Take a Walk on the Dark Side: Rock and Roll Myths, Legends, and Curses

by R. Gary Patterson

Book Overview

Take a Walk on the Dark Side is the ultimate book for today's rock and roll fan: a fascinating compendium of facts, fictions, prophecies, premonitions, coincidences, hoaxes, doomsday scenarios, and other urban legends about some of the world's most beloved and mysterious pop icons.
Updating, revising, and expanding on material from his cult classic Hellhounds on Their Trail, Patterson offers up a delectable feast of strange...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743244230
• ISBN13: 9780743244237
• Release Date: July 2004
• Publisher: Touchstone Books
• Length: 279 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.6" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Great book....fun and kind of scary!

This is a great book for music fans, fans of the paranormal, or those who just enjoy a good read. I stayed up late finishing this book because I couldn't put it down and I jumped at every little noise I heard. This is really an unusual and thoroughly enjoyable book!

Fascinating Look at Rock's Greatest Myths and Legends

First of all, I have eagerly awaited this book since its release in July. I was NOT disappointed. I have listened to the author many times on Coast to Coast AM and he is the only guest that can keep my attention for the full three to four hour span of the interview. Several times, I have been very groggy the next morning at work, but this was a small price to pay for the entertaiment. value. The book is written in a warm conversational style that is very compelling. The stories are fascinating and I can assure you that once started you will not be able to put the book down until you have completed it. The "decades long run of bad luck" for many of the bands makes us realise that nothing just happens on its own. I especially enjoyed the sections on the Buddy Holly Curse and "The Club". It is amazing the number of peformers who died in their twenty-seventh year. After reading some of the reviews given here, I thought that I may have a reading comprehension problem. This work is not a listing of rock and roll obituaries (thank God) and I found no evidence of moralising on the role of backward tracks. I found a very objective look at backward masking that included a great deal of humor by the author. I remember the early 1980s when religion clashed with the rock industry. Those accounts are given objectively in the work and I suppose some individuals have formed an opinion (such as the phallas reference in "The Little Mermaid." I slowed the frames down and the referenced section is clearly the minister's knee). Obviously, this is the proper role of the urban legend, and this is another strong point of the work in that the reader can choose to let his interpretation continue after being presented with opposing facts. It is all in fun but sometimes the ultimate truth is NOT in the ear of the individual but the uniformed listener. The writing style is very engaging and is not like the typical rock history that reads as historical fiction or is as dry as an encyclopedia reference. As readers, we form our own opinions. I suppose my definition of a "hack' is someone who attacks a work and clearly misses the purpose of the work itself. Maybe that is what is wrong with the media today, but we can only hope that a volume of rock and roll obitiaries makes it way to a bookstore soon--but don't bet on it--it's been done and overdone. If you ever liked "The Twilight Zone", "Thriller", and "Night Gallery", and if you ever enjoyed sitting around a campfire at night listening to ghost stories and tales of the unexplained, or if you'd like to be the life of the party in your knowledge of fascinating rock trivia, this book is for you. As one reviewer said of "Hellhounds on Their Trail", "you'll never listen to the music the same way again!"

Rock and Roll's Fox Mulder strikes again

Several years ago, I took a chance and interviewed R. Gary Patterson on my radio show about his book, " The Walrus Was Paul " " The Great Beatle Death Clues of 1969." The reaction I got from my listeners was unprecedented. People called to complain saying they were late for work because they refused to leave their cars until the interview was over. Time has passed and we lost touch. Then I saw that Gary had written a new book so I took chance number two and purchased it. Wow, " Take A Walk On The Dark Side " by R. Gary Patterson, is a chapter by chapter compilation of weird and spooky Rock and Roll myths and legends, warnings and harbingers, premeditated and organic, gruesome deaths and peaceful endings, coincidences and once in a lifetime tall tales. They're all wrapped up in a dandy book that can serve as common ground for young people and their elders, who have long shared and passed along in urban legend fashion over the past 50 years ( save Robert Johnson ) of these person to person whispered rock secrets. These are the tales my friends and I spoke about in the dark, in hushed breaths, blankets over our heads with the ghosts of electricity howling by flashlight onto the bones of our faces. Back then, rock and roll itself was the mysterious force that separated, divided and distinguished my generation from that of our parents. Until Gary Patterson came along, there was no one to represent the interests of this musically macabre constituency. The funereally fascinated can take ( a still beating ) heart because " Take A Walk On the Dark Side," surely will be their cup of blood. For me, the chilling thrill of finally reading about tales that have heretofore only existed as the shrouded starless spectral secrets of rock's far more intriguing underside is triumphant, if overdue validation that my friends and I have not been the only ones interested in this saturnine subject. At this point I think it necessary to address what seems to be a misconception of some of my fellow reviewers. It appears to me that the objective of the book is to assemble many of the more mysterious and compelling stories from the " dark side " of rock and roll and bring them into the light of day. Gary Patterson has done just that. Reviewers mrliteral and HDBboth expressed dismay that the confirmation or dismissal of these tales is sometimes missing. I searched through the book after I read their reviews to see if Patterson ever stated that that was his goal. Looking for confirmation or debunking? Forget it. Nowhere is it stated that he has set out to debunk these stories - what fun would that be? If that's what you want, take a trip to snopes, which would have been the correct thing before bringing up the Little Mermaid minister's phallus legend. Our reviewer claims it's true because he saw it with his own eyes. Snopes claims that to be totally untrue. However, if what you crave is an extended visit to rock and roll's ever enthralling

Fascinating and well-researched

After listening to author Patterson on Coast To Coast A.M., I was sufficiently intrigued to get this book. And I am SO GLAD that I did! This book is really a standout from other Rock bios I'd previously read, primarily due to the SUPERB investigative skills of Patterson! He literally leaves no stone unturned in uncovering intriguing and often frightening "connections" in the deaths of noted Rock icons-connections that defy simple explanation or coincidence. Patterson combines fascinating and well researched information with his uncanny abilities as a "born storyteller". Unlike so many other books of this genre, I found myself enthralled by his literary style:warm, engaging and GENUINELY affecting. His sincere love of the music(and respect for the artists who create it)comes shining through in each paragraph! BE WARNED:once you pick this book up, you WON'T want to put it down til it's over! It's like a TERRIFIC mystery novel, but-as the saying goes-truth REALLY IS stranger than fiction!