"Thank you for rescuing me from oblivion."

Eric Clapton's tribute (on TikTok) to John Mayall, who died yesterday....

"Like Dylan, he writes his own songs, so of course he will write a wonderful book."

Said the literary agent for Prince, whose book deal was just announced. The publisher was garrulous: "Prince is a towering figure blah blah blah..." The 5-foot-2 rock star was laconic: "You still read books, right?"

Rock memoirs have proved a lucrative niche for publishers as baby boomers snap up books by their favorite performers. The gold standards in terms of both sales and literary qualify include “Life” by Keith Richards (776,683 print copies sold, according to Nielsen), “Chronicles” by Bob Dylan (560,706) and “Just Kids” by Patti Smith (466,635).

I've read all 3 of those — and Eric Clapton's book too — so I guess I'm in the niche. And I love Prince. But the author needs to tell good stories on himself — like Richards, Smith, and Clapton — or have an endless assortment of interesting things — like Bob Dylan. I don't know if Prince is up for any of that. He seems so secretive and enigmatic. But it's surely not enough to "like Dylan" write ones own songs. Song lyrics are song lyrics for a reason. They go with singing and lots of instrumentation. When read, what seemed sublime is often stupid.

I did a chapter-by-chapter series of blog posts when I read Dylan's "Chronicles" in 2004. Sample:

Dylan seems to have gotten some ideas from Harry Truman, whom his parents took him to see when he was a kid: "Truman was gray hatted, a slight figure, spoke in the same kind of nasal twang and tone like a country singer. I was mesmerized by his slow drawl and sense of seriousness and how people hung on every word he was saying." Pp. 230-231....

A Bob Dylan political opinion: "I wasn't that comfortable with all the psycho polemic babble. It wasn't my particular feast of food. Even the current news made me nervous. I liked the old news better." P. 283.

UPDATE: Meade and I are discussing the meaning of "Just look for the purple banana til they put us in the truck." I say it was what was a typical Prince message: Live it up because you're going to die. The banana is obviously the man's penis and the truck is the hearse that takes you away. Meade says the truck is the vagina. He agreed about the banana. 

"It's embarrassing to be all 'Rah Rah Rah! Gooooo BOOZE!' only to zip off with my tail between my legs..."

"... saying, 'never mind, I’ve joined the other team,' but it’s what I had to do."

When you write about drinking, you never run out of material, because you can go on to writing about quitting. And if that's not enough, write about falling back into drinking, then how quitting the second time is different, going back to drinking responsibly, how that doesn't work, quitting again, etc. etc. Drinking is a goldmine of subject matter. And I bet drinkers are a good source of readers, since you can drink — quite a lot — while reading.

ADDED: We could make a list of books about drinking. The 2 that sprang to mind for me are:

"Dry," by Augusten Burroughs
"Clapton: The Autobiography"

"Everyone around the world come on!"

Editor & Publisher found out Condoleezza Rice's musical top ten:

1. Mozart --Piano Concerto in D minor ...

2. Cream -- 'Sunshine of Your Love' ...

3. Aretha Franklin -- 'Respect'

4. Kool and the Gang -- 'Celebration' ...

5. Brahms -- Piano Concerto No 2

6 Brahms -- Piano Quintet in F minor

7. U2 -- Anything ...

8. Elton John -- 'Rocket Man' ...

9. Beethoven -- Symphony No 7 ...

10. Mussorgsky -- Boris Godunov

If you're a big Condi Rice fan and are thinking of putting that in your iPod and listening in that order... well, I think you're going to find it a little annoying.

I'm annoyed by the failure to identify an individual U2 song. If you can pick "Sunshine of Your Love" out of all the acid rock you "loved ... in college," you can pick one U2 song.

I note that "Rocket Man" is about being separated from your loved one for a "long, long time," while stranded in outer space, and "Sunshine of Your Love" is also about being separated from your loved one and "waiting so long" -- also set in an astronomical context ("I'll be with you when the stars start falling").

Finally, "Celebration" is an excellent Secretary of State song: "It's time to come together, it's up to you/What's your pleasure/Everyone around the world come on!" So's "Respect" for that matter: "I'm about to give you all of my money/And all I'm askin' in return, honey..."