Dennis McNally

Author, Historian and Music Publicist

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    • Jerry on Jerry: The Unpublished Jerry Garcia Interviews
    • On Highway 61: Music, Race and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom
    • A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead
    • Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, The Beat Generation & America
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My First Real Rock Concert

August 1, 2014 by Dennis McNally

Sorry for the delay on this…much happening on the book front (which I’ll share with you in the next newsletter, out next week), and I even took a fast but delightful vacation back east to see family… if you’ve never been to Casco Day (always the last Saturday in July!), well, you’ve missed America … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Rock 'n' roll Tagged With: British Invasion, Paul Revere and the Raiders

1958 to 1964: From Surf to Folk to Jazz to the Beatles

July 15, 2014 by Dennis McNally

We came back to the states in 1958 and settled in Los Angeles, and my musical experiences toned down considerably. Even though I was in the San Fernando Valley, light-years away from the beach, we all – at least privately - thought of ourselves as surfers, and the music du jour was the Beach Boys … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Music

The Deep Roots of Rock ‘n’ Roll, part 1

June 28, 2014 by Dennis McNally

I started out talking about “On Highway 61” as “what white people learned from black music from minstrelsy to Bob Dylan,” and that certainly holds true. But as I’ve gone along – and as I’ve gotten tired of saying the same phrase over and over – I’ve come to realize that it’s also accurate to say … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Rock 'n' roll Tagged With: Elvis

Getting Near the End – Page Proofs

June 11, 2014 by Dennis McNally

So as I said in the first post, when you get galleys you actually have a bound book (if incomplete and not as nice as your future finished book) in your hands, which is a big deal.  But page proofs, even though they're not bound, are the last step in terms of dealing with the words.  You actually … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books

Galleys Day – When a Book Becomes Real

May 16, 2014 by Dennis McNally

I've been around long enough to have watched changes in this book-writing thing.  I swear the first draft of my first book was handwritten.   Nowadays, of course, you write a book on a computer, and while I got to edit On Highway 61 on paper (my editor is as old school as I am), I then copyedited it … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books

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  • Another Opening, Another Show…
  • On Highway 61 wins prestigious ASCAP music writing award!
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