Save the Last Dance for Satan

by Nick Tosches

Nick's gritty pen delivers the goods one more time again, storytelling the grime and the glory of rock-'n'-roll biz honchos - guaranteed to stun.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published August 30, 2011

About the author

Nick Tosches was an American journalist, novelist, biographer, and poet. His 1982 biography of Jerry Lee Lewis, Hellfire, was praised by Rolling Stone magazine as "the best rock and roll biography ever written."

Reviews

[Jonfaith]

More or less a sketchbook of personalities involved in both the burgeoning art of rock music in the 1940s and 1950s as well as organized crime which appears braided at times. Tosches is ever colorful and his prose crackles accordingly. He glosses on payola scandals at urban radio stations and paints graphic images of the fates of the dons who battle over said territory.

He ruminates on the golden age of rock which began in 1942 and ends with Elvis. It’s all shit until Jack Ruby becomes a promoter and the concurrent miracles of The Stones and Bobby Zimmerman. The first fact is as much a coincidence as anything but it allows a further rhapsody on Camelot.

I saw this yesterday while shopping and couldn’t resist. It might be a padded magazine piece but it is delightful and worth people’s time.

[Tosh]

At times I am taken back by Nick Tosches hard-ass attitude, but if I saw him in a dark alley I would have to be honest, and tell you I'll would be afraid. I read his biography on Dean Martin on a long plane trip to Japan from Los Angeles, and I finished the book as it hit the pavement of Narita Airport. It was probably one of the most enjoyable times i spent on a plane, and to this day, I think of that trip in conjunction with that particular book.

The great Norton Records who specialize in re-issues of great garage rock and obscure music now has a publishing wing called Kicks Books. I suspect, no, I know this is going to be a major press here in the States. I have a sense that 'they got it" like the label, and its going to be a wild reading ride.

Nick Tosches "Save the Last Dance For Satan" is a fragmentary tale of the great American hustlers who first came upon rock n' roll in the 1950's. Its a book about early record labels and all the hustlers around that specific world. I suspect that this is a dream project for Norton Records - but alas let's set that side and just sort of (my attention span is terrible these days) focus on Tosches interest here.

As a writer he likes to give you a snapshot with as much detail one can put in that one photo. And what you have here is a very small book with poetic details about the early American label scene. The gangsters (there must be gangsters in every form of art to sometimes make it interesting)) who see music as a means to generate capital, but the side affect is that it becomes something even more important. An art that can cut through the bullshit and say 'yeah I get it why I am here." And on a personal level I think Tosches feels that commerce in an interesting way has made art - which is sometimes obscure rock n' roll records or Rhythm and Blues recordings. Its amusing that Tosches sees Elvis as the property line when it all turn sour. I don't agree with his theory, but I like how he writes and thinks to get to that place.

So yeah, we have a small paperback, that is for sure poetic more than just the facts man, and its from a press that sees music not only ear candy, but also a rich culture that's endless like the sea with images that are truly beautiful and horrible at the same time. And that's rock n' roll ladies and gentlemen.

[Kurt Reighley]

A great little digestif for music geeks, less compelling for casual fans who nevertheless appreciated Tosches' "Dino" or other other biographies. Part of the fun of Tosches' writing is that feeling that you're hanging out with the author and his cronies, and this slim volume is especially good at conjuring that feeling. I particularly enjoyed the lengthy discussion of the Jaynetts' "Sally Go Round the Roses."

[Nick McTaffy]

This is one of the best rock-n-roll books I've ever read. Tosches writes like Chandler and beautifully interweaves the birth of the golden era of r-n-r with the best days of the mob and maybe everything else. I found myself tearing up reading the old reminisces of the likes of Jerry Blavat talking about Philly in the old days and old Jewish promoters missing the prostitutes in the biz back in the day. Tosches cites many other books I want to read and he took source material for 'Save the Last'. In the end there is something inherently hilarious about the mob back in the 40's and 50's. If you were someone they needed they would eventually make you an offer you couldn't refuse. Rock-n-Roll wouldn't have happed without mob money and payola but "success kills more men than bullets".

[Reeves]

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.

[Jerstyn Morehay]

Nick Tosches follows the effluence and confluence of nightclubs, radio, record promotion, and payola during the days of rock and roll's "innocence". Lots to savor here, and its parting jabs at then Mayor Giuliani, by a bunch of standup music industry wiseguys before the grave opens up and drags them down to hell, have aged extremely well.

[Ray]

Short enough to read on the can.

[Hardcore Book Club]

"They were days of naiveté and exuberance: the sweet and celibate two-straws-and-a-milkshake songs of Paul & Paula, the Singing Nun rising to the top of the pop charts. And, beneath it all, as Juggy Gayles had put it: booze, bribes, and broads."

Minor Tosches but still worth your time (don't start here though.) Expanded (barely) from a Vanity Fair article. The early days of rock n roll, payola, and mob/music industry shenanigans. Tosches has an occasional tendency to lapse into bouts of just listing names and dates, but he also churns out passages of pure gutter poetry like nobody's business.

[Scott Campbell]

An interesting look at the early days of rock and roll when the mob and other neer do wells were involved with independent labels. Not so much a book as it is a collection of anecdotes from people who were in the business. I'm not sure how informative the book is but it sure is a lot of fun to read.

[Keely]

Book is on its way to me. I'm a big Nick Tosches fan. I will post my review after reading - meanwhile here's what the publisher said about it:

Look at this list... Dean Martin Sonny Liston Jerry Lee Lewis

Their commonality?

They have all had biographies written about them by the incomparable poet/novelist/critic, Nick Tosches, one of the greatest writers in America, period.

You know the vibe in "Midnight Rambler" or "Gimme Shelter"? That's the vibe in Nick's writing.
Dark, swaggering, ominous, flashy, elegant, brilliant!

Read more about him, his acolyte, Andre Williams, and the elite of Old School Hipsterism in Old New York...
And if you're in town on Friday, Sept. 9th, @ 8pm, Nick is doing a free reading @ Jefferson Market Library @ W 10th and 6th Ave.
Back in the 1960s, the NYC Women's House of Detention overlooked this library. Vibes!

[Mason Jones]

Anything written by Nick Tosches is worth reading, but this is certainly going to be of real interest only to a smaller audience of readers. Started as an article and expanded into a thin book, this is the story of the dawn of rock'n'roll in the late 50s and early 60s, focused primarily on an intriguing crew of hustlers, many Jewish and centered in mid-Manhattan. Numerous tiny labels were started, closed, merged, expanded, some becoming the kernels of today's major labels. These tales of hustling, stealing, borrowing, one-upmanship and more are a fun read, but the book does play out as a series of bit parts. It's an enjoyable read, but a light one.

[Phil Overeem]

I'd read sections from the book in other publications, but it's great to put eye and mind to something relatively fresh by Tosches, who tells tales here about the miraculous and ignominious intersections of commerce and rock and roll (a theme he's long explored), with a great expanded tale of Jerry "The Geator with the Heater" Blavat.

[Brad Wojak]

Nick Tosches is one of my all-time favourite writers, and here he returns to the history of the early music business and the hustlers who populated it. A quick read this volume is the third offering from the cool new press, Kick Books. I think I may have to dip further into their catalogue of books, music and men's cologne...

[Now This Sound Is Brave]

http://www.nowthissound.com/ntsib/201...

[Robert]

Liked it, but it could have used an editor (or was that an homage to the format?) - ultimately, wanted MORE.

[Kevin Braswell]

Read this man's work please.