Although written in mostly colorless prose, this is a gold mine for fans of the 1970s and ’80s music scene.
A music memoir that is as much about love as music.
Frantz’s highly detailed, “true inside story” begins with a pleasant boyhood. Born to a military family, he moved around, went to good schools, enjoyed listening to music—especially the Beatles—played drums, and joined various bands. While attending Rhode Island School of Design, he met fellow art students Tina Weymouth, his future wife, and the aloof David Byrne, who, Frantz writes, “got into music to get out of himself.” Weymouth and Frantz helped Byrne write lyrics for “Psycho Killer,” and Frantz wrote “Warning Sign,” which Byrne later took sole credit for. Throughout, the author offers a devastating portrait of Byrne as a back-stabbing liar who aggrandized himself while disrespecting his band mates. Their first band, the Artistics, played some venues, and they moved to New York’s Bowery in 1974, where they got a regular gig playing as Talking Heads at the CBGB club, their all-time favorite venue. A keyboard player, Jerry Harrison, formerly of Modern Lovers, joined them. The star-struck Frantz began meeting people like Patti Smith, John Cale, Debbie Harry, Lou Reed, and Andy Warhol. Throughout the narrative, he proves to be an inveterate name-dropper. Frantz describes the band as “pioneers” in the “Punk/New Wave/Post-Punk music” scene. In 1976, they played 76 gigs. At this time, Byrne wanted to kick Weymouth out of the band, but as the author rightly notes, her inventiveness on bass “was one reason Talking Heads sounded so unique.” In 1977, they recorded their first album and toured Europe with the Ramones. Afterward, Frantz and Weymouth got married. Though not the most elegant stylist, the author offers entertaining stories about Stop Making Sense, Jonathan Demme’s documentary about the band; the origins of the Tom Tom Club; Byrne’s big white suit; and the day, in 1991, Byrne “sneaked out of Talking Heads.”
Although written in mostly colorless prose, this is a gold mine for fans of the 1970s and ’80s music scene.Pub Date: July 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-20922-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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
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