New Steve Goodman biography

If you're a Steve Goodman fan, you might want to check out "Steve Goodman: Facing the Music," a new biography by Clay Eals, published by ECW Press. Eals is a Seattle based writer who labored over 8 years to produce this 800 page tome.

It's a big book (about the size of a Manhattan phone book) about a little guy. As my wife said, "He was a great musician, but he wasn't Abraham Lincoln!" But it was clearly a labor of love for Eals, who interviewed over 1,000 people for the book, including Arlo Guthrie, Steve Martin, John Prine, Emmylou Harris, Bonnie Raitt, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, who, it turns out, was a high school classmate of Steve's (who knew?), though not including Steve's widow Nancy. He even interviewed Vin Scelsa and me. There's a classic photo of Vin with Steve and David Amram from 1978, and as part of a bonus CD of tribute songs that comes with the book, there's a six minute excerpt of an interview I did with Steve back in 1975 in Chicago.

It'll probably tell you more than you ever need to know about "City of New Orleans," the classic song he told me took about 35 minutes to write. But the subtext for Eals is that Steve quietly battled leukemia for 15 years before his death in 1984, while being an indefatigable entertainer. Steve shamelessly loved music and people and life, and I'm happy to say that comes through. It may take me 15 years to finish the book, but I'm glad to know someone took the time to capture his spirit.

John Platt