Book: Tryin’ to Tell a Stranger ‘Bout Rock and Roll

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Fifty years since his first published writing appeared, Gene Sculatti has released Tryin’ to Tell a Stranger ‘Bout Rock and Roll: Selected Writings 1966-2016, in both paperback and Amazon Kindle editions. The book collects more than 60 pieces from the rock journalist’s career: newspaper and magazine features, reviews, liner notes and online site postings.

Sculatti was one of the nation’s first rock critics, having covered the topic for Crawdaddy and the Mojo-Navigator Rock & Roll News before moving on to write for Rolling Stone, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Creem and other publications.

Among the book’s highlights are a long out-of-print 1973 interview with John Lennon on the release of his Mind Games album; the first article to appear in a national magazine on San Francisco’s then-emerging psychedelic music scene; and the earliest rave reviews for the album debuts of the Ramones and Bob Marley’s Wailers; among dozens of others.

In 1968, Sculatti came to the defense of the Beach Boys for Jazz & Pop magazine, writing: “how seriously can the 1968 rock audience consider the work of a group of artists who, just four years earlier, represented the epitome of the whole commercial plastic teenage music industry’?” He answered his own question with: “The Beach Boys approach to their music is as valid now as it was in 1962. Brian Wilson owes no one any apologies for his music, present or past.”

For a Los Angeles Times piece in 1981 called “Today’s Teens on Yesterday’s Rock Classics, Sculatti performs the equivalent of a blind taste test by playing all-time classic rock songs (e.g., the Rolling Stones’ “Last Time,” Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” and the Doors’ “Soul Kitchen”) for a bunch of high school kids who had to rate them. The results are highly unpredictable and often hysterical. After listening to a Dylan song, one teenager described the singer as “chosen from a band of farmers just standing around.” Upon hearing Tina Turner, a student said the singer “didn’t know how to use her voice.”

Artists and subjects covered include Foreigner, Madonna, Muddy Waters, Johnny Cash, garage-rockers the Sonics, punk, bubblegum and girl-group pop, and Dylan and Springsteen wannabe’s. Fun times.

Sculatti is featured in the recent documentary Ticket to Write: The Golden Age of Rock Music Journalism.