The Good, the Bad, the ‘Crime of the Century’ | Book Review

I just want to preface this review by saying I received a PDF copy of Crime of the Century (2024) by the author and these are strictly my thoughts and opinions.

Crime of the Century is a true crime / classic rock book written by music enthusiast Angie Moon. The author goes into gigantic details about how classic rock and true crime are connected to each other. I’m not the biggest true crime fan, but I’ve always been semi-fascinated with death and how people meet their demise. Not that I’m brave enough to watch gruesome deaths on movies and TV shows, but I love reading about them.

Leatherface, from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), killed his victims, and stripped them of their skin and bones. Christopher McCandless’ death is a whole different thing and there’s no accurate answer for how he died. Author Jon Krakauer, who wrote Into the Wild (1996) based on McCandless’ life and travels, came up with two possible conclusions: protein poisoning or eating poisonous seeds. Whether he was poisoned, ate too much meat, or starved to death, we’ll never know. There are many different ways to die, it’s insane!

Is Crime of the Century worth it? Well, there are two sides to the story. As for the positives, I enjoyed reading about the criminals and their backgrounds. Some of them had happy childhoods, some of them had terrible childhoods, and others wanted to be musicians. I graduated with a minor in psychology, so I love reading about people’s minds and why they behave the way they do. Music producer Phil Spector, for example, was self-conscious about his looks and didn’t feel like he was good enough. So, he’d act out violently and threaten the musicians and colleagues he associated with. His second wife, Ronnie Spector, was terrified of him because he was controlling and watched her every move, including financial moves. 

Singer/songwriter Jim Gordon suffered from schizophrenia and the dark side of fame. He got mixed with the wrong people and took drugs such as pot and LSD, which do not sit well with mental illness. While there’s research showing that psychedelic drugs can treat depression and other mental illnesses, they didn’t work for Gordon. According to Moon, while touring with Joe Cocker in 1970, Gordon punched his then-girlfriend, Rita Coolidge, in the face; she broke up with him immediately. His drug addiction and mental illness made things more complicated for him in the late ‘70s, becoming unreliable as a musician and having his personal life fall apart at the seams. Gordon kept hearing voices in his head, which sounded like his mother, saying he should quit music and find a new career path, and to end his “torture,” he murdered her in 1983.

The Kray twins were also interesting to read about because I’ve never heard about brothers in crime before. According to Moon, Ronnie and Reggie Kray were “Britain’s most notorious gangsters and most famous criminals.” Coming from a poor background, the twin brothers started their own gang at age 16 and were first charged with grievous bodily harm against three men. From assaulting cops to protection rackets, they got away with their crimes for years until they made the mistake of killing people themselves and becoming famous. In 1969, the Krays were tried and sentenced to life imprisonment for the murders of George Cornell and Jack “The Hat” McVitie, the former being a member of a rival gang and the latter being a hitman that worked with the Krays previously. These guys are so famous that they have two movies about them.

While I thought Crime of the Century was partially genius, it was also long-winded. First of all, the introduction is around 10-11 pages and five of those pages are about Supertramp’s Crime of the Century (1974), where Moon does a deep dive on the album’s history and the tracks on there. I get that she wanted to go into details about why she named her book, Crime of the Century, but I was getting annoyed and just wanted to be done with the book already. There are two sections in total. Section 1 is about classic rockers’ encounters with killers and attempted murders, and Section 2 is about musicians who killed people.

Section 1 really bugged me because I never understood why classic rockers interacting with criminals were such a big deal in the first place. How were these musicians supposed to know they were befriending or working with criminals? People encounter criminals all the time on the streets. Chapters 5 and 6 are literally about Charles Manson and his connections with The Beach Boys, The Beatles, and “other musicians.” However, I’ll admit that I’m happy Ted Bundy was included in the book because it made me think about the Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019) movie with Zac Efron, who portrayed Bundy in the film. 

Section 2, thankfully, focuses on musicians who actually committed crimes, sometimes by accident. In 1970, drummer Keith Moon accidentally ran over his friend and chauffeur, Neil Boland, while trying to help his wife and friends escape a rowdy drunken crowd outside the Red Lion pub in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. (Keith) Moon was haunted by Boland’s death and never recovered from the incident, unfortunately. Tower of Power vocalist Rick Stevens’ story is one of those born again stories, where he developed a drug addiction in the ‘70s, went to prison for 36 years for killing three people, found God while serving time, and upon release, turned his life around and started performing again. He died in September 2017.

As mentioned at the beginning of the review, I can look at Crime of the Century from two different perspectives. Celebrities are an easy target for criminals because they have money and power. The author did a lot of research and found bits that piece together the criminals’ ulterior motives for associating with these celebrities. However, more than once, I forgot what the book was about because I was too busy trying to make sense of the musicians (DEVO, The Band, Debbie Harry, and The Kinks) and their backgrounds. For a second, I even thought that Jack Ruby was a member of The Band. Not a horrible book, but I found the stories about the criminals way more interesting, so I’m better off reading books about them instead. I’ll give Crime of the Century a rating of 3.0 out of 5.0 stars.

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Lana