When We Get to Surf City: A Journey Through America in Pursuit of Rock and Roll, Friendship, and Dreams | 
 enlarge | Author: Bob Greene
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy Used: $9.40
You Save: $15.55 (62%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 45864
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7 x 5.5 x 1.1
ISBN: 0312375298
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.92092
EAN: 9780312375294
ASIN: 0312375298
Publication Date: May 13, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In a dazzling and exhilarating display of narrative on-the-road reporting, award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Bob Greene takes readers on an unforgettable American journey of music, memories, and universal longing.
Running away to join the circus is a dream we’re told to put away once we’re no longer young. But, as Bob Greene writes, “just when in our lives we give up on capturing the freedom and bright mornings of our world when it was new, sometimes something happens to keep the sun high in the sky a while longer. Sometimes we find something we weren’t even aware we were looking for."
For fifteen years beginning in the 1990s, Greene stepped into a universe that, out in the country every summer night, is hiding in plain sight: the touring world of the great early rock bands who gave America the car-radio and jukebox music it still loves best. Singing backup with the legendary Jan and Dean as they endlessly crisscross the nation, Greene takes us to football stadiums and minor-league ballparks, to no-name ice cream stands and midnight diners, to back roads and carnival midways as he tells a riveting story of great fame and lingering sorrow, of unexpected friendship and lasting dreams, of the things that keep us going in the face of all the things that threaten to stop us.
Striking chords of recognition and yearning, When We Get to Surf City glistens with cameos by the men and women with whom Greene traveled the United States on his deliriously unlikely journey, including Chuck Berry, Martha and the Vandellas, the Everly Brothers, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Beach Boys, the Monkees, the Kingsmen, James Brown, Lesley Gore, the Drifters, Little Eva, and the Coasters.
All of them—not just the people on the stage, but the people in the audiences, too—are seeking their private versions of the mythical destination Jan and Dean came up with all those years ago: Surf City as the perfect, cloudless place we all believe is out there, if only we can find it.
Hilarious and heartbreaking, moving and brilliant, this is the trip of a lifetime, a travelogue of the heart, accompanied by a thundering guitar chorus of Fender Stratocasters. It is a story destined to touch readers not just today, but for generations to come, as long as the music itself echoes.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
One of the best November 18, 2008
Bob Greene completly nails the journey we all make from teenagers to middle-agers and and what changes and wondefully, what remains the same. I bought "When I get to Surf City" because I am a Jan and Dean fan . The book however, moves quickly past J & D to us, to me, the aging baby boomers and how the search for companionship, acceptance and reverie develop in a satifying way for us if we are willing to go back, reconnect and have fun.
He also shows America morphing from State Fairs to Casinos.
I am buying it for all my friends, most of whom could care less about Jan and Dean in the hope that we all get to Surf City.
Perfect gift book for anybody you knew who grew up in the 60s November 4, 2008
I got to relive many of my teenage years by reading Bob
Greene's WHEN WE GET TO SURF CITY, a moving account of his many years as a member of the backup band for Jan and Dean . . . it was also
fun to read and left me yearning for the likes of such entertainers
as Chuck Berry, Martha and the Vandellas, the Everly Brothers,
Jerry Lee Lewis, the Beach Boys, the Monkees, the Kingsmen,
James Brown, Lesley Gore, the Drifters, Little Eva, and the
Coasters--all of whom make cameo appearances in the book.
Greene, long one of my favorite authors for such books as
HANG TIME and BE TRUE TO YOUR SCHOOL, continues
to impress me with how he presents glimpses of America
such as in the following account:
* It was one of those concerts you don't want ever to end--the Oklahoma
heat had us drenched by the second song, the sound system was
booming, the people at the water park swarmed to the concert area
like bugs at a picnic to spilled jam, still in their bathing suits and
dripping as they danced the evening away.
He also hit what it must be like to tour the country, playing
in a rock band:
* But on the day of a concert, as opposed to a day devoted
to travel--this was what delighted me, the economy of the phrasing,
and all that was conveyed in three words--there was this notation:
It was utterly factual-that was the agenda for show day: Today, we play.
How many adults are so lucky? How many adults, getting up in the
morning to go to work, would you do just about anything to be the
recipient of a message like that, written or unwritten?
TODAY WE: Play
It was the essence of all this-the magical lure. And, on show days, I never
tired of looking at the itinerary and seeing, once again, what was planned for us.
Only one thing-only one thing of importance.
Today?
Today, we play.
Lastly, I liked how Greene caught the essence of what it must
be like to go from city to city in the search for the perfect
culinary delight:
* Ted Drewes's [in St. Louis] proved to be every bit as good as
[Bob] Costas promised; the stand offered shakes, malts and
sundaes, but the specialty was something called a Concrete.
It got its name from the thickness of the mix; it was a concoction
made of frozen custard and other ingredients, and its defining
characteristic was this: it was handed to you in a paper cup, and
you could turn the cup upside down and hold it over the ground and the
dessert would not fall out. It was just that firm--like concrete.
WHEN WE GET TO SURF CITY is the perfect gift book for
anybody you know who grew up in the 1960s . . . rock and roll fans
from any era will like it too.
Warm summer nights and great rock and roll October 26, 2008
"When We Get To Surf City" is Bob Greene's story of his multi-year odyssey as a member of Jan and Dean's touring band. Greene is a long-time columnist for the Chicago Tribune and Esquire, as well as the author of several previous books. The opportunity to play with Jan and Dean came about as a one-time event, but the surf rockers saw how much fun he was having, and invited him back. Soon Greene was flying across the country to join the band whenever he could, a gig that stretched on for many magical summers.
Jan and Dean were pop music stars of the early 60s, and topped the charts in 1963 with the hit that provides the title for this book. The Jan and Dean story appeared to come to an abrupt end in 1966 when Jan Berry, who also produced their albums and wrote many of their hits, was involved in a near-fatal auto accident. He spent years battling back from those injuries, and well over a decade after the accident, began touring with Dean Torrence again.
Greene is a marvelous storyteller, and the most poignant moments of the book unfold as he portrays Jan's heroic struggles to get through each day. Fans of a certain age will remember the made-for-TV movie, "Deadman's Curve," which told the story of the first phase of Jan's comeback. But even those who remember that film will find themselves moved by the degree of struggle Jan Berry faced every day for the last 38 years of his life. Greene observes Jan before shows and wonders why he is listening intently to and singing along with recordings of the hits he wrote decades earlier. It turns out he has to re-learn the lyrics every single time due to the lasting brain damage he suffered in the accident.
Greene's gift is to interweave the nostalgia for innocence and youth with the realities of the present day. He does a wonderful job of evoking the beauty of a warm summer night, with music and laughter in the air and that mythical place called Surf City just around the next curve in the road.
As a long-time fan of Bob Greene's books, and of Jan and Dean, I couldn't pass this one up, and once I started it, I couldn't put it down.--William C. Hall
Searching July 26, 2008
Since I grew up in Southern California I thought I knew where surf City was...at the beaches I used to hang out at where the music was always going and the summers were endless. However, after reading Bob's book, I now realize it is more a state of mind where everything feels right!
Bob Greene has captured the essence of that search for Surf City...those of us who listened to Jan & Dean and many others of that era growing up will love this book. Like Bob, we are all in seach of that mythical place called Surf City and the endless summer...Bob found it while on tour with Jan & Dean and I found it in his book!
 More...and less July 13, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Greene's newest is fun if you are from that era of music. I wish it had more about the encounters of other musicians, and less of his musings. Since he toured with Alice Cooper and wrote a book about that, it would have been fun to hear some kind of comparison of those experiences.
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