Seth Rogovoy, a contributing editor at the Forward, is the author of Bob Dylan: Prophet Mystic Poet (Scribner) and Within You Without You: Listening to George Harrison (Oxford University Press).
Seth Rogovoy
By Seth Rogovoy
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Culture The Secret Jewish History of The J. Geils Band
Guitarist John “Jay” Geils Jr., a jazz-minded musician who formed a blues trio in college that would evolve into the hit-making rock group the J. Geils Band, died on Tuesday at age 71 at home in Groton, Mass. The group was formed in Boston in 1969, and remained a regional powerhouse until it hit big…
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Culture Was Lou Reed A Lot More Jewish Than We Thought He Was?
Lou Reed’s archives are headed to the New York Public Library, courtesy of Reed’s widow, performance artist Laurie Anderson. There are already two display cases of items on view in the lobby of the library’s main branch at 42nd Street, where Reed scholars or the merely curious can read the handwritten lyrics to the song,…
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Culture Remembering Chuck Berry And How Jewish Record Men Helped Him Invent Rock Music
Editor’s Note: Chuck Berry died on March 18, at the age of 90. In the fall of 2016, in honor of Berry’s 90th birthday, Seth Rogovoy wrote this article paying tribute to Berry and the role that Jewish record men had in his rise to glory. More than any other singular individual – including Elvis…
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Culture The Secret Jewish History of Bon Jovi
Coming off a banner year in which the 34-year-old pop-metal band released its sixth No. 1 album, Bon Jovi is ready to rock its way through 2017, kicking off a major tour of U.S. arenas in Greenville, South Carolina, on February 8, with shows scheduled well into April. Why, at the age of 55, does…
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Culture The Secret Jewish History of McDonald’s
There’s more than meets the eye in the title of “The Founder,” the new biopic of Ray Kroc. For while Kroc carefully cultivated his image as “the founder” of McDonald’s, two brothers named McDonald invented their namesake restaurant chain. By the time Kroc — a traveling salesman played by Michael Keaton in the film —…
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Culture Was David Bowie’s Last Work About Bob Dylan and a Jewish Poet?
According to an essay written by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and screenwriter Michael Cunningham (“The Hours”), the David Bowie musical “Lazarus” was initially conceived as a show about the great Jewish-American poet, Emma Lazarus, who is best known for her sonnet, “The New Colossus,” whose lines appear inscribed on a bronze plaque in the pedestal of…
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Culture What I Learned From a ‘Stiff-Necked Jewish Atheist’ Like Nat Hentoff
Reading Nat Hentoff in the 1970s in the Village Voice and elsewhere, as I did, helped clue me into an essential truth: that a writer needn’t specialize in one area to the exclusion of all else. In Hentoff’s case – which was particularly inspiring to me as a budding music critic who was also obsessed…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think Dylan at Tanglewood
Going into Bob Dylan’s concert at Tanglewood on July 2, 2016, I was prepared to hate it, having absolutely no interest in hearing him sing Frank Sinatra songs live (or on record, for that matter). Leave it to Dylan, then, to perform a scorching two-hour show. He alternated some of his moodiest, angriest, late-period rockers…
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