Carlin, Peter Ames

Though never pinpointing the reasons for the explosive, major-label success of a rebellious band, which ostensibly distrusted corporate rock, Carlin assembles a solid, much-needed narrative of one of the major alternative rock bands that both complements and updates David Buckley’s 2002 R.E.M. Fiction: An Alternative Biography.

Carlin’s spring-loaded narrative keeps the reader involved, and characterizing the empathetic side of some of the outsize personalities humanizes the Warner mythos. Record label books abound, but there has been little available about Warner itself or its sister companies since Warren Zanes’s Revolutions in Sound; Carlin’s title admirably fills that gap.