ROSEN: Why did you choose these seven musicians? 

Didn’t Brian Jones and Keith Moon cry out from beyond the grave to be included?

COMFORT: The pressure and surreality of superfame can fuel destructive impulses. I chose these seven because they were cultural icons. Living legends. Jones and Moon were not. Though famous, Jones drowned before full creative and popular maturity; and Moon, though a maniacal drummer, was little more than a colorful lunatic.

As for the Seven: What is it about a being a “living legend” which can become so alienating, so isolating, so toxic? The question is especially timely in light of today’s American Idol you’re-nobody-if-you’re not-a-star culture.

ROSEN: You’ve said that you spent 10 years on and off researching this book. 

Can you tell us a bit about your research methods? 

COMFORT: Omnivorous. I devoured everything out there – rock biographies, anthologies, mag articles, interviews, web resources. You name it.

I soon discovered that, generally, the more recent the source, the less new information. In spite of “bold new revelations!” jacket claims, most recent bios are retreads and repackagings. The reason is simple: since most of the stars have been dead for decades, virtually all important facts had already been mined.

So I didn’t try to track down Elvis’s long lost third-cousin, hoping to score some nugget about the King’s preschool years in Tupelo; I didn’t interview anybody on the 1960 Port Arthur football team to find out if Janis really did take them all on under the bleachers; etc. etc. 

This is best left to more conscientious biographers of the future. 

Wanting above all to write something substantially new and illuminating about these stars, I felt my time would be better spent collecting and analyzing the countless established facts – many unexplainably overlooked diamonds in the rough -- and presenting them from a completely unique and comparative perspective. 

ROSEN: Who did you speak to? 

Is there anybody who refused to speak to you?

COMFORT: I contacted certain biographers in hope of clarifications and further detail. Some were cooperative. Others, the pop Swiss Guard, were not. 

In a profession as supposedly uninhibited and permissive as rock and roll, I was surprised to find spin-controllers and image airbrushers rivaling those of Washington insiders. 

The seven stars were worshipped as near gods. So they became mainstays of the Rock Vatican. Many insider biographers (family, friends, band members, handlers, etc.), are jealously protective of their legacy. They excommunicate anybody they sense to be a heretic. 

Here are three examples of a heretic, an enemy of dogma:

-In the Church of Elvis: anybody who believes, or even considers the possibility, that the King committed suicide.

-In the Church of John: anybody who says that Lennon could sometimes be the exact opposite of what he professed to be: an all-you-need-is-love, imagine-no-possessions, workingclass-hero, peacenik guru. 

-In the Temple of Jerry: anybody who concludes that Garcia could sometimes be the opposite of the incarnated Buddha.