A lighter-than-air autobiography by the leader of Liverpool's second-greatest '60s pop band. Marsden, lead singer of Gerry and the Pacemakers—foremost practitioners, with the Beatles, of his city's once-celebrated ``Merseybeat'' sound—whips through his life with the speed of a greatest-hits medley: He was kept in a suitcase beneath hall stairs during London air raids; as an infant he was enchanted by his father's ukelele playing; he brawled with mates in the Dingle, the Irish working-class neighborhood where he came of age. An engaging stage presence with a somewhat thin voice, Marsden came up at a time when 240 Liverpool bands were competing for a place in the suddenly global pop scene. In 1963, the Pacemakers scored three number-one British hits in a row—a feat still unmatched. Marsden's rendition of Rogers and Hammerstein's ``You'll Never Walk Alone'' has become the official song of Liverpool's soccer team, his ``Ferry Cross the Mersey'' a kind of Liverpool anthem. Accounts (written with Coleman, The Man Who Made the Beatles, 1989) of friendships with the Beatles (Marsden purloined his wife, Pauline, from George Harrison) and of early days honing his sound in Hamburg are the book's most interesting. Following the death of manager Brian Epstein, whom he describes as a lovable ``honest fool,'' Marsden starred in two musicals before reforming the Pacemakers and becoming the staple of '60s nostalgia shows. Marsden's tone is fittingly modest, and he seems intent on proving he's still a hometown boy—unlike the Beatles, who ``went for the arty clique.'' A closing passage suggests both Marsden's philosophy and his book's limitations: ``Sixties...songs were happy, the music simple and the lyrics nice to listen to. We didn't try to change the world.'' (16 pages b&w photos; discography)
Pub Date: Nov. 15, 1994
ISBN: 0-7475-1473-9
Page Count: 178
Publisher: Collins & Brown/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
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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