ALL GATES OPEN. THE STORY OF CAN by Rob Young (Faber & Faber, 2018)
This is a long overdue, but slightly disappointing, study of the career and legacy of a remarkable and unique Krautrock band.
Author Rob Young’s approach is workmanlike although perhaps a little too much in awe of his subject matter. That said, he is well qualified for the task of writing the band’s biography since as he has written articles and conducted interviews over the years, mostly for The Wire magazine.
Gaining access to the inner sanctum of Can’s rehearsal /recording spaces gave him some insights into how their sound was created but despite his thorough research and analysis, the band remain wonderfully enigmatic. Continue reading
It’s fair to say Glam Rock has never really been taken all that seriously. Being casually dismissed as a joke genre is partly what drove Simon Reynolds to write this impressively weighty tome.
I was frustrated to miss the 
White Hills got a cameo spot in Jim Jarmusch’s Vampire flick ‘Only Lovers Left Alive’ and being a cult band in a cult movie is as close to superstardom as they are likely to get.
