NOBODY TOLD ME: From Basement Band to Jack and the John Lennon Sessions

While former music-industry executive and nightclub owner Geringer is an enthusiastic storyteller, his stories don't always merit much excitement. This counterculture memoir starts off with familiar tales of a misspent youth in Rockland County, N.Y., in the 1970s: cutting school, using lots of drugs and running afoul of the law before getting his life sorted out and becoming involved in the recording industry. Geringer attempts to inject vigor into his tales with frequent exclamation points, but this doesn't quite make up for the workman-like style or for the memoir's disingenuous central conceit: Geringer depicts himself as a showbiz insider, but his connections to the famous names he tosses around are tenuous at best. While the book gets its title from a John Lennon song and gives the former Beatle a shout-out in the subtitle, we learn that Geringer never met Lennon—though that doesn't prevent him from repeatedly taking potshots at Yoko Ono. Geringer spends much of the book building up his tenure under producer Jack Douglas, who worked with Lennon, Aerosmith and other classic rockers. But when readers meet the self-centered, self-destructive mentor, no amount of exclamation points can make him intriguing. Geringer's best yarns involve the no-name musicians he jammed with over the years, not the big-name musicians he barely knew. (July)