Fascinating story of the rock impresario, who led many lives to the fullest. Graham (1931-91), raised in a Berlin orphanage, was sent to the US at age 11, fleeing the pogrom. After serving in Korea, he was an actor; Latin dancer; motorcycle vagabond in Europe; and waiter at the Concord resort hotel—where he undertook his first entrepreneurial project, running an undercover crap game for the guests. Moving to San Francisco, he helped organize the first Trips Festival, with the Merry Pranksters, Big Brother, and the Warlocks (later the Grateful Dead). Graham, who knew only Latin music, opened the Fillmore auditorium and booked acts by asking bands, ``Who is your favorite musician?'' He soon became a favorite among musicians as an honest promoter who paid generously and treated them royally. Greenfield (The Spiritual Supermarket, 1975, etc.), who has constructed his book entirely through first-person voices, puts its heart in the 60's and in the Fillmores East and West. Graham, Owsley Stanley (infamous LSD chemist), Jerry Garcia, other musicians, and Graham's longtime employees here relate what's perhaps the most engrossing collection of anecdotes ever assembled about the era. Especially wonderful are Graham's descriptions of Ike Turner with his pearl- handled revolver clearing the way through a riot for an ermine- clad Tina; of how, for four years, the Grateful Dead tried every devious way they could think of to get Graham high on acid (and finally succeeded); and of Otis Redding in his first performance before the Flower Children. Graham went on to manage tours for such groups as the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan and to organize Live Aid and other world benefits. He died in a helicopter crash at age 60. Tremendous fun for rock fans and an affecting portrait of an extraordinary man. (Fifty b&w photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Oct. 25, 1992
ISBN: 0-385-24077-5
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1992
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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