Join the Brookline Public Library for an author talk with music journalist and Brookline resident Jim Sullivan in celebration of his new books Backstage & Beyond Vol. 1: 45 Years of Classic Rock Chats & Rants and Backstage & Beyond Vol. 2: 45 Years of Modern Rock Chats & Rants. This event will include a Q&A and book signing, and copies of both volumes of Backstage & Beyond will be available for purchase courtesy of Brookline Booksmith.

About the books:

Jim Sullivan spent 26 years writing about music for the Boston Globe and two decades more writing for national publications. He has interviewed and reviewed countless musicians, many of them multiple times.

The first volume of his music-writing anthology focuses on artists who came to prominence in the 1950s and ’60s. Twenty-one of them are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The second volume focuses on artists who came to prominence in the 1970s and’80s: punk, new wave, post-punk and beyond. Eleven of them are already in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Rather than simply collect up previously published articles as they originally appeared, Sullivan combed through his archive to find everything he wrote about each artist and worked the pieces together into a more expansive time-passages view that chronicles their changing situations, outlooks and experiences.

In the preface, Sullivan writes, “My hope is that the recollections contained here … trigger some memories, bring you back to where you wanted to be – backstage and beyond, as it were. And if you weren’t around then, I hope this transports you back to several golden ages of rock and roll.”