that the recollections contained here … trigger some memories, bring you back to where you wanted to be — backstage and beyond, as it were. And if you weren’t around then, I hope this transports you back to several golden ages of rock and roll.”