Beat homage covers Goldberg variations
West Coast rock critic releases journalistic greatest hits with Burroughs pulp paperback pastiche in prime position. Bob Dylan and Jack Kerouac make the cut and cult graphic artist plays starring role
ROCK MUSIC, it could easily be argued, truly entered the digital age under the aegis of a visionary Californian journalist called Michael Goldberg, whose web magazine Addicted to Noise was the first such virtual publication to break the stranglehold of the print pop press.
Thirty years on from his bold and outrageous innovation, Goldberg, senior editor on Rolling Stone in the 1980s, takes stock and gathers together the best of his journalism covering the last four decades both dynamically and democratically: exciting writing from many quarters of rock’s eclectic and promiscuous kingdom.
And his greatest hits, published by Backbeat Books at the start of next month, reflects the writer’s long-standing interest in the Beat Generation poets and novelist, with his collection, also entitled Addicted to Noise and thus crediting his earlier and influential internet innovation, adopts a legendary Burroughs pulp cover – it originally adorned the novelist’s 1953 noir novella Junkie – to give his imminent rock anthology a truly hip zip.
The re-boot of the earlier cover has been designed by the highly imaginative and thoroughly entertaining American graphic artist Todd Alcott, who has made a specialism of merging song and album titles by major musical performers with original dime store paperback images. His witty juxtapositions provide visual distraction to both rock fans and readers of cult literature.
Pictured above: The cover of Michael Goldberg’s forthcoming retrospective with a re-imagined cover by Todd Alcott
Goldberg, who produced the Beat-like fictional ‘Freak Scene Dream’ trilogy in the 2010s, also contributed two key accounts to the 2018 book Kerouac on Record: A Literary Soundtrack – an interview with famed music commentator and Beat fan Richard Meltzer plus an extended reflection on the Bob Dylan’s debt to that literary community and specifically Kerouac.
It’s a pleasure to report, too, that the Dylan/Kerouac account, ‘Bob Dylan’s Beat visions (Sonic Poetry)’, takes its own place in this journalistic overview, emphasising the fertile overlap and appropriate fit between music-making, novel writing and rock reporting.
Pictured above: The original cover of William Burroughs’ 1953 novel Junkie
When he came to compile this lively retrospective of his journalistic output, Goldberg invited me to provide an appropriate blurb for the forthcoming anthology and I was happy to help out. My words are presented below…
‘Michael Goldberg has his finger on the pulse, his foot to the beat, his hip to the rhythm, and his ears peeled for the cadences of rock & roll’s raucous jibber-jabber in an outrageously entertaining rollercoaster through several decades of pop and punk, funk and blues writing: a bright, breezy, frenetic, and often funny, frolic covering the main streets and backwoods of backstage patter, pulsating performance, and everyday posing. In his wide ranging collection of rock journalism, Goldberg provides close to an A-Z – from Laurie Anderson, Captain Beefheart, the Clash, and Bob Dylan all the way through to Brian Wilson, Neil Young, and Frank Zappa – of the last 40 years or so of the music’s mercurial journey, profiling, and interrogating many of its biggest hitters – James Brown and Tom Waits, Van Morrison and Prince – yet giving a gallery of more esoteric movers and shakers, like Flipper and Sleater-Kinney, Devo and Townes Van Zandt, space and time. With a byline peppering numerous major newspapers, newsweeklies, and magazines of the era, Goldberg is truly a star turn in a golden age of rock reportage.’
– Simon Warner, author of Text and Drugs and Rock‘n’Roll: The Beats and Rock Culture and co-editor of Kerouac on Record: A Literary Soundtrack
Note: Addicted to Noise: The Music Writings of Michael Goldberg is published on November 1st, 2022