Top Five Most Inadvertently Hilarious Rock Books

By Emily Carney

5. Kraftwerk: I Was A Robot, by Wolfgang Flür (2000)

Wolfgang Flür is best known as being Kraftwerk’s drummer from 1974 to 1991, during their “golden years” when they turned out seminal albums such as Radioactivity (1975) and Trans-Europe Express (1977). This memoir by Flür details his various escapades within the workings of the “Düsseldorf Beatles.”

Flür’s liquored-up memories encompass shameless groupie-guzzling, getting surreally and seriously ill while on tour, and being sexually attacked by an aging alcoholic male German film actor. They climax when Flür is unceremoniously ousted from the band, who have become increasingly obsessed with cycling (to Flür’s utter dismay). Who would have believed the inner workings of Kraftwerk could be so scandalous and sex-soaked? The book was greeted with anger from Kraftwerk’s remaining members, who sued Flür; apparently Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider were not amused by photographs depicting the Kraftwerk robots in various homosexual activities.

A sample of the text (page 127): Our hero Wolfgang attempts to exit an awkward situation with drunken actor Helmut Berger, with little success:

“Suddenly, [Helmut] sprang up and staggered towards an expensive-looking wardrobe. I thought that he was about to attack me again, but when he turned around he held out a pair of shiny Italian shoes. ‘There, take them!’ he said. ‘You’ve earned them, my dear.’ He then cut his gaze away, like a shy child. I was baffled. What on Earth did he mean?”

It appears Wolfgang may have lost out on Kraftwerk’s millions, but at least he gained a pair of nice Italian shoes. . .

4. What’s Welsh for Zen, by Victor Bockris and John Cale (1999)

John Cale’s musical career encompasses working with the Velvet Underground, producing albums for other eminent artists (Nico, The Stooges, and Patti Smith, to name a few), and of course, conducting his own varied career. Cale’s beautifully photographed memoir is filled with too many hilarious highlights to count. This book remains the Don Quixote of rock biographies for its neck-breaking honesty in describing the various peaks and troughs of Cale’s career and personal life.

A very short summary of What’s Welsh for Zen: Cale arrives in London from Wales to go to college; destroys a piano with an axe; goes to New York and becomes Lou Reed’s latest victim; gets infamous with the Velvet Underground; gets kicked out of the Velvet Underground; does a ton of drugs and drives a Mustang recklessly around Los Angeles while being in the most fucked-up, dysfunctional marriage ever (his crazy wife Cindy does speedballs and sleeps around with Kevin Ayers and Michael Des Barres); gets divorced and does even more drugs; decapitates a chicken onstage (probably while on drugs); gets married again and somehow survives to do still even more drugs. . . you get the picture. Cale eventually cleans his act up in the mid-1980s with the birth of his daughter, only to be victimized AGAIN by a clearly evil Lou Reed during the course of the tension-fraught and angry-fax-filled Velvet Underground reunion. Cale also goes into some detail about how he doesn’t like Brian Eno, and how he doesn’t like Jonathan Richman, either.

A sample of the text (page 99): John’s bedroom habits apparently didn’t always endear him to Lou Reed:

“I’d been dying to go to bed with Gerard’s [Malanga, Warhol associate] girlfriend whom Lou was also [sleeping with] on the side, Susan Bottomley. . . unfortunately, when Lou came out of the hospital [for hepatitis, probably from drug abuse—Emily C.], he caught me in bed with Susan (a.k.a. International Velvet, it seemed so fitting), and he threw us both out of the apartment, even though I lived there! I was pissed off! I wanted to get laid.”

The book is filled with dozens of anecdotes like this.

Pages: 1 2 3