David Dalton
David Dalton was a New York Times bestselling author, a founding editor of Rolling Stone, recipient of the Columbia School of Journalism Award, and winner of the Ralph J. Gleason Best Rock Book of the Year award for Faithfull. He was the author of twenty-four books, including biographies of James Dean, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Sid Vicious, the Rolling Stones, and, in 2010 (with Tony Scherman), a critically acclaimed biography of Andy Warhol, Pop. Dalton was the co-author (with Jonathon Cott) of Get Back, the only book ever commissioned by the Beatles, and the screenwriter for an upcoming Janis Joplin biopic.
David died in July 2022.
David interviewed for RockCritics.com
76 articles
List of articles in the library
Traffic at Berkshire Cottage: Just Playing Together was a Fantasy
Report and Interview by David Dalton, Rolling Stone, 3 May 1969
THE COTTAGE is an hour and a half from London, but it's thousand light years from Soho Square. Henley is like driving through a postcard, ...
Elvis Presley: Wagging His Tail In Las Vegas
Live Review by David Dalton, Rolling Stone, 21 February 1970
ELVIS WAS SUPERNATURAL, his own resurrection, at the Showroom Internationale in Las Vegas last August. ...
Report by David Dalton, Rolling Stone, 19 March 1970
The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus was an entertainment extravaganza planned and put on by the Rolling Stones in December 1968. Originally done as ...
Interview by David Dalton, Rolling Stone, 28 May 1970
I DIDN'T GET to see Little Richard at the Atlantic City Pop Festival where he followed Janis Joplin and revived his own legend, but when ...
Janis Joplin’s Full-tilt Boogie Ride
Report and Interview by David Dalton, Rolling Stone, 6 August 1970
LOUISVILLE, Kentucky – Janis Joplin and her newly-formed band, Janis Joplin Full-Tilt Boogie, debuted here June 12th, their first gig since they started rehearsing together ...
The James Gang, Little Richard: Little Richard Takes El's Advice
Report by David Dalton, Rolling Stone, 4 March 1971
CLEVELAND – "I'm going to tell Elvis what you did for me, hear?" Richard whispers to the stewardess as she leans over to deposit two ...
Interview by David Dalton, Rolling Stone, 17 February 1972
"I’M GOING to write a book about you," David Dalton told Janis Joplin when she was beginning her first tour with her Full Tilt Boogie ...
Book Excerpt by Lenny Kaye, David Dalton, Rock 100, 1977
FINDING AN UNDISCOVERED TONE ON THE soul scale in the early seventies was almost like inventing a new color, but Al Green scanned the high ...
Four on the Floor: The Motown Sound
Book Excerpt by Lenny Kaye, David Dalton, Rock 100, 1977
IT WAS EVER MORE THAN A RECORD LABEL. At its zenith, during a span that dominated most (if not all) of the sixties, the hit ...
Book Excerpt by David Dalton, Lenny Kaye, Rock 100, 1977
THIS IS NEWARK, THE NIGHT AFTER MARTIN Luther King's assassination. Jimi Hendrix is playing the Symphony Theatre to a crowd of white, modishly dressed hippies. ...
Book Excerpt by David Dalton, Lenny Kaye, Rock 100, 1977
ON MAY 5, 1973, A CAPACITY CROWD OF 56,800 paid $309,000 to watch Led Zeppelin perform for nearly three hours in a Tampa, Florida, football ...
Book Excerpt by Lenny Kaye, David Dalton, Rock 100, 1977
"I FIRST MET HIM IN 1962," SAYS STEVE Cropper who co-wrote two of Otis's hits, 'Fa, Fa, Fa, Fa, Fa' and 'Dock Of The Bay', ...
Elvis Presley: Rock 100: Elvis Presley
Retrospective by David Dalton, Lenny Kaye, Rock 100, 1977
"THAT'S FINE, MAN," CHORTLES SAM Phillips over the studio intercom at 760 Union Avenue, Memphis. "Hell, that's different. That's a pop song now." ...
Book Excerpt by David Dalton, Lenny Kaye, Rock 100, 1977
IN THE BEGINNING... WERE THE BEACH BOYS. Under the avalanche of the English Invasion, the Psychedelic Apocalypse, supersonic guitars and flash, it is almost forgotten ...
Grateful Dead: The Grateful Dead
Book Excerpt by Lenny Kaye, David Dalton, Rock 100, 1977
THE GRATEFUL DEAD ARE A LIVING HIPPIE monument, lysergic storm troopers who have carried "the Message" across continents and psychic thresholds, oblivious of all laws ...
Book Excerpt by David Dalton, Lenny Kaye, Rock 100, 1977
THEY HAVE PARTICIPATED IN AND provoked the transformation of the morals and manners of their generation so effectively that to future social historians the Rolling ...
Velvet Underground: The Velvet Underground
Book Excerpt by Lenny Kaye, David Dalton, Rock 100, 1977
OBVERSE, REVERSE, INVERSE, PERVERSE. A whiplash girl-child waits in the dark, splintered in blue fragments, pinpricks of white heat. The Velvet Underground cauterized their time, ...
Book Excerpt by David Dalton, Lenny Kaye, Rock 100, 1977
THE TEEN DREAM LIES AT THE CORE OF rock & roll and no group has explored, projected and interpreted the turbulent substances of teenage craniums ...
Book Excerpt by David Dalton, Lenny Kaye, Rock 100, 1977
ON THE WALL OF HIS NORTHERN CALIFORNIA home, a note announces to friends and visitors that "Van Morrison the person only sometimes has anything to ...
The Sex Pistols: Sod Awf! The Sex Pistols And Other Pleasantries Of Punk
Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, February 1998
A Short History of the NOW! ROCK EXISTS in the humming; now, an all-enveloping bubble of sound, energy and ecstasy. Like being at the flashpoint ...
Brian Wilson: Let's Go Trippin!
Memoir by David Dalton, MOJO, June 1998
IT WAS JULY 1967, the Summer of Love, on Zuma Beach, California that I first met Brian Wilson. It was one of those loony episodes ...
Profile by David Dalton, Gadfly, July 1998
IF THIS WERE the world it ought to be — that fantasy rockabilly kingdom dream up at Sun Records in the mid-fifties of flash, trash ...
Paul McCartney: Linda McCartney: How Rock 'n' Roll Saved Our Lives
Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, August 1998
I FIRST MET Linda McCartney at the Scene on West 46th Street. A hip little grotto in a cellar, it was run by the cool ...
Big Brother & The Holding Company, Janis Joplin: A Shot From The Heart: Janis and Cheap Thrills
Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, September 1998
IT'S 30 YEARS ago today since Cheap Thrills was released, but as soon as the needle touches the surface of the record (I’m sentimental about ...
Aretha Franklin: Rock 100: Aretha Franklin
Book Excerpt by David Dalton, Lenny Kaye, Cooper Square Books (reissue), 1999
IN 1972 WHEN ARETHA FRANKLIN RECORDED Amazing Grace, her first gospel album in 14 years, at the New Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago, it was ...
Bob Dylan: Rock 100: Bob Dylan
Book Excerpt by Lenny Kaye, David Dalton, Cooper Square Books (reissue), 1999
"I SEE THINGS OTHER PEOPLE DON'T," Dylan once said about himself. "I dissolve myself into situations where I am invisible." Dylan's progress has been a ...
Book Excerpt by Lenny Kaye, David Dalton, Cooper Square Books (reissue), 1999
CREAM WAS THE FIRST OF A NEW SPECIES – the high-voltage superblues group. By channeling their "amplified heat" through traditional blues, they created a clean, ...
Creedence Clearwater Revival: Rock 100: Creedence Clearwater Revival
Book Excerpt by Lenny Kaye, David Dalton, Cooper Square Books (reissue), 1999
PSYCHEDELIC MUSIC WAS PEAKING AND rock was undergoing a period of exhaustion in 1968 when Creedence Clearwater Revival arrived out of nowhere with their "lean, ...
David Bowie: Rock 100: David Bowie
Book Excerpt by Lenny Kaye, David Dalton, Cooper Square Books (reissue), 1999
HE IS, AS HE HAD PLANNED, MAGNIFICENT. The stage appears impeccably struck, lights arranged to catch the finer angles of his face, making him seem ...
Frank Zappa: Rock 100: Frank Zappa
Book Excerpt by Lenny Kaye, David Dalton, Cooper Square Books (reissue), 1999
"There is no undertaking more challenging, no responsibility more awesome than being a Mother."– RICHARD M. NIXON ...
Joni Mitchell: Rock 100: Joni Mitchell
Book Excerpt by David Dalton, Lenny Kaye, Cooper Square Books (reissue), 1999
I was born in Fort Macleod, Alberta, in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies – an area of extreme temperatures and mirages. When I was ...
Sly & the Family Stone: Rock 100: Sly and the Family Stone
Book Excerpt by David Dalton, Lenny Kaye, Cooper Square Books (reissue), 1999
JIMI HENDRIX WAS THE FIRST BLACK TO PLAY acid rock, but he remained a black musician playing to white audiences; he did not get played ...
Rock 100: Um, What Was It We Wanted To Say?
Book Excerpt by David Dalton, Lenny Kaye, Cooper Square (reissue), 1999
Introduction to the Second Edition David Dalton & Lenny Kaye, June 15, Very Late Twentieth Century ...
Book Excerpt by David Dalton, Lenny Kaye, Rock 100, Cooper Square Books (reissue), 1999
THE BAND was once described as the only group who could warm up the crowd for Abraham Lincoln. When they first appeared late in 1968, ...
Book Excerpt by David Dalton, Lenny Kaye, Cooper Square Books (reissue), 1999
IN THE BEGINNING... WERE THE BEACH BOYS. Under the avalanche of the English Invasion, the Psychedelic Apocalypse, supersonic guitars and flash, it is almost forgotten ...
John Cale, Velvet Underground: John Cale: What's Welsh for Zen?
Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, January 1999
THE VELVET Underground in their classic phase (1966-1968) lasted barely two years and released only two studio albums, but their influence has been immense. ...
Palace Music, Will Oldham: Will Oldham aka Bonnie Prince Billy
Profile and Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, January 1999
LO-FI POET OF THE MIND'S OWN TIDE ...
The Kinks : Remembrance Of Kinks Past
Retrospective and Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, March 1999
TAKE A LOOK at that face, the face of Ray Davies, it's the classic Dickensian mug, the face of a silent movie comedian, a vaudevillian, ...
D.A. Pennebaker: I Film While Leaping From My Chair
Retrospective and Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, April 1999
"Almost immediately reality gave in on more than one point. The truth is, it longed to give in." – Jorge Luis Borges ...
The Rolling Stones: Redlands: The Drug Bust of The Rolling Stones
Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, May 1999
Friday 11th February 1967. Keith Richard has just invited you down to Redlands, his fourteenth-century manor house in Sussex, for the weekend. Mick and Marianne ...
Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, August 1999
Woodstock. August 15, 16, 17, 1969. Three days of peace, love and music. For the past thirty years, it has been touted as a new ...
Charles Manson, Dennis Wilson: Into the Heart of Darkness with Dennis Wilson
Retrospective by David Dalton, MOJO, September 1999
(If Christ Came Back as a Con Man, Or How I Started Out Thinking Charlie Manson Was Innocent and Almost Ended Up Dead...) ...
The Rolling Stones: Altamont: An Eyewitness Account
Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, November 1999
The Rosy Apocalypse ALTAMONT, 6th December, 1969. The name itself is fraught with menace – its flinty suggestive syllables (altar-mountain-tumult) reinforcing biblical overtones. ("The ...
The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson: Brian Wilson: "Help Me, Rhonda," Indeed!
Essay by David Dalton, Gadfly, 2000
HEY, ALL you surfin’ dudes and hardbody wahinis, check out this thing on TNT. It’s a tribute to the surf god, Brian Wilson! ...
Bonnie Bramlett, Janis Joplin: Janis Joplin: Soul Sacrifice
Retrospective and Interview by David Dalton, MOJO, June 2000
She was no victim, but gave herself up to her music – and kept on giving. David Dalton hitches a ride with Janis Joplin, entertainer, ...
Lester Bangs: Rock 'n' Roll was the Big Bang
Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, July 2000
FOR A LONG time, its shockwaves obliterated thought altogether. That was the great thing about it: it was anti-matter, it vaporized everything that wasn’t immediate, ...
Bob Dylan: Something Was Happening, But I Didn’t Know What It Was
Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, September 2000
IN THE SPRING of 1970, I saw Les Blank’s lush, lyrical intimate documentaries about the blues singers Lightnin’ Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb. They’re amazing films ...
The Last Poets: Progenitors of Rap
Retrospective and Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, September 2000
Perhaps it was the Vietnam War dragging on, nightly television footage of bombed villages, body bags and helicopters dropping flaming glue on Vietnamese farmers or ...
Special Feature by David Dalton, Gadfly, 12 October 2000
INTERIOR DAY: A SMALL CUBICLE AT THE OBSOLETE ROCK 'N' ROLL WRITERS' RESIDENCY ...
Down From the Mountain: Invasion of the Autoharp Damsels and Flat-Pickin' Boys
Report and Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, 2001
OPENING SHOT: SOMEWHERE IN the mid-West. Through windscreen we see two-lane black top. Flat, farmland stretches out to the horizon. We pull back to see ...
Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, 2001
AFTER A six-year break the outrageous Britcom Absolutely Fabulous is back with a new six-part series. The "Donkey" episode airing on the Comedy Channel on ...
Paul McCartney, Wings: On the Wings of a Beatle
Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, 2001
"DADDY, tell us how it all began, how the walls of Pepperland crumbled, how the Blue Meanies with their lawyers and chartered accounts came and ...
Jack Nitzsche, The Rolling Stones: Tuning the Key of the Universe: Jack Nitzsche Remembered
Profile and Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, 2001
Jack Nitzsche, who died last August at the age of 63, was a seminal but shadowy figure in rock ’n’ roll since the early '60s. ...
Eminem: It's Rock 'N' Roll, Stupid!
Comment by David Dalton, Gadfly, 22 February 2001
I KNOW NOW I really have turned into my parents. Did I really spend three hours watching this dopey, homogenized, pre-packaged pap? Dear Lord, I ...
Comment by David Dalton, Gadfly, 22 March 2001
NOW WHAT did I do with my invitation? Not that I had any intention of attending (on moral grounds, mind you). The $25,000 a table ...
The Ramones: Joey Ramone, 1951-2001
Obituary by David Dalton, Gadfly, 19 April 2001
LAST SUNDAY Joey Ramone, lead singer of the Ramones, died of lymphoma, and so passed one of the originators of punk, the longest running fuck-you ...
The Beatles, Paul McCartney: Once Upon A Beatle
Comment by David Dalton, Gadfly, 14 May 2001
"DADDY, TELL US how it all began, how the walls of Pepperland crumbled, how the Blue Meanies with their lawyers and chartered accounts came and ...
The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson: Brian Wilson: 'Help Me, Rhonda' indeed!
Comment by David Dalton, Gadfly, 9 July 2001
HEY, ALL YOU surfin' dudes and hardbody wahinis, check out this thing on TNT. It's a tribute to the surf god, Brian Wilson! An American ...
Charley Patton: Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues (Revenant)
Review by David Dalton, MOJO, December 2001
HIS PEERS weren’t exactly trying to flatter him when they called him a rascal, a drunkard, a clown, a squabbler, a glutton, and hustler of ...
The Rolling Stones: Stephen Davis' Old Gods Almost Dead
Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, December 2001
David Dalton Talks to Stephen Davis, Author of the First Full-Dress Biography of the Rolling Stones in Twenty Years ...
Emmett Miller: Nick Tosches: Where Dead Voices Gather
Book Review by David Dalton, Gadfly, 10 December 2001
MINSTRELSY (1843-1928): the mere mention of the word is politically incorrect. You know, white performers blackening their faces with burnt cork and performing skits and ...
The Beatles: The Day the Angels Spent Christmas with the Beatles
Memoir by David Dalton, Gadfly, 12 December 2001
WELL, NO, IT'S NOT that kind of story, exactly, although given the fairytale element in the legend of the Fab Four you might, circa 1964, ...
Nico and The Marble Index: A Conversation with Danny Fields
Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, 2002
WHEN THE MARBLE Index appeared in 1969 it seemed unplaceable, flying out of some timeless place, as if we were hearing from a possessed medieval ...
Richard Hell: What Fresh Hell Is This?
Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, 2002
RICHARD HELL was the primal Punk, the ur-Punk: the spiky-haired one. The torn t-shirts, the safety pins, the era-defining ‘Blank Generation’–much of the ...
Being My Almost Absolutely True Adventures with Stanley Booth
Essay by David Dalton, Rock's Backpages, January 2002
The South, sir, is no more than the Creation viewed by a crocodile.– Rev. Sydney Smith I ADMIT I don't know what ...
George Harrison: My Walk-On in the Life of George
Memoir by David Dalton, Gadfly, 12 March 2002
"FIRST OF ALL," my friend Richard said, "he was a Beatle, how could he die?" They were immortal, weren't they? Gods, even if flawed. A ...
Marianne Faithfull: The Curse of the Multiplying Mariannes
Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, 18 March 2002
PART 1: THE SCATTERED SELVES Gadfly: I wanted to start by asking you to describe the various Mariannes who have manifested themselves over the years. ...
New Order: 24 Hour Party People: Faç Or Fiction?
Film/DVD/TV Review by David Dalton, Uncut, May 2002
Directed by Michael Winterbottom; Starring Steve Coogan, Paddy Considine, Sean Harris, John Simm Opens April 5, Cert 15, 110 mins**** ...
The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson: Epiphany At Zuma Beach Or Brian Wilson Hallucinates Me
Memoir by David Dalton, Gadfly, May 2002
AFTER PET SOUNDS Brian Wilson became the mad genius of the Beach Boys, a prodigy who had miraculously emerged out of the surf and car ...
Ozzy Osbourne: "Martha Stewart Can Lick My Scrotum!" Life chez the Osbournes
Review by David Dalton, Gadfly, 17 May 2002
A COUPLE OF years ago, my wife Coco and I did a few shows in which we played Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen if had ...
Interview by David Dalton, AnOther Magazine, Fall 2002
LATE AFTERNOON, hotel room in L.A. I’ve just downloaded four tracks from Beck’s new album. A song is playing. ‘The Golden Age’. "Desert wind cool ...
Retrospective by David Dalton, MOJO, March 2004
When innocent English teens David and Sarah Dalton met Andy Warhol in 1961 their eyes were opened to a whole new world of pop culture ...
The Sex Pistols, Sid Vicious: Sid Vicious: A Star Is Born!
Retrospective by David Dalton, MOJO, February 2005
When Sid Vicious joined the Sex Pistols in 1977 it was the end of the band and the beginning of his metamorphosis into mythic rock ...
Nuggets: Psych Rock's Pimply Origins
Retrospective by David Dalton, Classic Rock, 4 September 2015
LOST TEEN civilisation uncovered! Garage band rock and its mutant spawn, psych rock, a pimply, snotty, inspired, glue-sniffing teen culture that flourished in the last ...
Jimi Hendrix: Hendrix: The Gigs That Changed History
Retrospective by David Dalton, Classic Rock, 30 October 2015
AUGUST 18, 1969. Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, the supreme moment in the history of rock – if not of the cosmos. But, wait a moment, ...
Bob Dylan: How Bob Dylan And The Holy Trinity Changed Music Forever
Retrospective by David Dalton, Classic Rock, January 2016
BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde are the highwater mark of '60s rock, and with the quasi-religious reverence due ...
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