Rolling Stone Australia - May 2016

By the time she was 20, Lita Ford had

gotten crabs from Dee Dee Ramone,

toured the world with all-female punks

the Runaways, and got

her nose broken by a belt-

buckle-wielding woman

in a fight. Ford’s fearless

Living Like a Runawayis

a vivid account of life as

“the one-and-only guitar-

playing rocker chick who

could shred like I did”.

Personal struggles mount: Exploitative

Svengali Kim Fowley calls the band

“dogs”, and Ford battles music-biz

chauvinism and estrangement from her

kids. It’s a fast-paced read – and, at its

best, an inspiring one. ANNIE LICATA

LITA FORD: A ROCK

& ROLL HEROINE

TELLS ALL

This engaging biography of the troubled

soul heroine serves as a companion to

the 2015 Netfl ix documentary of the

same title. Journalist Alan

Light chronicles the life

of a civil-rights icon who

“grudgingly accepted the

popular nickname ‘the

High Priestess of Soul’ ”.

Simone’s mental-health

struggles led to violent

episodes (she brought

bodyguards to shows to protect fans

from her), and a tragic end. But as Light

shows, her intensity fuelled music that

refl ected and transformed the volatile

America of her times. JON DOLAN

Now that seemingly every record ever

made is just a couple of clicks away,

how do we process it all? In his incisive

new essay collection,

Every Song Ever, New

York Times critic Ben

Ratlif fi nds one way:

by locating common

ground among artists

as dif erent as Black Sab-

bath and Mozart. Ratlif

draws up idiosyncratic

playlists and focuses on shared traits

like loudness and repetition. Thanks to

Ratlif ’s vast knowledge, what could

have been a dry academic exercise is

more like a trip into the world’s coolest

record store. DAVID BROWNE

MAKING SENSE

OF A SEA OF

MUSIC

O

nacharmednightin

August 1969, residents of

tiny Woodstock, New York,

hadthechoiceofseeingVanMor-

risonorbluesgreatJohnnyWinter,

whowerebothintownperforming

atintimatevenues.Ifthatwasn’t

enough entertainment, Jimi Hen-

drix was a few blocks away, holed

upinaconvertedMethodistchurch

workshopping the rendition of “The Star-

Spangled Banner” he’d make legendary just

weeks later, 100 kilometres down the road at

MaxYasgur’sfarm.

Veteran music journalist Barney Hoskyns’

fascinating new history of Woodstock, Small

To w n Ta l k ,explores one of rock’s most mythic

settings, drawing on interviews with dozens

of residents and visitors, including Morrison,

the Band, Todd Rundgren, Patti Smith and

Bonnie Raitt, as well as memories

from his own years living there dur-

ing the Nineties. Hoskyns, who cov-

ered some of this ground in his 1993

biography of the Band, Across the

Great Divide, details Bob Dylan’s

legendary work at Big Pink with the

Band, and of ers a complex char-

acterisation of Dylan’s mercurial

manager Albert Grossman, de facto

mayor of the local counterculture. The book

also shows how the area’s idyllic energy was

hard to maintain in a cloistered scene where,

according to Band producer John Simon, “ev-

erybody was fucking everybody else”.

Hoskyns writes that Woodstock “has

become a kind of themed village of Sixties

hippie life”, and it’s that loving honesty that

helps him pin down the knotty reality behind

the tie-dyed myth. JON DOLAN

A new history goes inside the myth, debauchery and

creative fire of one of rock’s legendary towns

The Real Woodstock

Jon Taplin, Robbie

Robertson, Todd Rundgren

and John Simon (from left)

at a Band session, 1970

THE VOLATILE

LIFE AND SUBLIME

GENIUS OF NINA

SIMONE

f

b

p

May, 2016 RollingStoneAus.com | Rolling Stone | 17

JOHN SCHEELE