crawling from the wreckage (in book form)

I didn't really know what to think or what to expect when I first noticed talk on the Rockpile Facebook group of a book devoted to the band. I think I dismissed the talk as a nice idea that would never come to fruition. But later -- I don't know for sure how much later, as it's been so long -- Rikard Bengtsson and Ulf Bjore have proven me wrong.

As threads about the book heated up, I was facing two decisions.

The first decision was, sadly, easy to make. Do I want to contribute to the book. Yes, I desperately wanted to. Rockpile is among my favorite bands, and I enjoy writing. I love writing. So it seemed like a great thing to want to be a part of. Bud Rockpile broke up when I was 15 years old, when I was just starting to become a music fan. I've seen both Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe in concert several times and at different stages in their post-Rockpile career. But I never got to experience a Rockpile concert, and have no contemporary memories of the group. Maybe I could have pitched something about being a fan only after the fact. But I decided against trying.

The second decision was harder to make. Would I buy the book? While I'm a huge Rockpile fan, I'm not much of a collector of articles and writings about musicians that I like. I have some, to be sure. Mixed in with my life's accumulation of assorted stuff are magazines I never threw out with interviews of musicians that matter to me -- and that includes Rockpile as a group and -- I think -- each of the four members. I also have some books about musicians. But I don't buy them in some effort to collect. I buy them because they are books I want to read. Would I want to read a book about Rockpile written as a pastiche of articles and memories by assorted fans? I honestly wasn't sure. Ever practical, Blair formulated my decision as a question I could answer. "What," she asked me, "are you more likely to regret? Buying the book and thinking it's not worth it? Or missing out?"

Fear of missing out won the day. It helped that there was plenty of emphasis on the fact that this would be a limited print run of 600. Bengtsson was very clear that, if and when it sold out, that was it; there would be no second printing. That, and all the posts about the progress of the book, got to me. I didn't want to look back and think that I should have bought the book.

And so I am the proud owner of copy number 360 of Crawling From the Wreckage. And the book far exceeded my expectations.

It is, to some degree, the pastiche I thought it would be, but it's more wide-ranging. There are, to be sure, the memories. There are essays by fans describing their general feelings about the band and how it evolved over time. There are other essays about specific concerts and events. But there's more. There's a nicely done essay about the history of Rockpile. And Bengtsson himself put together several pages about Rockpile's break-up. Bengtsson captured it very well with quotes and then summed it up from his view. That's paired with a more personal view of the end, written by Mats Olsson.  And one of my favorites was an item about what happened to Dave Edmunds' famed Gibson ES-335.

But in addition there are interviews with studio insiders who worked with Rockpile -- notably Aldo Bocca, and Roger Bechirian. There are also interviews with Billy Bremner and Terry Williams which was nice, since they tended to get less attention than Edmunds and Lowe.

These essays are interspersed with photos and scans of old magazine clippings, tickets and other assorted memorabilia, forming a really nice package. I can't stress enough how well the whole thing was put together.

There were, from my perspective, two big revelations in the book. The first was that Mickey Jupp could have been a member of Rockpile, and the second was that Dave Edmunds tried to reunite the group in the early 2000's. He managed to get Terry Williams and Billy Bremner to join him, but Nick Lowe demurred, explaining that he couldn't rock like that anymore.

This is not a book to sit and read cover to cover. This is something to flip through, reading each item on its own.

My gratitude to Bengtsson and Bjore for putting this book together, and to all those who contributed to it. Oh, and to Blair for her question that made me decide to buy it. If I had decided not to, I would certainly be regretting that decision now.