A doggedly researched but plodding, unambitious bio of the fondly remembered late ’60s swamp-rock band. Though Creedence Clearwater Revival had nine top-ten hits and has remained perpetually popular on the radio since its 1972 demise, the group has become practically as famous for the number of lawsuits that have percolated in its wake. From early on, rock journalist Bordowitz focuses on the tensions between singer/songwriter/guitarist John Fogerty and his bandmates, as Fogerty gradually took over the band (originally called the Blue Velvets, then the Golliwogs) from his older brother, Tom, who was shunted from singing and songwriting to rhythm guitar. John rapidly emerged as both a gifted songwriter and a tyrannical leader, and Tom quit within three years of their first hit. The band fizzled out with a last album on which John Fogerty, bassist Stu Cook, and drummer Doug Clifford split singing and songwriting duties equally. Fogerty claimed he had simply acquiesced to the others— gripes about creative input, while Cook says, —John wouldn—t even play on our songs, other than rhythm guitar.— In subsequent years, Fogerty and the others fought endless legal battles with Fantasy Records, which had a cutthroat contract with the band and helped them to invest their earnings in a Bahamian banking scheme that went belly-up. Fantastically, Fantasy sued Fogerty for copyright infringement in the mid-’80s because a song on his solo album allegedly plagiarized one of the band’s songs, which Fantasy owned. (Fantasy lost.) The other three members made their peace with Fantasy, and bitter public exchanges among the survivors (Tom Fogerty died in 1990) have made clear that there will never be even a one-time Creedence Clearwater reunion. Endlessly describing how Fogerty and the others —festered along— with recriminations, Bordowitz offers no perspective to keep the narrative momentum from slowing to a crawl in the long post-breakup half of the book. (40 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-02-864870-6
Page Count: 356
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1998
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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