Books by Author Joel Selvin

Joel Selvin, 1996

Salvage research from “Summer of Love,” retooled into a book modeled on the one Art Fein wrote about Los Angeles. My proposal, in fact, consisted of nothing more a copy of Fein’s fine book with a note paper-clipped to the cover; “San Francisco?” This is an anecdotal approach to regional music history that covers everything from the basement coffeehouses where the poets jammed with the beboppers to the garage in the East Bay where Metallica rehearsed.

John Johnson, Joel Selvin, Dick Cami, 2012

The Peppermint Lounge was intended to be nothing more than a front for gambling and other rackets, so Genovese capo Johnny Biello, trying to quietly slip out of the life in Miami, was surprised to suddenly find his club ground zero of an international dance craze – the Twist – where celebrities such as Shirley MacLaine and Greta Garbo squished in alongside Manhattan socialites and the rock and roll kids who drive up on their motorcycles. The great thing about this book was working with my college roommate John Johnson Jr., who had a lengthy and distinguished career at the Los Angeles Times, where, among many other big stories, he broke the Menendez murder case. Forty years later, after starting out together at the UCR Highlander, we got back together and did this.

Joel Selvin, 1992

My first book with Jim Marshall. “This is found money,” Marshall told me during a chance meeting in a bank parking lot. I hadn’t worked with Marshall before, but we both survived and he never did another book I didn’t have a hand in. I did the photo edit on virtually the first pass. Marshall photographed the world turning in a single weekend at Monterey; it’s all there to see. This is the visual and historical record of the three-day pop music festival that announced the beginning of rock’s renaissance with breakout performances by Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and many others.

Joel Selvin, 1990

David Halberstam loved this book when he tripped across it researching his far weighter tome, “The 50s.” “I don’t know anything about this sort of thing,” he told me on the phone, “but I don’t think this is a book so much about music as the American family.” No wonder all the Nelsons hated it. Ricky was one of the greats of his day and almost entirely forgotten now. He would hate that his dad’s TV show is his legacy. This is the first major biography of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member and pioneer rock and roll musician who grew up in front of a nation on ‘50s TV as the youngest son of Ozzie and Harriet, stars of “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” an ultimately sad and lonely life through his privileged Hollywood upbringing to his death in a place crash on New Year’s Ever 1985.

Sammy Hagar, Joel Selvin, 2011

I feel lucky and privileged to help Sammy tell his remarkable story. Sam and I go way back – I saw the Justice Brothers at the Wharf Rat—and he once gave out my home phone number to a sold-out Cow Palace audience, taking exception with one of my reviews. As a lifelong card-carrying member of rock music’s critical elite, with its carefully proscribed doctrinaire orthodoxy, I am fully aware of the regard in which such circles hold Sam. To them, I say, fuck you, the guy had “Rock Candy” on his first album. There are entire, highly regarded careers that have never reached such a peak, and that was just Sammy’s opening salvo. Those who have known Sammy all these years will further testify that he has unwaveringly been the same guy all along. He is as authentic as the Grateful Dead, maybe more. Sammy Hagar is a genuine working-class hero. I am as proud of this book as anything I have done. – Note From the Co-Author

Joel Selvin, 1994

They raised money for the book of Randy’s photos after he was killed by a hit-and-run driver. The Bill Graham people spent a year screwing around with the project before I went over and picked up the manuscript. I agreed to do this on one condition; no meetings. Randy Bachman was a San Francisco nightclub photographer, short in stature, middling as a photographer, but greatly beloved by his countless subjects. His collection is like the school yearbook of the San Francisco music scene in the ‘80s.

Paul Grushkin, Joel Selvin, 2001

Buddy Holly’s glasses were gathering dust in a box full of other glasses in the memorabilia department in the hamburger chain’s Orlando, Florida headquarters when we got there to poke around. They dusted them off after we told them we were going to spread the glasses across the book’s two opening pages. A coffee table extravaganza drawn from the enormous collection of rock memorabilia assembled by the Hard Rock Café tells the history of the music is new and unusual ways; from the hand-painted signboard advertising the Beatles engagement outside a German nightclub to lonely scrawling drawings by Kurt Cobain.

Stephen King, 1994

I was nobody’s favorite Remainder —some gal collected my autograph outside a Washington nigthclub, turned to her friend and said “Who’s that?” before I was out of earshot – but even Al Kooper agreed I got off a good line about road manager Bob Daitz. While all these guys were having fun pretending they were rock musicians, my fantasy was that I was a best-selling author. This was the collective account of a three-week road trip by a rock band composed of authors such as Stephen King, Dave Barry, Amy Tan, Ridley Pearson and others. Somehow I managed to join the lineup for the Critic’s Chorus, a woefully inept background group that also included Greil Marcus, Roy Blount Jr., Dave Marsh and Matt Groening.