Jim Sullivan's Backstage & Beyond Volume 2: 45 Years of Modern Rock Chats & Rants Released

10-19-2023

(Big Hassle Media) Trouser Press Books is proud to release Backstage & Beyond Volume 2: 45 Years of Modern Rock Chats & Rants, the second anthology from award-winning music journalist Jim Sullivan, to be published in paperback and e-book. To celebrate the release of the book, Sullivan will be making several local appearances in Boston, including The Paradise on October 30, The Earfull on November 7, City Winery Boston on November 13, and Brookline Public Library on November 16.

Sullivan - a 2023 inductee into the New England Music Hall of Fame - spent 26 years writing for the Boston Globe and two decades more writing for national publications. He has interviewed and reviewed countless musicians, many of them multiple times. The second volume of his music-writing anthology focuses on artists who came to prominence in the 1970s and '80s: punk, new wave, post-punk, and beyond. Eleven of them are already in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Over the course of 300 pages, Sullivan shares fascinating profiles of Ramones, Sex Pistols, The Clash, Patti Smith, Buzzcocks, The Damned, The Fall, Joy Division/New Order, The Cure, Stiff Little Fingers, Gang Of Four, The Pogues, The Police, The Cramps, David Byrne/Talking Heads, Beastie Boys, Elvis Costello, Billy Bragg, The Cars, The English Beat, Morrissey, Pixies, Mission Of Burma, The Feelies, Puff Daddy, Spiritualized, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Swans, and U2.

"My hope is that the recollections contained here trigger some memories," writes Jim Sullivan in the book's preface, "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."

From Backstage & Beyond Volume 2:
Johnny Ramone - "I hate disco music. It's some kind of communist plot to make our brains smooth, to take the crevices out of it."

John Lydon (Sex Pistols, PIL) - "I've always been true to my word, and I mean what I say. You might not like what I do, but at least I mean it."

Joe Strummer (The Clash) - "People in England realize that anybody can be a star.
Beginners have to realize they can be stars; otherwise, they ain't gonna bother with it."

Patti Smith - "When I've had brief periods of the muse taking an extra-long vacation you wonder, did it go to Zanzibar? Is it never coming back?"

Pete Shelley (Buzzcocks) - "We're not a statement, we're an adjective. Each time we play it's like an accident in creation."

Captain Sensible (The Damned) - "If you think punk is monotonous, one-dimensional, two-minute noise bombs then, yes, you'll be upset by some of the Damned catalog."

Mark E. Smith (The Fall) - "I sounded about 50 when I started out. I was world-weary at 18. It's an advantage when you think about it."

Peter Hook (Joy Division/New Order) - "The band came to a tragic end, but that does not change the fact that Joy Division was a great band to be a part of."

Robert Smith (The Cure) - "I loathe the Morrissey kind of wallowing in despair.
I don't find it very entertaining to be around somebody who's morose all the time."

Jake Burns (Stiff Litle Fingers) - "We're only political in the original meaning of the word: of the citizen. All we've ever done is write about things we knew."

Hugo Burnham (Gang of Four) - "If you're not in conflict, you're not making great art.

We made delightful noise, we enjoyed a few drinks, we got into fights with people."

Shane MacGowan (The Pogues) - "I'm just following the Irish way of life: cram as much pleasure as you can in your life and rile against the pain that you have to suffer as a result."

Sting - "In the initial stages of the Police, it was very hard to get gigs.
We couldn't feed ourselves, so I got an agent who sent me for TV ads."

Poison Ivy (The Cramps) - "Our songs have to do with, from the male point of view, being intrigued by the power and mystery of females."

David Byrne - "If you play music outside the alternative rock spectrum it's hard for people to conceive that you can like this music the way you can a rock band."

Mike Diamond (Beastie Boys) - "What started as us having a good time was manipulated into this big business. We said, 'This is not why we started.'"

Elvis Costello - "I did interviews when I started out and they were mostly unsatisfactory. I said, 'I'll show you - you want punk, this is f***ing punk.'"

Billy Bragg - "I don't think it's my duty to change people's minds. The most we can do is to begin the debate."

Greg Hawkes (The Cars) - "The Cars were a new wave band. I always thought of us as a pop-art band, in the Warhol sense, but also we were pop and sort of arty."

Dave Wakeling (English Beat) - "Everything we feared came awfully true -
the rich got richer, the poor got poorer, the health system became decrepit."

Morrissey - "Celibacy is an unfortunate tag."

Black Francis (Pixies) - "I am the Ernest Hemingway of indie rock."

Bono - "The review has gone straight to our heads and we're discussing breaking up the band!!"

Order here.