Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - August - 2008 Issue
More Film and Literature from James Pepper Rare Books
Salvadore Dali's Persistence of Memory.
Item 122 is a rock and roll memoir of a singer who managed to survive the kind of behaviors that took down many of her contemporaries in their youth. It is Somebody to Love? A Rock and Roll Memoir, by Grace Slick. Slick was the lead singer for the pioneering psychedelic band Jefferson Airplane. Her biography includes musical stardom with several bands, uncontrolled alcohol and drug abuse, numerous arrests for actions committed under the influence, and varied affairs with members of her bands and others. She essentially retired from the music business in the 1990s, noting (quite incisively) that rock and rollers over the age of 50 look stupid. She now focuses on her other art form - painting. This copy of her 1998 biography has been signed by Ms. Slick. $225.
Item 81 is not a book, but a classic piece of film ephemera. It is a derby hat worn by Stan Laurel while making films at 20th Century Fox during the 1940s. On the inner rim the name "Stan Laurel" has been written and the inside hatband is monogrammed "AJS" (Laurel's actual name was Arthur Stanley Jefferson). Laurel and his partner Oliver Hardy were noted for wearing these hats during their numerous comedic appearances and films. The hat comes with copies of a couple of books about Laurel and Hardy and three photographs of the performers, hat on head. $75,000.
James Pepper Rare Books may be reached at 805-963-1025 or pepbooks@aol.com. You may visit them on the web at www.JamesPepperBooks.com.
