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So You Wanna Be A Rock & Roll Star
How I Machine-Gunned A Roomful Of Record Executives And Other True Tales from A Drummer's Life
by Jacob Slichter

So You Wanna Be A Rock & Roll Star reviews


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A hilarious inside look at the real business of popular music by the drummer of Semisonic that does for rock and roll what Jim Bouton's "Ball Four" did for baseball. [Broadway]

Broadway, 304 pages
06/29/2004
$21.95

ISBN: 0767914708

Nonfiction
Biographies & Memoirs

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Kirkus Reviews

Few first-person memoirs of the rock biz are as smart, honest, and entertaining as this tart, incisive work.

Library Journal Robert Morast

Ultimately, the drummer's recollections of life in the music biz are far more interesting than his band ever was. [15 June 2004, p.74]

PopMatters Zachary Houle

Rock & Roll actually comes out of the wringer being a pretty balanced and refreshingly bang-on first person perspective of the music biz: Sometimes you're walking down the red carpet, sometimes you are the carpet. For that reason alone, the book winds up being fairly entertaining on a voyeuristic level.

Publishers Weekly

Thanks to Slichter's good-natured presentation, these stories and Slichter's work as a whole, despite their rock star origins, are surprisingly easy to relate to.

USA Today Edward Nawotka

With its emphasis on reality and hard-won insights into the record biz, this un-ironic tale should be required reading for anyone aspiring to pop stardom.

Washington Post John Strausbaugh

The best insider's account of indentured servitude to the music industry since Danny Goldberg's essay "The Ballad of the Mid-Level Artist" and Courtney Love's "Dear Fellow Recording Artists" letter.

The New York Times Book Review James McMurtry

If the members of Semisonic indulged in any stereotypical rock-star debauchery, Slichter ignores it, focusing instead on the sometimes exciting but often banal and soul-sullying work of becoming a rock star.

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So You Wanna Be A Rock & Roll Star How I Machine-Gunned A Roomful Of Record Executives And Other True Tales from A Drummer's Life by Jacob Slichter

So You Wanna Be A Rock & Roll Star
How I Machine-Gunned A Roomful Of Record Executives And Other True Tales from A Drummer's Life
by Jacob Slichter