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Shake It Up: Great American Writing on Rock and Pop from Elvis to Jay Z

Edited by Kevin Dettmar and Jonathan Lethem

“Pop writing, at its best, doesn’t know the difference between desire and theory, which is precisely the reason for its power and its persistence. Lethem and Dettmar’s expansive anthology renders this wild, polychrome tradition, and the state of play today, with gusto.”—Ben Ratliff, author of Every Song Ever

Overview
News & Views
Table of Contents
Contributors

Overview

Story of the Week Lenny Kaye, “The Best of Acapella”
October 28, 2019

News Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Bob Dylan: Desolation Angels led to “Desolation Row”
October 21, 2019

News Photos: Library of America goes on the road to Brooklyn Book Festival
September 20, 2017

Rock music changed America, and the generation of writers that grew up with it embraced the spirit of that change. Pioneering new attitudes and styles that mirrored the music’s freedom, homemade inventiveness, and rebellious energy, they created a body of writing that is a heady mix of high culture, pop culture, roots culture, the politics of race and gender, philosophical speculation, poetic exploration, and just plain obsessive enthusiasm. Shake It Up is a mix tape of fifty of the most outspoken and distinctly personal voices from a half-century tradition of “revolutionary and often joyous defiance,” in the words of this volume’s editors, ranging from Nat Hentoff’s early recognition of Bob Dylan’s first breakthrough to Greil Marcus’s update on the outer reaches of today’s experimental sound art.

Rock emerged as an unavoidable presence in the mid-1950s, provoking disgust and disdain from the cultural mainstream. Those who grew up with the music saw it otherwise. The result was a wave of magazines—among them Crawdaddy, Creem, and _Rolling Stone_—offering channels for fresh and innovative styles and perceptions. As the music evolved and new genres came to the fore—heavy metal, disco, punk, hip-hop—the writing also continued to change, extending earlier conversations and arguments into a new era.

Shake It Up invites the reader into the tumult and excitement of the rock revolution. Stanley Booth describes a recording session with Otis Redding; Ellen Willis traces the meteoric career of Janis Joplin; Ellen Sander recalls the chaotic world of Led Zeppelin on tour; Nick Tosches etches a portrait of the young Jerry Lee Lewis; Eve Babitz remembers Jim Morrison. Alongside are Lenny Kaye on acapella and Greg Tate on hip-hop, Vince Aletti on disco and Gerald Early on Motown; Robert Christgau on Prince, Nelson George on Marvin Gaye, Luc Sante on Bob Dylan, Hilton Als on Michael Jackson, Anthony DeCurtis on the Rolling Stones, Kelefa Sanneh on Jay Z. The story this anthology tells is a ongoing one: “it’s too early,” editors Jonathan Lethem and Kevin Dettmar note, “for canon formation in a field so marvelously volatile—a volatility that mirrors, still, that of pop music itself, which remains smokestack lightning. The writing here attempts to catch some in a bottle.”

Jonathan Lethem is the author of The Fortress of Solitude and nine other novels; Kevin Detmarr is the author of Is Rock Dead? and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan.

This special publication features full-cloth binding, acid-free paper, and a unique design with specifications differing from those of Library of America series titles.
News & Views

Story of the Week Lenny Kaye, “The Best of Acapella”
October 28, 2019

News Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Bob Dylan: Desolation Angels led to “Desolation Row”
October 21, 2019

News Photos: Library of America goes on the road to Brooklyn Book Festival
September 20, 2017

Audio Listen: New Spotify playlist gives Shake It Up a “Top 50” audio accompaniment
June 14, 2017

Interviews Shake It Up: Jonathan Lethem and Kevin Dettmar on the music writers who taught the world how to hear
May 24, 2017
Table of Contents

Introduction by Jonathan Lethem and Kevin Dettmar

Nat Hentoff, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”
Amiri Baraka, (from) “The Changing Same (R&B and New Black Music)”
Richard Poirier, “Learning from the Beatles”
Jules Siegel, “Goodbye Surfing, Hello God!”
Richard Goldstein, “Master of Mediocrity”
Paul Williams, “Outlaw Blues”
Stanley Booth, “The Memphis Soul Sound”
Lillian Roxon, (from) Lillian Roxon’s Rock Encyclopedia
Lenny Kaye, “The Best of Acappella”
Richard Meltzer, (from) The Aesthetics of Rock
Ellen Sander, “Inside the Cages of the Zoo”
Vince Aletti, (from) The Disco Files
Paul Nelson, “Valley of the New York Dolls”
Lester Bangs, “Where Were You When Elvis Died?”
Greg Shaw, “In Defense of Rock Theory”
Robert Christgau, “Prince”
Jon Pareles, “The Cars’ Power Steering”
Ellen Willis, “Janis Joplin”
Carola Dibbell, “The Slits Go Native”
Debra Rae Cohen, “David Bowie Eats His Young”
Nick Tosches, (from) Hellfire
Ariel Swartley, “Boys’ Night Out: Aztec Camera Clicks”
Nelson George, “The Power and the Glory”
Peter Guralnick, “King Solomon: The Throne in Exile”
Donna Gaines, “Sylvia’s Husband”
Dave Marsh, (from) The Heart of Rock & Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made
Chuck Eddy, “The Ramones”
Eve Babitz, “Jim Morrison Is Dead and Living in Hollywood”
Gina Arnold, (from) Route 666
Ann Powers, “Houses of the Holy”
Robert Palmer, “Sam Cooke’s Night Beat”
Gerald Early, (from) One Nation Under a Groove
Ed Ward, “Bruce Springsteen: Born To Run”
Camden Joy, “Total Systems Failure”
Chuck Klosterman, (from) Fargo Rock City
Geoffrey O’Brien, “Seven Years in the Life”
Devin McKinney, (from) “O.P.D. / Deus Est Vivus: The Beatles and the Death Cults”
Jessica Hopper, “Emo: Where the Girls Aren’t”
Douglas Wolk, (from) Live at the Apollo
David Hajdu, “Ray Charles”
Luc Sante, “I Is Somebody Else”
John Jeremiah Sullivan, “The Final Comeback of Axl Rose”
Greg Tate, “In Praise of Assholes”
Elijah Wald, “Say You Want a Revolution . . .”
Hilton Als, “Michael”
Evelyn Mcdonnell, “The Runaways: Wild Thing”
Kelefa Sanneh, “WORD: Jay- Z’s Decoded and the Language of Hip-Hop”
Anthony DeCurtis, “Love and Hope and Sex and Dreams: Punk Rock, Disco, New York City & The Triumph of the Rolling Stones’ Some Girls”
Danyel Smith, “After 30 Years, I Finally Went to a Barry Manilow Concert”
Greil Marcus, “Guitar Drag”
Contributors

Vince Aletti
Hilton Als
Gina Arnold
Eve Babitz
Lester Bangs
Amiri Baraka
Stanley Booth
Robert Christgau
Debra Rae Cohen
Anthony DeCurtis
Carola Dibbell
Gerald Early
Chuck Eddy
Donna Gaines
Nelson George
Richard Goldstein
Peter Guralnick
David Hajdu
Nat Hentoff
Jessica Hopper
Camden Joy
Lenny Kaye
Chuck Klosterman
Greil Marcus
Dave Marsh
Evelyn Mcdonnell
Devin McKinney
Richard Meltzer
Paul Nelson
Geoffrey O’Brien
Robert Palmer
Jon Pareles
Richard Poirier
Ann Powers
Lillian Roxon
Ellen Sander
Kelefa Sanneh
Luc Sante
Greg Shaw
Jules Siegel
Danyel Smith
John Jeremiah Sullivan
Ariel Swartley
Greg Tate
Nick Tosches
Elijah Wald
Ed Ward
Paul Williams
Ellen Willis
Douglas Wolk

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