Reviews

Save the Last Dance for Satan by Nick Tosches

dreevesss's review against another edition

3.0

Tosches’ Save the Last Dance for Satan documents the history of payola in the early rock and roll business and the sordid characters that ran the labels, promoted records, and did whatever needed to be done to get those number one hits. Personally, I was hoping there would be a lot more satan or occult elements, especially with satan right there in the title, but nope, the gangsters weren’t into all that, which is fine cause the story is interesting as is.

Tosches definitely has a way with words in that old macho way of writing. On Elvis Presley:

“Elvis Presley marked its end, and it was as if the golden age of real rock and roll had never been, as the all-powerful consumer mainstream of white America in its belated discovery of rock and roll knew only the banal Wonder Bread of its usurpation by the forces of market-friendly mediocrity.”

On the Beatles and real rock-n-roll:

“The Beatles, sort of a silly girl group with male genitals, who came along a few months after Sally came and went around the roses, were mere pap. It would not be until nearly two years after “Sally, Go ‘Round the Roses”—the summer of 1965, which began with the blast of The Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” and culminated with the further blast of Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited—that resurrection would truly come, in a sudden exundant thundering wave.”

Hy Weiss and his cohorts are probably the most compelling people in the book, and it’s fascinating to think that we aren’t really that far away from the old openly gangster way of running the music business. Weiss' son is currently the president and CEO of Island Def Jam/Universal Motown Republic, so really, it probably still is run mainly by gangsters.

Definitely recommended for anyone interested in this sort of thing.