LIZZY GOODMAN
ABOUT THE BOOK
Joining the ranks of the classics Please Kill Me, Our Band Could Be Your Life, and Cant Stop Wont Stop, an intriguing oral history of the post-9/11 decline of the old-guard music industry and rebirth of the New York rock scene, led by a group of iconoclastic rock bands.
In the second half of the twentieth-century New York was the source of new sounds, including the Greenwich Village folk scene, punk and new wave, and hip-hop. But as the end of the millennium neared, cutting-edge bands began emerging from Seattle, Austin, and London, pushing New York further from the epicenter. The behemoth music industry, too, found itself in free fall, under siege from technology. Then 9/11/2001 plunged the country into a state of uncertainty and warand a dozen New York City bands that had been honing their sound and style in relative obscurity suddenly became symbols of glamour for a young, web-savvy, forward-looking generation in need of an anthem.
Meet Me in the Bathroom charts the transformation of the New York music scene in the first decade of the 2000s, the bands behind itincluding The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem, Interpol, and Vampire Weekendand the cultural forces that shaped it, from the Internet to a booming real estate market that forced artists out of the Lower East Side to Williamsburg. Drawing on 200 original interviews with James Murphy, Julian Casablancas, Karen O, Ezra Koenig, and many others musicians, artists, journalists, bloggers, photographers, managers, music executives, groupies, models, movie stars, and DJs who lived through this explosive time, journalist Lizzy Goodman offers a fascinating portrait of a time and a place that gave birth to a new era in modern rock-and-roll.
CRITICAL PRAISE
Lizzy Goodman has produced an instant classic...All the Strokes, LCD Soundsystem, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Ryan Adams gossip youve ever wanted to know is right here in this epic, loving look at a very different New York City. Rolling Stone
[A] thrilling, hilarious, gossip-fueled account Pitchfork
Spectacular Playboy
The First Great History of New Yorks 21st Century Rock Scene...thoroughly entertaining
engrossing
Meet Me in the Bathroom is a wonderful reminder that the next big thing can be right around the corner. Spin
Meet Me in the Bathroom is an impressive document of the time . . . shes managed to extract admissions and reflections that are genuinely poignant . . . distilled into a tome that captures the messy, glorious chaos of New York.
VICE
[A] gossip-fueled, engaging oral history Publishers Weekly
I devoured Meet Me in the Bathroom . . .Thats what it feels like to read this oral history, as if youre in a bar or living room with all these people reminiscing and eavesdropping on all the juicy details. A perfect beach read, if there ever was one. Lenny Letter
As far as Im concerned this book is one of the truly great New York stories. Rob Sheffield, The Village Voice
Terrific Paste Magazine
Sharp, funny and dishy oral history...Goodman does a wonderful job of sketching out and filling in this singular time and place...It is a blast... Austin American-Statesman
In the page-turning tradition of Please Kill Me and I Want My MTV, Lizzy Goodmans new oral history, Meet Me in the Bathroom is a post-mortem of rocks last gasp...You dont read a book like this. You demolish it whole, like a bag of Funyuns. Las Vegas Weekly
