Backstage & Beyond (45 Years of Rock Chats & Rants)

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 countless national publications. He has interviewed and reviewed countless musicians, many of them multiple times.

Backstage & Beyond is not just an anthology of profiles and reviews Jim Sullivan he has written over a half-century; it integrates different pieces of writing about 40 artists into a broader, deeper and more expansive time-passages view of each. It covers rock and roll pioneers (Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison), classic rockers (Kinks, Who, Bowie) punks (Sex Pistols, Clash, Ramones), new wavers (Talking Heads, Police, Cars, Cure) and much more. Most of the subjects have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Originally published as two volumes in 2023, this edition contains 40 of the most fascinating chapters as well as several new ones and a revised introduction.

“I have spoken to many journalists in my time: some good, some bad, some terrible. And it is lovely when you meet someone who is just like you ... a huge music fan! Jim Sullivan … is friendly, knowledgeable, forthright and opinionated! An expert in his chosen field. He is no pushover ... if you have faults or are resting on your laurels, he is the first to tell you off.” —Peter Hook (Joy Division/New Order)

“There’s a lot of history here, and a lot of reflecting on that history. For me, it’s interesting to see the conflict many artists have as they try to evaluate their own work and its place in the scheme of things. Jim Sullivan has been able to coax some of those reflections out of a broad spectrum of artists, and it’s fascinating to read.” —Greg Hawkes (The Cars)

“Jim Sullivan is an expert interviewer with an uncanny ability to connect with his subjects. In Backstage & Beyond, he brings out the humanity in a host of rock and roll icons who are too often portrayed as godlike figures. This an intimate and revealing look at many of the major personalities of the classic rock era.” —Tom Perrotta, author of Election, Tracy Flick Can't Win, The Leftovers and Mrs. Fletcher

“Sullivan has been really successful at getting a huge list of artists to share what makes them come up with the music we’ve been loving for decades. He has a knack for peeking under the blanket and finding out what makes musicians human — and sometimes inhuman. That’s what makes the book so much fun to read.” —Tom Hamilton (Aerosmith)

“These are wonderful stories across the whole range of popular music, by one of rock’s finest journalists. As history lengthens and some of these legends move on, these become increasingly precious fragments of lives lived at the sharp edge of music.” —Richard Thompson

"The marquee names first draw you in, but it’s what’s behind the storefront that’s really the main attraction here. Sullivan fashions a kind of extended narrative from interviews, performance reviews and his own thoughts and rethoughts on the music and the musicians who make it. His informed commentary and the professional and personal revelations he elicits from his subjects place Backstage & Beyond several leagues above the average rock read. At this late date, that’s saying something." —writer and broadcaster Gene Sculatti (The Catalog of Cool, For the Records)