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The Life and Mystery of Dean Reed, the All-American Boy Who Brought Rock 'N' Roll to the Soviet Union
Walker & Company
June 2006
352 pages ISBN: 0802715559 Trade Size
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Non-Fiction Biography
Dean Reed had one of the strangest careers in the history of
popular culture. Failing to gain recognition for his music
in his native United States, he achieved celebrity in South
America in the early 1960s and then, unbelievably, became
the biggest rock star in the Soviet Union, where he was
awarded the Lenin Prize and his icons were sold alongside
those of Josef Stalin. His albums went gold from Bulgaria to
Berlin. He made highly successful movies and, naively
earnest, was an unwitting acolyte for socialism; everywhere
he went, he was mobbed by his fans. And then, in 1986, at
the height of his fame, right after 60 Minutes had devoted a
segment to him, finally giving him the recognition he had
never attained at home, he drowned in mysterious
circumstances in East Berlin. Drawn magnetically to his story, Reggie Nadelson pursued the
mystery of Dean Reed's life and death across America and
Eastern Europe, her own journey mirroring his. As she
traveled, the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union
crumbled, and Reed became an increasingly alluring figure,
his life an unrepeatable tale of the Cold War world.
Encountering the characters--musicians and DJs, politicians
and public figures, lovers and wives--who peopled Reed's
life, Nadelson was drawn further and further into a seedy,
often hilarious subculture of sex, politics, and rock 'n'
roll. Part biography, part memoir and personal journey,
Comrade Rockstar is an unforgettable chronicle of an utterly
improbable life.
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