VIA PRESS RELEASE | On September 27th, Trouser Press Books will publish Time Has Come Today: Rock and Roll Diaries 1967–2007 by Harold Bronson.
People who are born into a life of rock and roll either make music, collect it, write about it, sell it, or get into the record business. Harold Bronson has done all of those things. In Time Has Come Today: Rock and Roll Diaries 1967–2007, he recounts the fascinating adventure of his musical life.
Before he co-founded Rhino Records—America’s leading reissue label—and put decades of rock and roll history back into musical circulation, Bronson was just another devoted fan growing up in Southern California in the 1960s. But with boundless enthusiasm, a discerning ear, and a near-photographic memory, he channeled his passion into writing for the UCLA Daily Bruin and then Rolling Stone and other magazines.
After meeting and interviewing many of the era’s greats, he launched the Rhino label from the back room of the Los Angeles record store he managed. And in doing so he took on a new role, working behind the scenes with many of those same artists—in studios, offices, concert halls, and restaurants—to bring their old, and sometimes new, music to the public.
Completing a trilogy of books that began with The Rhino Records Story (2013) and continued with My British Invasion (2017), Time Has Come Today is a 40-year memoir in diary form that documents Bronson’s progress from student musician and journalist to label executive, where his fandom, wit, and creative imagination augmented and altered the course of many great careers.
Time Has Come Today contains concert accounts, historical events, and meetings with many noted hitmakers with fascinating details that have never before been made public. This unique, behind-the-scenes document is packed with dates and details and loaded with many of the boldface names that Bronson worked with:
∙ Lunches with Peter Noone, Terri Nunn, Wally Amos, Henny Youngman, Andrew Loog Oldham
∙ A limo ride with all four Monkees
∙ In the studio with Black Sabbath and others
∙ Home visits with George Carlin, Howard Kaylan of the Turtles, Mike Nesmith, Stephen Bishop, and many more
∙ Posting bail for Arthur Lee of Love
∙ Parties with Gene Simmons, Alice Cooper, and many more
∙ Conversations with the Bee Gees, the Doors, the Knack, ELO, George Clinton, Mickie Most, Hunter S. Thompson, John Sebastian, Van Dyke Parks, Rod Argent, Bon Scott, Janis Ian, Edgar Winter, the Chambers Brothers, Suzi Quatro, David Essex, Sha Na Na, Mike Chapman, Nicky Hopkins, Badfinger, Rodney Bingenheimer, John Kay of Steppenwolf, Sean Bonniwell of the Music Machine, Michael Brown of the Left Banke and members of Iron Butterfly, Procol Harum, and Focus
∙ Business meetings with Ben & Jerry, the editors of Mad magazine, and Randy California of Spirit
∙ A wild in-store appearance by Kim Fowley
