Talk:Stephen Davis (music journalist)

Untitled

Hello, I'm going to add some cited information about the author
which was printed on the last page of one of his books.
I'm not making any changes to existing information.
I hope you will agree that this addition is worthwhile.

Stephen Davis was born in New York City and began his career writing for the Old Cambridge Phoenix in 1970
His journalism has appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Times, the Boston Globe
and numerous other papers and magazines.

- Rockthing 19:59, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Third paragraph issues

I put in a request to WP:REREQ a couple of weeks ago, asking for a copy of the December 1009 Q Magazine article that was in use in the article. I received that a short while ago, and after reading through it I don't think it adequately supports the breadth of what we're asserting in the third paragraph.

The only content from the Q Magazine piece that is of relevance here is Stephen Davis's book Hammer Of The Gods – a catalogue of error and distortion according to its three surviving subjects – details all manner of on-the-road malarkey as alleged by their somewhat discredited former tour manager Richard Cole. Again, in the opinion of John Paul Jones, the excessive behaviour ascribed to Led Zeppelin is very much the consequence of being the most popular yet most mysterious of bands, and therefore assumed to have the most to hide – with our old friend rumour filling in the gaps..

While that would certainly support a sentence that members of Led Zeppelin have alleged that Hammer of the Gods has inaccuracies, it would in no way support the remainder of what is in the third paragraph; that his biographies often contain incorrect facts and fabricated versions of the truth, that other subjects have come out about book inaccuracies, and that some musicians refuse to communicate with Davis. As such, I've removed the paragraph for now per WP:BLP and WP:V. I've no objections in principle to the same or similar paragraph being added, if adequate sourcing can be found. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:37, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Pinging @Horse Eye's Back:, as you also removed content recently from this article, for your thoughts. And to note that depending on what sourcing we do find, this might altar what we had been Talk:Lori Mattix with regards to sourcing on that article. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:38, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Agreed that the wording here goes beyond the source but Hammer Of The Gods is never going to be a high quality source no matter which way you push or prod it. When Mattix is dead absolutely, but absolutely not for a living person. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:52, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Would you mind having a look at the sourcing for Hammer of the Gods (book) itself? We don't appear to have any positive reception whatsoever and that doesn't seem right, someone must have thought it wasn't trash. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:54, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

The contemporary reviews from when the book was released are going to be primarily offline, and many may not be digitised. I'll try to take a look, but it's going to take a while to figure out where those were published, let alone access copies of em. Sideswipe9th (talk) 22:59, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

It looks like a Led Zeppelin fan stacked the deck on us, we have a bunch of cherrypicked quotes about how people didn't like it. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:08, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

That's entirely possible. I suspect something similar might have happened here, as while I can definitely confirm Zeppelin's displeasure over the book, I can't seem to find evidence that many other bands or musicians have contested the factual content of their respective biographies. I've not been able to do a fully exhaustive search yet though, and some of these books are pretty old so criticism of them may not be digitised. Sideswipe9th (talk) 00:14, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

There are more problems with the book than contested facts, there's also the problem that its not really a secondary source at all as its semi-autobiographical. As the review we have says "The rest of the book, a very slim volume, is pointless - it's far more about Davis than the band. And Davis is not interesting." Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:37, 4 October 2023 (UTC)