Here Comes the Night (2014)

I picked up this biography of songwriter and record producer Bert Berns by Joel Selvin for a couple reasons. I know Selvin’s first book, a biography of Rick Nelson, which is pretty good. And then I was curious to know more about Berns and Van Morrison, whose T.B. Sheets album was produced by Berns, rumored as under unusual and extreme circumstances. The subtitle to this bio, The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues, suggested all the juicy details would be here about Morrison being stranded in Boston with no money to get home, virtually held against his will and forced to record the original version of T.B. Sheets, called Blowin’ Your Mind! That story, if there is any truth at all in it, is not here. Instead it sounds more like Morrison was merely unhappy and surly. Take as you will. The album remains great and powerful, in either version, both of which include the amazing 10-minute “T.B. Sheets.” The Berns story and all its accomplishments are here, as songwriter and producer. Born in 1929 with a heart condition he was told would kill him by 21, Berns served a long apprenticeship in the proto-Brill Building milieu under such leading lights as Doc Pomus, Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, Jerry Wexler, and Ahmet Ertegun. His biggest hits are very big: “Twist and Shout,” “Cry to Me,” “Hang On Sloopy,” “Here Comes the Night,” and “Piece of My Heart,” among others. His production credits include Morrison’s “Brown-Eyed Girl” and the Drifters’ “Under the Boardwalk.” He owns a share of the ‘60s even though his heart problems finally caught up with him late in 1967, before he was 40. I have been working on building a playlist out of the massive, detailed discography Selvin includes here as an appendix (see here). I love the pop music across all of his proximate era—1959 to 1967—and even a lot of his obscurities (often blatant variations on his biggest hits) are a pure pleasure for me. Selvin’s book largely contains the stories of Atlantic Records, Leiber & Stoller, and the Brill Building ferment. It features lots of bad actors, as the subtitle suggests, including Berns himself in many cases, stealing from artists by taking publishing rights and/or just not paying royalties. Berns is interesting but his music is even more so. The discography may well be the single most valuable point about this book—very valuable indeed. Everything else is perfectly competent.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.