Backstage & Beyond

Jim Sullivan — a 2023 inductee into the New England Music Hall of Fame — spent 26 years writing for the Boston Globe and two decades more writing for national publications. He has interviewed and reviewed countless musicians, many of them multiple times.

An intrepid journalistic explorer who gets close enough to his subjects for real human interaction, Sullivan penetrates the publicity machine veneer to reveal the artists beneath the artifice. The profiles gathered here — the result of numerous encounters and conversations over time — have weight and depth, illuminating familiar names and music with fresh insights and personal reflections, the sort that rarely appear in the music press any longer.

Backstage & Beyond contains a rich collection of ideas, experiences and remarks, many from greats who are no longer with us:

•David Bowie: "I probably drive people around me mad with my enthusiasm."
•Peter Gabriel: "My attitude has always been to make the music that I want to make … and then, when it's finished, try to sell it."
•Nico: "I find it very tiresome to be famous."
•David Byrne: "If you play music outside the alternative rock spectrum it's hard for people to conceive that you can like this music the way you can a rock band."
•Warren Zevon: "It's a danger to exaggerate your own emotions. We do that, but it's probably a greater danger to hide from them or conceal them."
•Jerry Lee Lewis: "[I] would never harm a hair on nobody's head, much less take someone's life. I'd die for someone, but I would never hurt nobody."
•Leonard Cohen: "If you think by saving the forest you're going to redeem your soul, you've got another thing coming."

In 2023, Trouser Press Books published two volumes of Backstage & Beyond: one about artists whose careers began in the 1950s through the early 1970s, the other focusing on artists from the mid-1970s onward. This 2027 e-book assembles all the  pieces from both, updated and augmented, deepening the examination of aging and the quest for relevance and purpose over the course of long careers. It also includes eleven bonus chapters not in any of the print editions.

Chapters on:

Alice Cooper
Beastie Boys
Billy Bragg
Bono / U2
Brian Eno
Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music
Buzzcocks
Cramps
Darlene Love
David Bowie
David Byrne and Talking Heads
Edgar Froese & Tangerine Dream
Elvis Costello
English Beat
Enya
Flipper
Frankie Goes to Hollywood
Gang of Four
George Clinton & P-Funk
Ginger Baker
Ian Hunter and Mott the Hoople
Iggy Pop
Jerry Lee Lewis
Jethro Tull (Ian Anderson)
Joan Baez
Joe Perry and Aerosmith
John Fogerty
John Lydon, Sex Pistols and Public Image Ltd.
Joy Division/New Order
Judy Collins
k.d. lang
KISS
Lemmy and Motörhead
Leonard Cohen
Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground
Marianne Faithfull
Mark E. Smith / The Fall
Mission of Burma
Morrissey
Neil Young
Nico
Patti Smith
Pete Townshend
Peter Gabriel
Peter Wolf and the J. Geils Band
Pixies
Police
Richard Thompson
Ringo Starr
Robert Fripp and King Crimson
Roy Orbison
Ryuichi Sakamoto
Shane MacGowan and the Pogues
Spiritualized
Stiff Little Fingers
Suicide
Swans
The B-52s
The Cars
The Clash
The Cure
The Damned
The Kinks
The Ramones
The Rascals
Tina Turner
Warren Zevon