Never Mind the Pollacks: A Rock and Roll Novel

by Neal Pollack

These names defined the mayhem, excess and glory of American rock for half a century, but only Neal Pollack was there for every note of every show, except for the shows he missed. Only Neal Pollack saw Memphis with Elvis, the Village with Dylan, and the depressed Pacific Northwest with Kurt Cobain. Only Neal Pollack had the extra-potent cough syrup that they all so desperately craved. From the twisted mind of America’s most-photographed satirist comes a raw protean yawp from the depths of nowhere, a hilarious trip through time that savagely parodies the history of rock-‘n’-roll and its grandiloquent journalism. The fictional Neal Pollack, born Norbert Pollackovitz before being renamed, by Elvis, at his Bar Mitzvah, first hears the blues as a child. The notes come from the guitar of Clambone Jefferson, an ancient, mythical character who Pollack spends the rest of his life chasing as the source of music’s primal allure. In that pursuit, Pollack becomes a renegade rock journalist whose screeds appear in such high-profile publications as Hillbilly Hot Rag! and Broken Testicle . He seduces Patti Smith and Joan Baez. He discovers Kurt Cobain. He goes on pharmacopoeial binges that put the most reckless, bloated rock star to shame. Through it all, the real Neal Pollack, the greatest American novelist of his generation, manages to echo the style of overeducated blowhards while tackling the history of blues, rock, punk, post-punk and post-post-punk with equal enthusiasm and disdain. Never Mind the Pollacks is a rock novel that really rocks. Like a classic album, it opens with a kick in the guts, proceeds to a bite in the shins, and ends with an uppercut to the jaw, leaving you bloodied, awed, and grateful. Along the way, it manages to uncover America’s sellouts and false idols. So drink some cough syrup and put on Iggy and the Stooges’ Raw Power . Better yet, burn your copy of Raw Power and listen to something new. Because rock, like literature, must destroy itself. Thankfully, Neal Pollack is here to kill them both.

Genres: Music, Fiction, Humor, Comedy, 21st Century, Novels, The United States Of America

272 pages, Hardcover

First published May 15, 2007

About the author

Neal Pollack’s first book, The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, was published in 2000, becoming an (almost) instant cult classic. His debut novel, Never Mind the Pollacks, hit shelves in 2003, and was shamelessly promoted by his band, The Neal Pollack Invasion. In 2007, he published Alternadad, a best-selling memoir. In 2010, Pollack became a certified yoga teacher and published Stretch, a nonfiction account of his adventures in American yoga culture. He has contributed to The New York Times, Wired, Slate, Yoga Journal, and Vanity Fair, among many other publications. Thomas & Mercer published his historical noir novel Jewball in March 2012, and debuted his "yoga detective" novel, Downward-Facing Death, in serialized fiction form in September, 2012. His latest book, a time-traveling romantic comedy called Repeat, will be published in March 2015. He and his wife, the painter Regina Allen, live with their son in Austin, Texas.

Reviews

[Linnea · Rating 1 out of 5]

Neal Pollack is the guy in school that all the boys thought was funny. All the girls wavered between wanting to kick him in the balls and wanting to send him secret love notes because they kept thinking that maybe, maybe if he were to hone it just a little, that he could be a really truly funny dad to their babies some day, and that maybe, maybe he might even just make a little money off his humour - if he were to somehow hone it a bit.

He didn't hone it.

In other words, this book is not funny.

[Ross Lockhart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Neal Pollack skewers fifty years of rock-and-roll idol worship in this mean-spirited, yet laugh-out-loud funny, piss-take on rock criticism. From its cough-syrup swilling anti-protagonist, the out-Lester Bangs-ing critic Neal Pollack (yeah, you read that right) to its swipes at everybody from Bob Dylan to Bruce Springsteen to Iggy Pop to Johnny Rotten to Kurt Cobain, Never Mind the Pollacks is a wild, decadent, and fun ride through rock-and-roll excess. Sure, it’s nothing Hunter Thompson didn’t already do years earlier, but it’s still fun.

[Julia · Rating 2 out of 5]

(mdc) This was amusing, but also contains everything i hate about rock criticism and music fan-ship in general. Parts are like listening to my dad tell me about how craaaazy rock was in the 70s and how my generation just doesn't have that; other parts are like trying to talk to the most jaded boring scenester who only likes 2 bands and sucks their dicks relentlessly. It also has the "you couldn;t possibly understand unless you were in memphis in the 50s/london in the 70s/dc in the early 80s/wherever" thing going too. BULLSHIT, but it's entertaining at least.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

For you musics fans (snobs)! Neal Pollack was a rock critic who created rock-n-roll history, discovering everyone from Elvis to Kurt Cobain. Has the same self-important feel as "Anthology of American Literature", but how else would a great rock critic be remembered? Fun to follow the ride through rock history and hillarious writing, as always.

[Julie Haydu · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would like to like this book even more given the number of Iggy Pop references including the phrase "WWID?" What Would Iggy Do? All the characters are so cartoonish though that it just gets downright silly at times. I do love how Neal Pollack inserts himself into the backstory of rock and roll history.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply the best book ever written in the English language. About rock music. Or really about rock music criticism. Or most accurately about the satirical portrayal of a fictional rock music critic.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do you share my pet hate of the music press? Read this book.
Are you a rock critic? Read this book.
Does the idea of a satirical Forest Gumpian race through the history of popular music appeal to you? Go on, read it already!

[Art Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

Top Five Rock Novel Ever!

[Christopher Key · Rating 4 out of 5]

How do you satirize rock critics? It's like trying to satirize sportscasters. Neal Pollack gives it a helluva ride and it's delightfully nihilistic, if that's not an oxymoron. Pollack creates a "prose stylist" named Paul St. Pierre, who proceeds to document the life of the greatest rock 'n roll hanger-on of all time: Neal Pollack. He was there when Sam Phillips first recorded Elvis. He was there when Dylan went electric. He was at Woodstock and Asbury Park and Aberdeen, WA. It's all about sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll. What else is there?

[Scott · Rating 1 out of 5]

Some mildly amusing parts. Not enough to keep me interested. Could not get past page 50.

[Kitt-e-kat · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this.. kinda bored..

[Donald · Rating 1 out of 5]

In my opinion the author tries to hard to be funny which has the opposite effect not a funny book.

[Colin Bischoff · Rating 2 out of 5]

A madcap sprint of jokes covering the last 50+ years of hipster music. I'm probably the target audience, but it was all pretty lazy.

[Lea Sabb · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF this is like when a loser tries too hard to seem cool

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Judging from a quick scan of Goodreads reviews, Pollack is a writer, and Never Mind the Pollacks a book, that most readers either love or hate, and it gleans anywhere from one to five stars. Great! A good satirist should irritate and amuse in equal measure or, probably, more like sixty-forty. It's not comedy, people, nor is it a "novel" in the usual, dramatic, sense (Oprah's not going to induct this one). Yes, much of it is sophomoric and yes, it does try to piss off just about everyone who ever took a band, or a particular view of rock'n'roll history, too seriously. Neal Pollack's nihilistic rock critic "Neal Pollack" outdoes all the iconoclastic rock critics you ever read: "All real music is crap." "Rock has to be bad. What's the point of playing rock if it's good? You have to push people to the brink. You have to make them want to kill you. Good musicians have no place playing rock'n'roll." "Only the workingman can create true rock'n'roll." Et cetera. The fictional Pollack represents the extreme of the critic who can't just write, but needs to live his subjects' self-destructive, hedonistic, anarchic lives; he is hilariously connected to, inseparable from, legendary figures that include Elvis, Dylan, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Johnny Rotten, Kurt Cobain, etc. -- inseparable if you don't count his lack of musical talent or charisma. Nevertheless, he lives the life while his polar opposite, the novel's narrator and academic, mainstream critic Paul St. Pierre, fails ever to get next to his heroes or, seemingly, even understand them and their art in the least. Never Mind the Pollacks only seems to be an irreverent and arrogant dismissal of (just about all) music and a celebration of the most primal, hindbrain qualities of rock. Its actual target is, of course, pretentious rock critics and criticism, which insists on its right and ability to define, categorize, control, shape, even create the music. Maybe this is just the age-old complaint of all artists against those artistes manques, the critics and commentators, since some Sumerian scribe "interpreted" Gilgamesh. While "Neal Pollack" can get on your nerves (as he's meant to), he's a neanderthal mix of Forrest Gump and Zelig and finds himself at all the crossroads of rock history (well, of one favored narrative of rock history), inspired and encouraged by the occasionally materializations of Willie "Clambone" Jefferson, first as an ancient bluesman but later as a funkster and rapper. "Pollack" takes turns as a folkie, a punk, a grunge rocker, and all of these meetings we get to hear his (or Pollack's) parodies of the stars. This is one of my favorite aspects of the novel; I have to share at least one example, so here's an excerpt from the section on Springsteen:

He sings in an authentic voice that reflects all our pain, with lyrics that make the universal particular and the particular universal. Because whenever we hurt, as Americans, Bruce is there. Whenever we feel, he feels with us. In our darkest, coldest hour, we call out to him, and he answers:

Hey there mister can you tell me
Whatever happened to the dreams we had?
We were feelin' good, now we're feelin' bad.
I'm just driftin' now from bar to bar.
With my workin' hands.
And my old guitar.

etc.

And so it goes (as Kurt Vonnegut would say)...

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story runs pretty good in this, and I can't fault how meticulous the industry feels sketched out. I can't help but feel that the author had more fun writing it than I had reading it, but I still enjoyed the book.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Because I can't put it any better, I'm cutting and pasting Chris G's review into this field:

Never Mind the Pollacks offers a pretentious academic/critic/biographer's take on the legendary (and entirely fictional) life of the "greatest rock critic who ever lived and ever will," Mr. Neal Pollack. Though preternaturally brilliant, the syrup-sqigging Pollack's also "a pretentious bloated nightmare of a man" who seems to get routinely screwed (both literally and metaphorically) by the people he turns into legends. The author Neal Pollack enmeshes his fictional alter-ego into the most seminal moments in rock-n-roll history. There he is taking Elvis to Sun Records for to meet Sam Phillips. There he is walking in on Jerry Lee Lewis banging his mom. There he is the night Dylan meets Baez. There he is with them all before they became ROCK GODS: The Stones, Iggy Pop, the Boss (who gets a brilliant skewering), Kurt, the Minutemen, Lou Reed and co. The tale swaggers from absurdity to absurdity, poking holes in these legends and in the process by which critics turn these chemically-altered hedonistic guitar-bangers into legends. It's frequently brilliant, occasionally awful, always obnoxious satire for record fiends, and it's a shitload of fun.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I've been getting more and more into not just reading books, but also reading about books (on fine blogs like Bookslut and 50 Books), I've noticed that there are a few names that are often used as examples of both what is right and what is wrong with writers today - "you either love 'em or hate 'em" kind of authors. Neil Pollack's name seemed to come up more than most, so when I saw Never Mind at a used book sale for $4, I picked it up. After reading it I can see how it would be hard to have something other than complete love or all-out hate for its author.

Never Mind, The Gump-like story of a pompous, know-it-all rock critic (is there any other kind?) weaving his through most of Rock and Roll's seminal moments, is a book that is completely off-the-wall, only understandable to those who grew up reading Rolling Stone (back when it was still cool to read RS), sometimes extremely gross, and often times nonsensical. It's also hilarious. Laugh-out-loud-page-after-page hilarious. Pollack's knowledge of the subject matter and his boldness in insulting his target audience - music snobs (of which he's obviously one) - and most importantly the fact that the book is hilarious (did I mention that already?) puts him firmly in my "what's right with writers today" column.

[Crckt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Neal Pollack's Never Mind the Pollacks is the tale of a fitional rock critic's research and writing about another fictional (the greatest of all time) rock critic named, humbly, Neal Pollack. Neal PPollack, the critic, not the author, has an insight into the essence of rock unparalleled by any. The youing Pollack is guided by the spirit of a black bluesman known as "Clambone" (think that annoying Indian in Oliver Stone's "The Doors." Pollack sets of on his critic adventures financed by a trust fund supplied by Elvis Presley obtained when Elvis ran over and killed his father. The protagonist goes on to befriend and in some cases be the impetus behind the greatness of artists like: Wanda Jackson, Dylan, Joan Baez, The Stones, The Velvets, Iggy, The Ramones, Nirvana, blah,blah ,blah... The book is indeed and entertaining read, especially if you fancy yourself as having some sort of rock-hip media savvy, but in the end it reads as little more than a drug fueled rock and roll version of Forrest Gump mixed with the know it all hipster name dropping of LCD Soundsytem's "Losing My Edge." (Sorry but I didn't feel that the review would be complete without my own name dropping pretension).

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Never Mind the Pollacks offers a pretentious academic/critic/biographer's take on the legendary (and entirely fictional) life of the "greatest rock critic who ever lived and ever will," Mr. Neal Pollack. Though preternaturally brilliant, the syrup-sqigging Pollack's also "a pretentious bloated nightmare of a man" who seems to get routinely screwed (both literally and metaphorically) by the people he turns into legends. The author Neal Pollack enmeshes his fictional alter-ego into the most seminal moments in rock-n-roll history. There he is taking Elvis to Sun Records for to meet Sam Phillips. There he is walking in on Jerry Lee Lewis banging his mom. There he is the night Dylan meets Baez. There he is with them all before they became ROCK GODS: The Stones, Iggy Pop, the Boss (who gets a brilliant skewering), Kurt, the Minutemen, Lou Reed and co. The tale swaggers from absurdity to absurdity, poking holes in these legends and in the process by which critics turn these chemically-altered hedonistic guitar-bangers into legends. It's frequently brilliant, occasionally awful, always obnoxious satire for record fiends, and it's a shitload of fun.

[Daryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

bought it today for the equivalent of $0.25.

About halfway through. A great big pretentious romp (largely through my hood) making me remember that my bombed out times living both broke and large at the same time were(are) much less poetic/artistic and more... well, pathetic.

I'm guessing that the people gushing about the book are featured in and/or masturbate to Look At This Fucking Hipster

good fun. good book? we shall see.

=================================

well, it made me laugh.

[Katrina Bergherm · Rating 1 out of 5]

Horrible. Horrible. Horrible book. Neal Pollack is a fictional rock critic with obscure connections to many famous musicians (Rolling Stones, Iggy Pop, Elvis, and more) and this book is about his story through the years, from one tragedy to another. It's not interesting...even though it sounds like it might be. It's not humorous. It's not amusing. It's not even entertaining. Don't bother with this book!

[Ed Wagemann]

Why Everything You Think You Know About Punk Is Completely Wrong:
http://generation-add.blogspot.com/20...

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hilarious semi-tribute to Lester Bangs (and passionate tribute to rock 'n' roll), Never Mind the Pollacks is the story of rebellious (against everything) music critic Neal Pollack and his search for the source of all music. Along the way, he sleeps with Lou Reed, drinks with Elvis, and provokes Michael Stipe into a fistfight.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you have been involved in your local underground music scenes through the years (as well as infecting others) you may find this as hilarious as I did. Fear in Loathing meets Confederacy of Dunces, oh and a little Christopher Moore for good measure. Could be a 4 but I could not put it down unless I needed a break from cracking up.

[Christine · Rating 1 out of 5]

Finished this book and threw it in the trash can. Then felt bad about the slow and quiet lives of the trees that were sacrificed for its printing. This book is the unfunny guy who follows you around telling the same joke over and over and wonders why you're not laughing. Wink wink...get it?? Yeah, I got it.

[Brian Topping · Rating 4 out of 5]

strange, disturbing, but somehow poetic, love him or hate him, Pollock creates a great rock fiction, the kind that happen in the midst of a dreamy hallucination. If Nick Hornsby and John Kennedy Toole had a love child...

[R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The height from which Pollack fell.

[Becky Sweger · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yes, Pollack is very clever and entertaining, etc. etc. but his shtick wears thin very quickly. Can't take him in large doses.

[Ardys · Rating 1 out of 5]

I made it over halfway through, but eventually I couldn't take any more of Pollack's smug, self-congratulatory hipness. Good riddance.