John Mendelssohn
Critic John Mendelssohn does his best to bear this prejudice out with a purposefully ridiculous scene at the start of his autobiography, I, Caramba, a combination book and CD just released by Rhino Records. His band Christopher Milk is being mobbed by fans on the way to play before a crowd of 17,000 in his hometown of LA. It’s a fantasy of course, though Christopher Milk did put out a couple of albums in 1971 and ’72. Both records bombed, and Mendelssohn went on to form other bands. Yet Mendelssohn isn’t known for playing music, he’s known for writing about it, becoming “if not the father of American rock criticism, at least its nephew,” according to the blurb on the front of I, Caramba.
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Beginning with an essay on the Doors–“whom I thought pretension made flesh”–for UCLA’s Daily Bruin, Mendelssohn went on to write about music for the Los Angeles Times. His infamous debut in Rolling Stone ripped into Led Zeppelin’s first album: “Fancying myself an expert on loneliness, a connoisseur of despair, I loathed them from the fadeout of the first track, during which [Robert] Plant snidely asserted, ‘I know what it’s like to be alone,’ so as to mock the notion of self-pity. There are some things I just can’t stand anyone being snide about.” Yet snideness would be Mendelssohn’s stock-in-trade as a critic, while loneliness and self-pity (not to mention regret) would become his most recurring lyrical concerns as a songwriter.
By the early 70s Mendelssohn had become a regular contributor to Rolling Stone, where he had a reputation as a “heartless destroyer of careers,” though his writing undoubtedly helped other bands, such as ELO and the now-forgotten Black Oak Arkansas. Hitting his peak as an influential critic, he seized the opportunity to at least act the part of a rock star, donning velvet suits and a Rod Stewart hairdo and becoming involved with a succession of leggy blonds. Then by the middle of the decade he gave up rock criticism entirely: “Jon Landau’s replacement as Rolling Stone’s review editor neglected to flatter me as extravagantly as I expected. Truth be told I had long ceased to regard rock criticism as much of a job for a man–or woman. Or child.” It’s not that he felt too old to rock and roll; he simply got tired of being critical. “I pretended to disdain people who liked the Wrong Artists, but in fact envied them. My life could have been a little fuller if I’d enjoyed Led Zeppelin as much as others claimed to.”
Today Mendelssohn has settled down. He’s spending more time with his young daughter, and is concerned with more practical matters like earning money. But aside from odd jobs writing liner notes, he doesn’t get published much anymore. I, Caramba includes a few rejection letters; one from TV Guide tells him to stop bothering them. Yet, through it all, he’s managed to hold on to his feelings of superiority (“every magazine is full of the bylines of writers I’m better than”). It’s not all bluster. He’s still recognized as a star in the field of rock journalism. Austin Chronicle critic (and former Sun-Times contributor) Michael Corcoran has written, “[The few rock critics] I prefer and aspire to be like are entertainers….They’re funny and irreverent wild men….This very small contingent includes the late, great Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer, Nick Tosches, and John Mendelssohn… all great writers who happen to write about music and, in doing so, create music through their words.”
