A well-argued work of rock criticism for a specialized audience.
Daniels (Blended, 2017, etc.) explores the Who’s famous rock opera from the perspective of a psychotherapist and fan in a work that combines memoir and art criticism.
For many people of Daniels’ generation who grew up in the 1970s and ’80s, rock music offered a reflection of teenage angst and alienation. The author writes that he found particular resonance in the music of the Who, especially the songs on their landmark 1969 album “Tommy,” which was adapted as a film in 1975. Daniels argues in his introduction that rock opera’s “lyrical motifs, such as the ‘deaf, dumb, and blind boy,’ its references to mirrors, and pinball, carry the feel and weight of archetypes, affording Tommy a mythic status that is unrivalled in pop music.” His book—part memoir, part literary critique, and part psychological evaluation—explores not only the album and the context in which it was created, but also the eponymous character at the center of the work. Daniels discusses his own discovery of the Who as a child in 1970s Britain, noting that it wasn’t until his family moved to the United States that he became a true fan. He provides some background on the album’s origins and on the development of attachment theory before continuing, full-bore, into the “Tommy” story. While investigating the life of the isolated, abused, pinball-playing Tommy, who’s paraded before a series of doctors in the album’s narrative, Daniels draws on relevant, anonymized cases that he’s encountered in his own psychotherapy practice. The author goes on to offer his own “sequel” to the album, imagining what it would be like if Tommy were to walk into his office for treatment. Daniels’ deep fandom of the album is the book’s defining characteristic, and it’s present in nearly every line of his prose. As he didn’t secure the rights to reprint the album’s lyrics, Daniels is forced to get creative in his descriptions of its plot and themes, and he does an admirable job of capturing the overall feel of the record this way, as in this description of the hit single “Pinball Wizard”: “Blending fantasy with evocations of the past, the song is a stroke of genius, conjuring depression era taverns, Brighton Pier arcades. The ephemera easily comes to mind: a battery of lights illuminating flippers, comic-book imagery, bumpers, and launch springers.” He offers a number of intriguing ideas about the Who, as well—which, he argues, was “perhaps the first act in rock history conceived as a reflection of its audience rather than a self-contained performing act”—and about Tommy as a character. That said, his deep dives into the minutiae of each song from a psychoanalytic perspective can make for dry reading at times, even for those who love the album. It’s difficult to imagine this work, which blends the intensity of Who fandom with the esotericism of psychology, finding a large readership. That said, it’s still an impressive work of intellectual labor.
A well-argued work of rock criticism for a specialized audience.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-09-214297-7
Page Count: 213
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Noted jazz and pop record producer Thiele offers a chatty autobiography. Aided by record-business colleague Golden, Thiele traces his career from his start as a ``pubescent, novice jazz record producer'' in the 1940s through the '50s, when he headed Coral, Dot, and Roulette Records, and the '60s, when he worked for ABC and ran the famous Impulse! jazz label. At Coral, Thiele championed the work of ``hillbilly'' singer Buddy Holly, although the only sessions he produced with Holly were marred by saccharine strings. The producer specialized in more mainstream popsters like the irrepressibly perky Teresa Brewer (who later became his fourth wife) and the bubble-machine muzak-meister Lawrence Welk. At Dot, Thiele was instrumental in recording Jack Kerouac's famous beat- generation ramblings to jazz accompaniment (recordings that Dot's president found ``pornographic''), while also overseeing a steady stream of pop hits. He then moved to the Mafia-controlled Roulette label, where he observed the ``silk-suited, pinky-ringed'' entourage who frequented the label's offices. Incredibly, however, Thiele remembers the famously hard-nosed Morris Levy, who ran the label and was eventually convicted of extortion, as ``one of the kindest, most warm-hearted, and classiest music men I have ever known.'' At ABC/Impulse!, Thiele oversaw the classic recordings of John Coltrane, although he is the first to admit that Coltrane essentially produced his own sessions. Like many producers of the day, Thiele participated in the ownership of publishing rights to some of the songs he recorded; he makes no apology for this practice, which he calls ``entirely appropriate and without any ethical conflicts.'' A pleasant, if not exactly riveting, memoir that will be of most interest to those with a thirst for cocktail-hour stories of the record biz. (25 halftones, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-508629-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
A well-researched but dull account of the hungry, unkempt days of early television. Written by film director Ritchie (The Candidate, etc.), the book shows the chaotic beginnings that justified the once widely held belief that this gimmicky new technology had no future. A fuzzy picture was first telecast on a bulky monitor with a tiny screen in the 1920s by Philo T. Farsworth, a high school student in rural Utah. But it would be another 20 years before television was taken seriously in America. Ritchie chronicles many of TV's historic firsts. In 1927, for example, future president Herbert Hoover was the first public official to speak in front of a ``televisor'' in Washington D.C., while his wife appeared from New York. They were followed by a comedian in black-face who called his routine ``a new line of jokes in negro dialect.'' Television's first commercial was illegal, but this did not stop broadcasters from soliciting commercials. NBC earned seven dollars in 1937 for simply showing the face of a Bulova watch. Many of the early (live) commercials were more than artistic disasters: A newly invented ``automatic'' Gillette safety razor would not open on camera, and the hostess of a Tenderleaf tea commercial mistakenly lauded the quality of Lipton tea. The first television newscasts were also tentative affairs. News was considered the exclusive domain of radio, of which television was then a poor cousin; CBS's first newscast featured Lowell Thomas talking in front of a stack of sponsor Sonoco's oil cans. The BBC was technologically ahead of US companies, but it abruptly stopped transmission (in the middle of a Mickey Mouse cartoon) when WW II broke out. A historical video would be better than written narrative for this material. The 77 black-and-white photos provided here hold the nonspecialist's attention, while the text rarely does.
Pub Date: Oct. 30, 1994
ISBN: 0-87951-546-5
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
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