Jefferson Airplane singer Slick delivers a bouncy, somewhat hectoring account of her 25-year career. Raised by comfortable WASPs in Palo Alto, Calif., Slick married young and moved to San Francisco, where she and her husband saw an early incarnation of the Jefferson Airplane perform in 1965 and figured that starting their own band, the Great Society, would be more fun than their boring day jobs. Slick soon drifted into the Airplane and out of her marriage. Her lively descriptions of the close-knit musical community revolving around Bill Graham’s Fillmore Auditorium successfully evoke both the highs and lows of the Summer of Love. Slick was never one to shrink from the highs, and she gives us a few entertaining psychedelic vignettes. Uniquely, the Airplane played all three of the pivotal rock festivals that, respectively, inaugurated an era (Monterey), defined it for posterity (Woodstock), and ignominiously ended it (Altamont). Slick cheerfully and explicitly details her sexual liaisons with all but one of her bandmates and an encounter with Jim Morrison involving a bed full of smashed strawberries. In the ’70s, Slick had a child, tried to slip acid into President Nixon’s tea, and got drunk often, finally quitting the revamped and renamed Jefferson Starship in 1978. A few years later she reenlisted, at this point the only original member; this version of Starship was a soulless commercial enterprise that commissioned its songs from top Hollywood hacks, but the aging Slick liked the —easy ride.— Since retiring several years ago, she’s been campaigning to end medical testing on animals, but coauthor Cagan (Marianne Williamson’s coauthor for A Return to Love, not reviewed) doesn—t help her explain the cause very coherently. Slick’s swaggering, unapologetic persona gets a little irritating by the end, but her progress from hippie queen to cranky rich liberal makes for a fun and emblematic trip. (4 pages color photos, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 8, 1998
ISBN: 0-446-52302-X
Page Count: 384
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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