Guided by blind and unabashed adoration

That author Jim Greer was actually at one time a member of the band Guided by Voices should come as no surprise whatsoever. A one time rock journalist (Greer spent time writing for Spin magazine in its burgeoning days) and indie rock mega-fan Greer found himself living out every slumming rockwrites ultimate fantasy – becoming a functioning player (Greer played bass guitar) in a seminal cult-band which he’d always adored. Which itself is an utterly compelling story. But it isn’t the one Greer documents in Guided by Voices: A Brief History: Twenty-One Years of Hunting Accidents in the Forests of Rock and Roll.

What Greer delivers instead is unabashed veneration of Robert Pollard’s mid-life rock and roll dream come true. As he wades through the somewhat messy history of Dayton, Ohio’s Guided by Voices with his beating heart pinned cleanly to his sleeve Greer spares no enthusiasm, even though he himself once played bass in the band. He is first and foremost a fan – and he always will be. And he takes his role as GBV’s loudest and most doting cheerleader serious enough to pen a detailed tome that delivers very little of interest to anyone but fellow fans of Pollard and his long list of GBV cohorts (a list that includes Cleveland’s Doug Gillard, John Petkovic, and rest of the band Cobra Verde’s work on what was ultimately GBV’s finest moment, 1997’s Mag Earwhig).

But such is often the state of affairs for rock-bio’s, they tend to be indulgent affairs by very nature and rarely spare any effort admiring the subject matter. And Greer’s effort is, unfortunately, no different.

Yet Greer’s hero-worship can be infectious. Pollard and the amazing array of characters that have inhabited the rather disheveled and uncertain history of Guided by Voices make for, at the very least, an entertaining and beer-soaked romp (Pollard’s consumptions of the grand ol’ malted beverage is legendary to say the least) and Greer is an astute and talented music journalist. His labor of love winds through an extraordinary amount of detail but never gets too tedious or dull. And because of Greer’s affiliation with Pollard and GBV, his writing offers more insight and seems to have a greater understanding of Pollard’s muse.

But in the end it is Pollard himself who best spins the Guided by Voices tale. He quite obviously has a good relationship with Greer and his openness and frank assessments of his talents and place in pop music’s often fleeting history are refreshing. And it is only within the comforts of familiarity with Greer that this type of definitive portrait of Pollard can be painted. When told that Pete Townshend (one of Pollard’s absolute idols) of The Who – a band to whom GBV was often compared, said of GBV, "I listened to them and to be honest I couldn’t really connect. Obviously the connection is there for others but not for me" Pollard best summed up everything his musical quest has always been about with this retort:

"That’s good," he shoots back without hesitation. "It means that we’re obviously not overly-influenced by The Who. If he can’t tell, then we must be doing something right"

He adds, Greer writes, "I haven’t been able to connect with much of his music lately either. Like for twenty-five years."

Then, as Greer records it, Pollard states his ultimate peace, his "manifesto", a defining moment of thought and conflict: "People like Pete Townshend, or Keith Richards, or whoever, have become so high and mighty, like they’re gods. They don’t listen to anything but their own shit. I’m almost becoming one of them. But not quite. I still dig. I still go down and smell around."

In the end this is Robert Pollard, and this is the Guided by Voices story – the story of a band that was debatably brilliant but undoubtedly "not quite". And it’s a story, while hardly universally appealing, worthy of the top-flight journalism Jim Greer gives it.

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