Kirby, a professorof English, has written the most misleading book imaginable. His prose is bizarrelycutesy, scattered and rather like a teenager’s diary, driven by emotivehysteria. Quotations from Wikipedia abound, and the author’s comparison ofRichard to Tarzan is merely one of the mindless attempts at pseudo-originality.Little Richard and the birth of rock are subjects that deserve honest studyinstead of dishonest sensationalism without scholastic merit. Little Richard isnot in this book. The birth of rock ’n’ roll is not in this book. A more honesttitle would have been Professor David KirbyTells Us About His Adolescent Fantasies Regarding Greil Marcus.
Yes, the book isessentially a pathetic tribute to Marcus and, in particular, Marcus’ expertlycrafted text, The Old, Weird America.After describing his own text as a car, Kirby devotedly opines: “And that’sjust the chassis. The design is by Greil Marcus, the rock critic who shows youhow much you can get out of music.” The difference between them is that Marcustells the secret history of Americanaand Kirby tells us his own.
Little Richard is filled with references to Marcus’ canon, his insights, andultimately serves as a fan letter to the great critic, completely eliminatinganything substantial about Little Richard and actually redesigning (withoutimagination or substantive research) the birth of rock ’n’ roll.
The intent of thisreview is not to say much more about a pitiful book by a piteous author, exceptto note that the author’s report of having had lunch one time in LittleRichard’s hometown hardly serves to say that one has eaten in the old, weirdAmerica of Marcus’ book or has joined the same cultural community as LittleRichard. It is never proven or even clear why Little Richard would be inMarcus’ textual song milieu, so well defined in Marcus’ important book;actually, Richard would not belong there at all, so the basic cultural premiseis simply incorrect.
Before leavingthis book, though, one must take note that the author doesn’t understand thedifference between rock ’n’ roll in the 1950s and what came out of it in the’60s. He equates the important though nonsensical lyrics of Little Richard withthe literary, lyrical intent of Bob Dylan. “Similarly, the lyrics are…the leastimportant element of a song.” This is “proven” by discussing Dylan, withmaterial from Dylan’s interviews only, never his songs, noting: “Even when he’smaking sense, he doesn’t.” So “Like a Rolling Stone” correlates to LittleRichard’s “A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop, a-lop-bam-boom.” There is a rambling series ofdisconnected comments about art that come and go from the text, with referencesranging from the Sibyl of Cumae to Richard Wagner with lots of Freud thrown infor, well, maybe the possibility that the author needs psychotherapy instead ofa book deal.
Rock criticismseems to attract academicians in many areas, most notably in English, who writebooks not from due diligence but from undue indulgence. The horror of thematter is that rock criticism was founded and given credence by qualityacademicians in the field of literaturethough not ones who write like failedpoets seeking to craft memoirs, fictions, about what this music meant to themwhen they were younger.
We are seeing somany important books on the birth and development of rock ’n’ roll music, andthere should be more. Little Richard is still waiting for one, as are so manyartists who worked within oral tradition music to elevate it to the culturalprominence it enjoys. Critics such as Clinton Heylin, Michael Gray, ChristopherRicks, to name but a few, and the enduring, properly considered Greil Marcus,make serious contributions and cannot be blamed for letting fools into wisdom’sdomain. But another one got in.
