Intelligent, critically generous, slightly boring essays, reviews, and profiles on pop music and cultural topics by longtime Rolling Stone contributor DeCurtis. DeCurtis warns us in a preface not to expect flashy prose or gonzo authorial participation in the subjects he covers, and he’s unfailingly respectful of his subjects, so it’s logical that the most engaging pieces here are the interviews with quick-witted, well- spoken musicians like U2 and Peter Buck of R.E.M. The unfortunate corollary is that DeCurtis takes all too seriously aesthetic irrelevancies like John Cougar Mellencamp. Magazine profiles (of the Rolling Stones, Sting, 10,000 Maniacs, and Leonard Cohen, among others) and liner notes (for Eric Clapton and Phil Spector CD boxed sets) often manage to boil down genius and eccentricity into qualities resembling mere skill and pluck; while useful as a corrective to rock-journalism hyperbole, the author’s mild response also makes these essays more or less forgettable. An obituary feature on the bluegrass legend Bill Monroe is unexpectedly sweet, a discussion of the furor over Ice-T’s —Cop Killer— is concise and thoughtful, and pieces on the novelist T. Coraghessan Boyle and the historians Neil Sheehan and Taylor Branch show a welcome avidity for advancing the cause of serious writing. But DeCurtis is best as a reviewer: The assortment of short record reviews and appreciations included here, while seldom advancing any unexpected opinions, show off his careful use of language without falling back on obscure hipster references or supercilious critical jargon. For instance, DeCurtis says Johnny Cash —has made a rumbling baritone voice with nonexistent range and a limited guitar technique expressive of a dignified worldview—; certain songs on Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks ’suggest the possibility not merely of regret but of reconciliation and forgiveness based on the acceptance of loss.— In the end, though, while DeCurtis’s writing is efficient, it’s also generally too bloodless and ephemeral to reward the reader’s concentration.
Pub Date: May 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-8223-2184-X
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Duke Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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