Klein changed the way rock does business. In this balanced, fascinating, and well-written biography, Goodman gives him...
The story of a manager more often vilified than any other in the history of rock.
At his peak, Allen Klein (1931-2009) managed both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, but both relationships led to legal action and acrimony, with Klein largely depicted as unconscionably rapacious even by the dubious ethical standards of the music business. Since former Rolling Stone editor Goodman has previously explored the seamier side of rock’s underbelly (most notably in The Mansion on the Hill, 1997), readers might expect him to pile more dirt on the legacy of his late subject. Instead, he humanizes Klein with a nuanced and multidimensional account of how a boy raised in an orphanage looked for validation by courting artists who had been cheated by their record companies and promising to rectify their financial situations. The author benefits from access to previously unavailable material, provided by Klein’s son without editorial stipulations. “When you hired Klein, you hired a pistolero,” writes Goodman. “He’d run the rustlers and varmints out of Dodge, but then you’d have to figure out how to live with a mercenary in the sheriff’s office.” The author shows how Klein earned the trust of Sam Cooke and how he came to be seen by both John Lennon and Keith Richards as a kindred spirit while arousing the enmity of Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger. (Goodman also acknowledges that Klein engaged in a conflict of interest in buying the rights to the Stones music while he was managing them and shifting sides on the “My Sweet Lord” copyright suit.) Klein loved a battle, and he would engage in litigation long after it was to his benefit to settle. But Goodman builds a convincing case that Klein fought the good fight for his artists and that depicting a man in his business as greedy is akin to calling a lion a carnivore.
Klein changed the way rock does business. In this balanced, fascinating, and well-written biography, Goodman gives him credit where it’s due.Pub Date: June 23, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-547-89686-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
PROFILES
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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