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    Comrade Rockstar: The Life and Mystery of Dean Reed, the All-American Boy Who Brought Rock 'n' Roll to the Soviet Unio
    Unavailable
    Comrade Rockstar: The Life and Mystery of Dean Reed, the All-American Boy Who Brought Rock 'n' Roll to the Soviet Unio
    Unavailable
    Comrade Rockstar: The Life and Mystery of Dean Reed, the All-American Boy Who Brought Rock 'n' Roll to the Soviet Unio
    Ebook376 pages6 hours

    Comrade Rockstar: The Life and Mystery of Dean Reed, the All-American Boy Who Brought Rock 'n' Roll to the Soviet Unio

    By Reggie Nadelson

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Dean Reed had one of the strangest careers in the history of popular culture. Failing to gain recognition for his music in his native United States, he achieved celebrity in South America in the early 1960s and then, unbelievably, became the biggest rock star in the Soviet Union, where he was awarded the Lenin Prize and his icons were sold alongside those of Josef Stalin. His albums went gold from Bulgaria to Berlin. He made highly successful movies and, naively earnest, was an unwitting acolyte for socialism; everywhere he went, he was mobbed by his fans. And then, in 1986, at the height of his fame, right after 60 Minutes had devoted a segment to him, finally giving him the recognition he had never attained at home, he drowned in mysterious circumstances in East Berlin.

    Drawn magnetically to his story, Reggie Nadelson pursued the mystery of Dean Reed's life and death across America and Eastern Europe, her own journey mirroring his. As she traveled, the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union crumbled, and Reed became an increasingly alluring figure, his life an unrepeatable tale of the Cold War world. Encountering the characters- musicians and DJs, politicians and public figures, lovers and wives-who peopled Reed's life, Nadelson was drawn further and further into a seedy, often hilarious subculture of sex, politics, and rock 'n' roll. Part biography, part memoir and personal journey, Comrade Rockstar is an unforgettable chronicle of an utterly improbable life
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateMay 26, 2009
    ISBN9780802718617
    Unavailable
    Comrade Rockstar: The Life and Mystery of Dean Reed, the All-American Boy Who Brought Rock 'n' Roll to the Soviet Unio
    Author

    Reggie Nadelson

    Reggie Nadelson lives in New York and has written for Travel & Leisure, Vogue, and Conde Nast Traveller. She has had columns at The Guardian, The Financial Times, and Departures, where she wrote a series about cooking with the great chefs, such as Heston Blumenthal and Ruthie Rogers. Her Departures piece about fish in Hawaii was a finalist for the MFK Fisher Prize at the James Beard Awards. Her series of mysteries have been published in a dozen countries, and her nonfiction book, Comrade Rockstar was made into a documentary by the BBC and bought by Tom Hanks for a feature film. Find out more from ReggieNadelson.com.

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    Reviews for Comrade Rockstar

    3/5

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    • 4/5
      I like unusual stories and this sure was unusual. An American rock and roll singer goes to Hollywood, has some minor hits, has bit parts in movies then heads off to South America. Becomes political and ends up living in Communist East Germany and touring throughout the Eastern Bloc. Dies from drowning in 1986 but was it murder, an accident or suicide?Everyone has an opinion it seems and the author gives hers.But the book is more than that, it looks at life behind the Iron Curtain. The insights into music and why Dean Reed was so popular in his day are very interesting. I should point out that this is not a biography, it is about the authors journey to find out about Dean Reed and in the process it also talks about his life. You should read this if your interested in unusual stories about the Cold War, music or interesting people you've probably never heard of.
    • 3/5
      A fascinating story I was sucked into this right from the start. I actually knew about Dean Reed before I read this, and as I was reading I realized it was because I had actually seen the 1986 "60 Minutes" episode that’s referred to in the book. Jeez I’m getting old. That I remembered it is amazing enough in itself.

      It’s pretty well written, and I enjoyed it, but there were a few odd bits. It’s not the story of Reed’s life, it’s more of a journal of the author looking for the story of Reed. The author states this right up front though so I can’t really fault her for that. It seems like she went a long way for research, but I was still left feeling like I hadn’t heard the whole story.

      The fact that Reggie is a woman was a little confusing to me because I didn’t realize it until halfway through the book. It’s weird how I can sometimes get a different impression when I confused about the sex of the writer, and sometimes it doesn’t make any difference at all. It didn’t help that she was working with a man named Leslie much of the time.

      Another very slightly confusing thing was that the book was written in ’89, not long after Reed’s death, and before the Berlin Wall fell, but has been updated recently. So almost all of it, interviews etc. are from the late 80’s, but there are little bits that are much more recent thrown in.

      The other minor problem I had was that she was constantly throwing in political jabs and seemed to have almost a mocking tone at times, but I still really wasn’t sure what she was trying to say most of the time except "the malls are better in the US". I had to take into account the time it was written, maybe it made more sense at the time, and maybe it was just the feeling in the air that the US had "won".