The Afghan Whigs' Gentlemen

33⅓ Main Series #59

by Bob Gendron

"In the absence of love, there is loneliness, sorrow and desperation. And that's where I come in." --Greg Dulli, introducing "When We Two Parted" onstage in San Francisco




Like no record before or since, Gentlemen is fraught with the psychological warfare, bedroom drama, Catholic guilt, reprehensible deception and uncleansable shame that coincide with relationships gone seriously wrong. This story explores what happens when intellectual sophistication is star-crossed with outspoken braggadocio, a charismatic mixture that managed to alienate the mainstream horde and arms-folded indie scenesters while, for good measure, incited outsider jealousy and condescending rumors advanced by the Fat Greg Dulli 'zine. In addition to dissecting the record's organization, arrangements and lyrics, as well as examining old articles, reviews and interviews, this book delves into the memories, experiences and influences of the Afghan Whigs, most notably those that drive Dulli, a polarizing frontman whose fierce pretentiousness, GQ appearance and gloves-off boisterousness concealed deep-rooted mental depression and chemical dependency.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Biography

121 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 15, 2008

Reviews

[Georgette · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the first album where Whigs fans got an idea of the extent of the bedroom toys in Greg Dulli's bag of tricks. Not just a seductive lure to the masses, but a psychological portrait of warfare in love, lust, sadomasochism, power trips, drama, and just about every messed up emotion that one can bring into play when that silly four letter word is involved. I'm a huge Whigs fan and this retelling of their excellent album "Gentleman" made me want to revisit it extensively (I'm more of a "Black Love" worshipee myself, but this, my friends, is where the rivers of Dulli's soul started to turn red. I guarantee anyone who's a fan of true blue soul and rock will end up wanting to worship at the altar of this fantastic group of musicians, and this is a great addition to anyone's collection of music know-how. Gendron fits a lot of stories, background, history, and interviews with Dulli and the boys into the scant 114 pages the book is. But oh, how you are riveted. I was riveted. I love the 33 1/3 series, and this is one of my favorite in the series. Pick it up, put on Gentleman or buy it (if you don't own it!) and give it a spin.

[Mike Hammer · Rating 4 out of 5]

awesome insight/story into awesome band and great album

[Matt Lohr · Rating 4 out of 5]

My methodology for choosing the 33 1/3 volumes I read is odd: I use a random number generator and pick the next one I read at random, regardless of how much I know about the band or how familiar I am with the album in question. This method has brought a few new favorite albums into my life; I never knew anything about DJ Shadow's "Entroducing..." before reading Eliot Wilder's book-length interview with the turntablist / mixmaster, and his 1995 masterpiece now ranks among my all-time favorite albums. Time will tell whether the Afghan Whigs' 1993 record "Gentlemen" will make that cut; it's another album that I knew nothing about prior to picking up Gendron's volume. In the reading, I learned a lot about a very interesting-sounding album: The band's influences in various strains of black music, the fractured relationship that led to the creation of the tracks by singer / songwriter Greg Dulli, the band's checkered commercial history and close-but-no-cigar history with the critical establishment. I don't feel that Gendron does as much as he could to dig into the music itself on the album (a persistent issue I have with this entire series), but the book is a great introduction to an intriguing band, written with a lot of style and vitality.

[Sara · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love the Afghan Whigs and I love this album. I've waded through some really shit 33 1/3 books (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea: I'm looking at you). This one I got six pages into and put it down. If this were the first one I'd read I wouldn't have bothered with the rest. Luckily, the first one I read was Carl Wilson's wonderful book on Celine Dion, followed by John Darnielle's awesome book on Black Sabbath. They've all (with the exception of the Throbbing Gristle book) been downhill since then. I'm hoping Prince and ABBA will bring me back up to having an okay opinion of the series again. I'm also hoping they'll do a book on a Paul Simon album.

[Gary Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic look at a fantastic album by a fantastic band.
Though, like most (if not all) in the 33 1/3 series, it's a bit esoteric to recommend to anyone who isn't familiar with the Whigs, and especially with Gentlemen. But if you are a fan, check this one out; it may remove some of the mystery surrounding the guys, which was kind of their allure in the first place, but it will replace it with a deeper understanding of it all.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWg_4r...

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable. Informative. Finding this series tends to produce two types of books, either they're narrow-focused on the band's history and the personalities/events (before and after) that created the specific album or they're broad-focused where the album is used as a entre/platform to broach bigger, capital-I ideas. This one fits squarely in the former and delivers an organized chronology of the making of Gentlemen. It's sorta like VH1 Behind the Music, but not in a bad way.

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm tempted to hate this book on the first chapter alone. Gendron makes assumptions that all those in Austin, of all places, are rednecks. Dude, we have ignorant people just like Chicago (Do you ever wonder why your town is divided the way it is...look into it buddy). Still, the rest of the book was enjoyable, and you can never really be indifferent to a character like Greg Dulli now can you?

[L. · Rating 2 out of 5]

i adore afghan whigs and i really like "gentlemen" (although it's not my favorite album). reading what the band members and people they worked with had to say was a great adventure, but the author's comments were mundane, too pompous and irrelevant at times. he keeps restating the obvious. his "analyses" of the songs were cringeworthy.

[Duke Haney]

Certainly better than the last 33 1/3 book I read. The author's most striking insight: the Whigs had difficulty breaking out because they were dealing forthrightly with sex, a subject largely avoided in the indie world. How sadly true.

[Zfitz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must read for any die hard whigs fan. My only complaint is that this books ends before they reunited, so just be aware the ending is a bit off

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do love this series.
And I learned a lot about Dulli and the band I did not know before.
OTOH.....
His song by song deep dive was full of hyperbole, and overall vague and overblown. Scanned that chapter after I had read about a couple of the cuts.
Gendron is not above some Chicago-set ass kissing and nasty throw downs regarding critics. Yeah, I love Kot too, but......
And toss in some totally unrelated rock gossip to brighten it up (Axl and his band member's girlfriend story, brought up a couple times).
Rock musicians are not the brightest people on the face of the earth. Yes, at their best they can draw a powerful emotion from their lyrics and music - but overwhelmingly, deep thinkers they are not.
And I guess I am too old now to appreciate Dulli going in and doing the vocals after a night of drink and vast amounts of coke, while the stripper he picked up earlier in the evening sits by watching.
Kudos for getting good interviews from band members and those around them.
Obviously a fan (otherwise he would not have ben chosen to write this), the whole thing of the under appreciated band being unable to fit into a niche, having a unique sound, and misunderstood (with no effort otherwise on the part of the record label or many critics) is, for me, just a sad song to sing.
A Discography would have been appreciated.
Opening story of Dulli getting cold cocked with a 2X4 by a racist doorman and his buddy at a club in Austin is something I had not heard before. But it does not have anything to do with this album, and we never hear about the recovery.
Again, I do love this series. There were a handful (or a bit more) of dust-to-digital conversion typos in here, something you would not expect from this highly regarded publisher.
As with every title in this series, it is a good idea to go back and listen to the album before you start reading the volume about it. And helpful to go back to the album now and then while reading it as well.
3 out of 5.

[Peter O'Connor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I own a copy, I have only a passing knowledge of this album which probably makes it the first of the wonderful 33 1/3 series that I have gone into without a reasonable understanding of the subject. Despite that, Bob Gendron's effort is an excellent one as more so than many of the others in the series it works well as a stand alone. Given that the history of the Afghan Whigs is a relatively short one and is centred largely on the release of this very album, the author is able to neatly wrap a bow around the whole story and is able to adapt a more narrative style for their history rather than just a deconstruction of the album. Given that much of the story is set in the musical wonderland of the mid nineties only makes it that much more compelling (especially for a crusty old Gen Xer) One of the great things about this series though is that, although music appreciation is a personal thing, they often uncover a lot of elements and detail in the recordings that you may not have picked up yourself. Best I dust off my copy of Gentlemen and give it another listen, then.

[Manuel Chavarria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good little book about the Whigs, but good god is it marred by Bob Gendron's attempts to describe each individual song. My god. The book just stops dead so he can write things like:

"The error of his ways netted freedom, but at what cost? The prom-dance waltz of hell-bound sinners continues. Ba-bahm, ba-bahm. Bahm-ba, bahm-ba. No sympathy. Ba-bahm, ba-bahm. Bahm-ba, bahm-ba. Loneliness. Another swell of feedback arises, but this time, rather than fling acid into bare eyes, McCollum underlines the alienation with a mournful Southern slide."

Remove the interminable, wanky chapter that trudges through the individual tracks with that kind of bullshit, and this is a four-star book.

[Steve · Rating 1 out of 5]

A co-worker let me borrow this as she's a big fan of the band and knew that I lived in Cincinnati (where the band is from). I was never a big fan of the band but I enjoy music and I've read other books on bands that I didn't care for as the stories were still interesting. This one was not. Written by a fan boy who thinks they are soulful and compares them a lot to old acts like James Brown (laughable). It's only a hundred or so pages but I could barely get through half of it before deciding there were better things to read out there. I would say if you are a fan of the band you'd like this but my co-worker was disappointed in this book as well.

[Timothy Minneci · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being an AW superfan, I'd heard lots of theories about what or who, exactly, Gentlemen was about. Enjoyed that aspect, but moreso the behind the scenes aspect of how the album was written on the road during the Congregation era touring. Gendron is very precise in his descriptions during the track-by-track breakdown, which can be a dicey proposition in lesser hands, but here he nails the sound of the record as I heard it my own head. Only wish Black Love wasn't dismissed as at the end, as to my ears it's the finest moment of the band in their attempt at musical cinéma vérité.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of the books on this series don’t hit right for me. I don’t prefer the personal stories that are tacked on to the assessment of the album. This book avoids that trap and is as a result is great. That’s not to say you don’t catch Gendron’s enthusiasm for the material. That’s their in spades. But it’s shown through a clear exhaustive look at the songs, the recording process, the band history, the cover art, even the band’s saga post-gentlemen. A terrific little book about a phenomenal record.

[Mr. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good music writing. At times, it's a bit...much in describing some of the sexual details, but on the whole, fascinating. If you like The Afghan Whigs or are interested in Greg Dulli, it's definitely worth reading.

[John Vettese · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the worst 33 1/3 I’ve read but far from the best. Lots of great history about a band I adored in college; the author, however, is a pompous get-off-my-lawn bore and often gets in the way of his own reportage.

[Ted Gurley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been reading the 33 1/3 series in order and have had of several nice discoveries. This was a new record for me and as I listened and read, I really enjoyed it. The writing was a great intro for a newbie to Afgan Whigs like me. Not too fan boy focused, just enough.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really thoughtful work of an often overlooked classic album. Gendon offers great insight into all aspects of what went into making the record.

[Brad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two-and-a-half stars.

[James Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good information on a record that stands out in a time of grunge murk

[Matt Daneman · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. At times, an interesting history of the (tremendous) Afghan Whigs and of the Gentlemen album. Other times, a fanboy hagiography.

[Aaron Hook · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read about a dozen of these little guys and they vary in quality pretty greatly. This one was right in the middle. I was surprised to see that someone decided to tackle the Whigs in this series, since most of the other volumes cover albums that are widely accepted to be classics (Zeppelin IV, Born in the USA, Low, etc.)

I remember loving the single "Debonair" back when it first came out, and I remember always wanting to buy the album from Columbia House, but for some reason I never pulled the trigger. It wasn't until a couple years ago that I picked it up in the Amoeba clearance bin for about $2. It's a great album, but the author here is a bit hyperbolic about the whole thing. He makes it out to be an utter tragedy that the Whigs never rose to the stature of a U2 or Nirvana. They were good, and Greg Dulli is still putting out good stuff, but I'd never consider them to be particularly ground-breaking.

The content is pretty straightforward: history of the band, motivations and themes for the album, and character profiles of the members. If you like the album, it's recommended. It reads as a linear narrative, which I definitely prefer, as opposed to some others in the series which spend 100 pages doing a song-by-song technical breakdown.

[Davy · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. Really sort of sloppy from start to finish. Every time it felt like a cohesive narrative was taking shape, Gendron would change direction and disrupt the flow. The editing throughout was poor and the track-by-track commentary was a mistake -- it reads like a high school poetry analysis. The band doesn't come off that well, either, even despite the considerably biased effort of the author. In fact, now that I've read a 33 1/3 book, I wonder if all of them are written by fanboys like this one obviously was. There's a disagreeably defensive tone, as if it's the writer's job to protect the legacy of the band. He jumped all over the troubled drummer -- along with the rest of the band -- and that was an awkward thing to read through. I don't know. I didn't appreciate it. Gentlemen is one of my favorite albums of all time -- top 3, probably -- and while I learned some neat things and have a better grasp of the album now that I know more about the context, this wasn't an enjoyable read, and now I'm skeptical of the entire series.

[J.J. Lair · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book because I really like this album. I was shocked that the album didn’t sell that well. When it came out, 106.3FM at the Jersey shore played Debonair and Gentleman almost daily. Even Miles Iz Dead got a lot of airplay. (I prefer the Rebirth of Cool version.)
Being just a casual fan of Afghan Whigs, I learned a lot from this book. There was band history, a song by song breakdown, and aftermath of the release. I heard the album so many times that the song by song breakdown was interesting but not much new. The bands decline was there was one cut after another until it all fell apart.
Overall for a short book (that was a bit too pricey) I found it informative and enjoyable.

[Lindsey Buis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a hard one to review because I a.love The Afghan Whigs (One of the best concerts I've seen) b. found the content and musical references interesting and c. Thought the writing wasn't as bad as others, but found it wordy and jumpy at times. There were also some awkward moments. For fans it's rich with information. I love the idea of the series so much and I want to read the Celine Dion one because I hear it's great. 5 stars for the album, 3 stars for the writing, 4 stars for the Information.

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much better than the over-prosed Tom Waits entry; not near as great as The Band entry. It delves into the facts of the album and the band (at the time) very much like most of the series. It did it's job--I listened to Gentlemen and AW with new ears.

[Taryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A peak into the Whig's greatest release, the book gives up Dulli's secrets. No one explains lascivious desire like Dulli and Gendron paints the perfect perfect picture. Debonair is one of my favorite songs ever written. If you are a fan this is a must read!

[Mattias · Rating 2 out of 5]

The album is one of the all-time greatest in my book. I love it to death and it has helped me through some tough times. I am sorry to say that the book isnt as good. I would have loved a more detailed book especially about the songs but it is an ok read and it is a must if you are a fan like me.