An adulatory account of the musical achievements of jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. Most musicologists would agree that Coltrane (1926-67) was a seminal force in contemporary jazz, but this comparison by Nisenson ('Round About Midnight, 1982) of Coltrane's ``spiritual quest...to find the essence of music and the mind of God'' to Einstein's search for a unified field theory is a little too much. Nisenson painstakingly traces Coltrane's career from his earliest recordings with Dizzy Gillespie and his work as a member of Miles Davis's legendary late-50's quintet through his own classic ensembles and later forays into free jazz. But the author is blindsided by devotion to his subject and often acts as a shrill apologist for the excesses of Coltrane's music rather than offering a balanced guide (he calls Coltrane's album A Love Supreme one of ``the most moving and genuinely spiritual documents of our century''). Nisenson's hero-worship carries over into his comments about Coltrane the man as he marvels over Coltrane's ``sheer courage'' in following his muse and the ``enormous amount of sacrifice and continual growth'' that the musician's career embodied. Nisenson is at his best in describing Coltrane's fellow musicians, including the egotistical Miles Davis; the far-out Sun Ra, who created an entire self-mythology to accompany his innovative music; and the shrieking saxophone player Pharaoh Sanders, who was a close associate of Coltrane's during his final, most radical years. The author correctly identifies Coltrane's inspiration in the complex rhythmic bases of non-Western, modal music, and his influence on everyone from psychedelic rock stars to today's devotees of world music. Finally, Nisenson discusses Coltrane's legacy, finding fault with the empty commercialism of 70's jazz-rock fusion artists, as well as with the ``brittle and heartless'' neoclassicism of today's jazz superstars, such as Wynton Marsalis. As Nisenson says, more ``gaseous prose has been written about Coltrane'' than any other musician—but, unfortunately, he, too, generates more hot air than light.
Pub Date: Dec. 3, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-09838-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1993
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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