While we’ve been saturated with accounts of New York’s Warhol and CBGB eras, 21st-century developments remained unchronicled until this monolithic new work by journalist Lizzy Goodman, who used an oral history approach and interviewed more than 200 main players, musicians, writers, DJs and scenesters.
The story starts with The Strokes, New York’s last great rock band, whose career followed the common arc of meteoric rise followed by drugs-and-booze ruin, then weaves Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem, White Stripes, Interpol, The Killers, Kings Of Leon, Vampire Weekend and more into 600 riveting pages. New York remains the lead character; sanitised by its Prohibition-style 90s crackdown, changed forever by 9⁄11 (the book’s most gripping section) then the internet as the Lower East Side is swallowed by gentrification, leading to today’s flourishing Brooklyn scene.
The endless hard drugs, flowing booze, high-jinks debauchery and business shenanigans show that nothing really changes, whichever era you’re following.
