Irving Berlin, who popularized Tin Pan Alley music (the forerunner of rock), was a commercially successful role model for many of the pioneer Jewish rock ’n’ rollers.
The heroes are not the ones we typically think of...
Rather, they are the obscure and often tormented lives of songwriters with names like Doc Pomus (R&B songwriter for Elvis), who was confined to a wheelchair due to childhood polio.
Other personalities in the book include Los Angeles’ own enigmatic producer, Phil Spector. The still-active Spector, who was recently arrested on suspicion of murder at his Alhambra home, penned the hit “To Know Him is To Love Him,” based on the inscription on the tombstone of his father who took his own life. Another interesting story is told of Lou Reed, the urban music legend of “Take A Walk on the Wild Side” fame. He wrote racy lyrics at a time when radio stations were fearful of having their licenses lifted by the Federal Communications Commission. We also find colorful sketches of Monterey Rock Music Festival maven Lou Adler, but not his co-producer, Holocaust survivor Bill Graham. And then there are the “black lyrics” of co-writers Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller.
... The author explains why Neil Sedaka became one of the first outwardly Jewish performers in rock’s early years. Sedaka was the antithesis of the male sexual predator macho artist and usually performed on the piano in classical music garb. His publicist always made it a point to remind everyone that Sedaka was trained on classical piano by none other than the virtuoso Artur Rubinstein. This fact has even been mentioned on the TV show “Jeopardy.”
Only in the “counterculture” 1960s did other obviously Jewish performers surface. The nonethnic Tom and Jerry of the 1950s became the very Jewish Simon and Garfunkel of the 1960s and ’70s. Billy Joel, the son of a Holocaust survivor, is another rock idol of the new type. Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand and Barry Manilow represent a middle-of-the-road musical sound and a very Jewish persona.
Paradoxically, the two groups that bemoan “satanic” rock music the most — Evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews — both use this medium to effectively communicate the human relationship to God. For trivia buffs, Norman Greenbaum is the Jewish singer-songwriter behind one of the most popular Christian rock songs of all-time, “Spirit in the Sky.” Yet, he never converted to Christianity. He just liked the sound, words and imagery.
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