(By Rob Sheffield)
Review By Anthony Kuzminski
Rating: 4-Stars (****)
{Buy the book HERE}
One key element that most people will never understand about music is that it’s not imperative whether the music is good or not; what’s essential is how it makes you feel. Music is part of the very fabric of our souls and it serves as a permanent stamp on our past. This is why disco never sounds dated to some, why hair metal still seems dangerous and it justifies that lack of fashion everyone had during the grunge movement. During these times, music winds up becoming something much larger than we ever could envision and it’s specifically why certain songs, acts and genres are endearing no matter how downright embarrassing they may seem to be a few decades down the line. Rob Sheffield may write for Rolling Stone magazine, but don’t let that alarm you, his writing style comes more from his heart rather than his head. Not since the 1970’s has Rolling Stone had a writer as disparate, witty and embarrassingly honest as Sheffield. He’s a pop culture coinsurer and his latest book Talking to Girls About Duran Duran is a treasure trove of recollections not just for Sheffield but for you as well as he guides us through his life and 25-songs that defined his life during the decade of excess. Opening with the Go-Go’s “Our Lips are Sealed” to the final chapter, Duran Duran’s “All She Wants Is”, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran is filled with stories of triumph, heartbreak and downright hysteria. This book will do more for you than urge you to buy a late night 80’s collection of metal ballads when you’re buzzed but make you be conscious of the little minute details of the people and places in your life. You could have been born in the 1990’s but the book will reverberate just as strongly to those who grew up with these songs as they were inscribed into the consciousness. He’s gifted but not demeaning to the reader in his sharp prose and his analogies are mostly spot on but above all else he makes you care about the music and his stories.
The decade covers his life from the junior high age of 13 all the way through him completion of college in 1990. He traces the history of 80’s music through the lens of his own life. While visiting his world you will sit at the same table as Paul Westerberg, Debbie Gibson, Jon Bon Jovi, Prince, Lita Ford, Jordan Knight, Richard Butler and David Bowie. In the book, they prove to be the greatest surprise guest band of all time. With them at his side, he breaks bread, spills the beans about his amusing, awkward and utterly heartrending teen experience. But here’s the secret; Sheffield endears himself to you in such a way that even though you may be a decade younger, grew up on the opposite coast and can’t relate to the 80’s, you feel as if you’ve known him your entire life. His story about driving an ice cream truck in the summer of 1984 (“Purple Rain”) will evoke tears from laughter, sum up why high school wrestling goes hand-in-hand with the Rolling Stones “She’s So Cold”, how memories of “Maneater” extract memories of his sister and how a girl ruined his perfect summer job on a garbage trucks as Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” rides shotgun. He wrestles with what John Hughes meant to a generation while waxing on the Psychedelic Furs “Pretty In Pink” and somehow he manages to warp Roxy Music, Catholicism and Kenny Rogers into one chapter.
Ever since the advent of rock magazines there has been continual debate as to who should receive accolades and who shouldn’t. What endears me to Sheffield as a writer is his brash lack of coolness when it comes to admitting loving Chaka Khan or Lita Ford and when you read his gusto for a forgettable pop ditty, he finds a way to elevate it to heights no one deemed possible; much like When In Rome’s “The Promise” received because of Napoleon Dynamite. He may write for Rolling Stone, but make no mistake, his love of all music is among the most pure I’ve ever encountered. Sheffield doesn’t believe in “guilty pleasures” and because he attaches significant moments in his life to these songs. In turn, they remind us that we have nothing to be embarrassed about regardless of the artist or genre. It’s a thin line walking between discussing music and intertwining your life story into it, but Sheffield does this with sophistication. Neither overpowers the other and by the end of the book, you feel a close connection to Sheffield, his life and the music he spent a decade gorging. I won’t lie, in the weeks since reading the book; I’ve listened to the Replacements “Hold My Life” nearly 20-times. It almost made me unembarrassed from seeing Debbie Gibson in concert (emphasis on the word almost) but regardless, Sheffield has a story here that tops mine.
Sheffield’s previous book Love is a Mix Tape may be the greatest book you’ve never read. Trust me on this, if you haven’t read it, get it now. Talking to Girls About Duran Duran may not flow as naturally, but it doesn’t have to. It makes you rejoice with glee that you can take out your Debbie Gibson and Tiffany CD’s and place them on the shelf next to Guns N’ Roses and T-Rex and only be slightly embarrassed. Rich in captivating detail from outfits he wore, to his grandfather’s bleeding feet to the torture a bevy of female acquaintances and finally to his youngest sister’s obsession with New Kids On the Block; his stories ripple with heartache and sincerity. The prose is stylish and sharp without being highfalutin. He sums up intense emotions and the connections we tie to them which we carry with us forever. Technology and times may change, but the experience of growing up is the same for everyone despite the music and styles of the time. Sheffield wears his heart on his sleeve but because he shares all the minute details with us, it makes him one of us. Anyone can read Talking to Girls About Duran Duran and within a few pages with be fully fluent in the language of Rob Sheffield. It perfectly captures precisely why music is an emotional experience that can’t be taught but only experienced.
