Not likely to change anyone’s opinion of Elton John’s music, good or bad, but it will to far to lend a greater appreciation...
A comprehensive biography that traces the evolution of the pop star known as Elton John, examining both the man and the personality.
Reginald Kenneth Dwight was an overweight, insecure child whose ability, at the age of three, to play tunes by ear foreshadowed the musical success he was to have with the stage name Elton John (“Elton” from sax player Elton Dean, and “John” from blues singer and mentor Long John Baldry). In a matter-of-fact sequence, freelance writer Rosenthal examines the many vicissitudes of Elton’s career, including his partnership with lyricist Bernie Taupin, his record-company affiliations, his Academy Award for “Can You Feel the Love Tonight,” and his Broadway smash Aida. No new personal gossip is revealed, and the biggest “mystery” turns out to be whether he is gay or bisexual, and the author glosses over Elton’s problems with drugs, alcohol, and bulimia, although she does discuss the reasons behind his once-flamboyant costumes, and his friendships with fellow performers, AIDS sufferer Ryan White, and Princess Diana. Behind-the-scenes stories and tidbits about the songs and recordings are engagingly informative—for example, the song “Daniel” was originally written with an extra stanza, but was struck by Elton in order to keep the song mystical and the public guessing. Through it all is the portrayal of a man who simply enjoys playing music. As he summarizes his career, “I was never David Bowie or Mick Jagger or Axl. I just sat at the piano and put my feet up on the piano and danced on it.” The extensive endnotes and the discography that tracks Elton’s work will be of great use to fans.
Not likely to change anyone’s opinion of Elton John’s music, good or bad, but it will to far to lend a greater appreciation for the performer. (40 b&w photos, not seen)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8230-8893-6
Page Count: 544
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2001
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
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
© Copyright 2026 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.
