Alien Rock: The Rock 'n' Roll Extraterrestrial Connection

by Michael Luckman

Whether you’re a UFO skeptic, believer, or merely a rock music fan, Alien Rock takes you on a fascinating and irreverent journey exploring the extraterrestrial stories of your favorite rock icons.

From Elvis to the Beatles and from Michael Jackson to Marilyn Manson, countless rock stars have claimed to have seen, communed with, been inspired by, and sometimes even descended from extraterrestrials. Now you can discover these stories for yourself in this illuminating, all-access pass to rock’s unearthly encounters—some friendly, some frightening, and some frankly bizarre.

From John Lennon spying a UFO from his penthouse in 1974 to Jimi Hendrix’s claim that he was a messenger from “another place,” there is no extraterrestrial tale neglected. With witty prose and in-depth research, Alien Rock provides a fascinating new perspective on the long, strange trip that is rock history, and suggests that, wherever the road takes us, we may not be traveling alone.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

352 pages, Paperback

First published July 26, 2005

Reviews

[Leo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Got 67% in but completely lost interest in it and won't finish it. Had a cool concept or rather i thought it would be fun to read about, but this wasn't a book for me

[Tom Schulte · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book reads like a hastily thrown together potpourri about UFO aesthetic and dreamy inclination by musicians over the decades. There is not much of a basis for a "connection" here. No evidence that, say, plumbers are not similarly inclined in at least as great a percentage. It seems to be a bit of a pamphlet to a promote a then upcoming "Signal to Space" music festival, a bit of an odd marriage in truth between a music festival and an organization actively trying to make contact with life in the universe by beaming a signal and offering a landing pad in 2006. Did this festival ever happen?

In the rush or maybe some OCR fail, a lot 1980-something dates ended up back dated, such as this about Nina Hagen: "Nina has always tried to link her singing career with UFOs. In 1905, for example, she descended over a concert crowd of fifty thousand people at the Couto Pereira Stadium in Curitiba, Brazil, in a spectacular flying saucer." Wow, she's old!

There is a lot of supposed first-hand encounters detailed credulously, such as this also backdated report: ""Former Kinks star Dave Davies, who now performs backed up by his own four-piece band, said that his latest album, called Bug (as in alien implant), was inspired by personal contact he had with extraterrestrials in 1902"

This did make me seek out the documentary "Dan Aykroyd Unplugged on UFOs" and look into the arbitrarily cancelled Out There series.

I didn't expect much, so it met my low expectation. I enjoy reading music history and this delivered on that offering UFO flavor and believes from musicians famous and underground.

There were some things that irked me, like such errors as

Gort, the beloved hero of the classic 1950s flying-saucer movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, who came with a message of peace (and a warning) for all mankind.

Hey, The humanoid alien protagonist of the film is Klaatu (Michael Rennie), not the robot Gort (Lockard Martin).

Then, it's all worth it for "insights" like this

The Alien Twins, Taharqa Aleem and Tunde-ra Aleem, who once shared an apartment with Jimi and were background singers on Hendrix’s Cry of love, War Heroes, and Rainbow Bridge albums, claimed, “Jimi was able to make visible musical entities from the ethereal world of sound, and on numerous occasions he actually performed that for us…. Jimi would take us into a room and he would perform an act that would summon up entities that we were able to see. Of course this was mind-boggling.

[Julio R. Ra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very fun book and quick to read. It has lots and lots of research in it, and lots of reference to music, not only rock'n'roll, relevant to the subject of UFO's. It is well balanced between information of famous artists and performers, and the music itself. Best enjoyed with a music service subscription.

[Joshua Arons · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible. It turns out that when reading purported non fiction, it becomes impossible to suspend disbelief.

[Evan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elvis and Lennon are cooler than you. Don't believe me. Ask an alien.

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author of this book must have an iron grip and calves of steel, since all he does is grasp at straws and leap to conclusions.

One might say he’s tilting at Martian windmills.

[Peter Morris]

read