Less than a glance at what drove “the man death forgot.”
Hollow if high-revved portrait of the Rolling Stones guitarist and songwriter from rock-music biographer Sandford (Mick Jagger, 1994, etc.). The only thing missing, tellingly, is his subject’s voice.
The Stones may now be “the officially tolerated moral slobs of the middle class,” as Sandford writes, but it wasn’t always so; their early dazzle was a scandalous counterpoint to Britain’s dismal Edward Heath years, and Richards in particular has been arrested and harassed for his drug use from Japan to California. Since the author did not have immediate access to the musician or his friends for this unauthorized biography, the material comes from published work, remote interviews, fanzines, and Sandford’s relatively brief entrée with the group as a reporter. While he tells much about Richards as a virtuoso and economical guitarist, a rhythmical innovator, a musician of sentimentality, emotion, and passion, and a man versed in his traditions, all this might be surmised by acute listeners from exposure to an album or a concert. And any reader of the rock-’n’-roll music press will be familiar with his influences in the world of music, with such delicious moments as Chuck Berry telling him to “fuck off” when Richards went to meet him backstage, with his many tiffs with fellow band members, especially Brian Jones, and with the women in his life, including the mother of his children, with whom he didn't mind exchanging fisticuffs. This all renders dubious Sandford's claim that Richards has a “deep need for roots and domesticity,” not to mention the author’s timeworn rationale for the guitarist’s abundant drinking and drug use (“not so much vices as the working out of a complementary dark side without which the juices couldn't flow”). Ultimately, the author fails to convey any deep sense of what inspired either Richards’s self-destructive behavior or the songwriting and guitar work that got him dubbed the “Human Riff.”
Less than a glance at what drove “the man death forgot.”Pub Date: April 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-7867-1368-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
