Anyone who survived The Pogues deserves one last drink after the war.
A founding musician in one of Ireland’s most raucous, poetic and punk bands remembers the highs, lows and plateaus of the golden age of combat rock.
It’s really only the first half of a continuing story, but it’s the right half to tell. Fearnley just narrowly escaped becoming a permanent member of Culture Club when band mate Jem Finer invited him to become a member of The Nips, later changed to Pogue Mahone and then simply The Pogues. Led by the irreverent, inebriated and often diabolical singer Shane MacGowan, the band toured hard for a decade in the wake of their 1984 debut “Red Roses for Me.” Fearnley makes readers feel every mile. For fans of the band, it’s a detail-rich, expressive remembrance not only of the many gigs where someone had to pull MacGowan off the ceiling with a rake to get him to play, but also of the remarkable musical gumbo that produced fantastic songs like “If I Should Fall from Grace with God,” “Rainy Night in Soho” and the holiday classic “Fairytale of New York,” a duet with the late Kirsty MacColl. Along with fascinating glances at contemporaries like Elvis Costello and Joe Strummer, the book also offers a cleareyed and unforgiving assessment of MacGowan’s path of self-destruction. “Shane’s drinking was a more venerable enterprise, a swath cut by the likes of such writers as Brendan Behan and Dylan Thomas, not to mention Faulkner, Chandler, Fitzgerald and O’Neill,” writes Fearnley. “More and more the question on people’s lips was whether Shane wrote so beautifully because of the amount he drank, or despite it.” But neither is the author afraid to point his insights at himself, relating his own struggles with music, women, drink and combat with his musical mates. Clearly, this talented musician has taken a page from Keith Richards’ marvelous biography: Believe it or not, he remembers everything.
Anyone who survived The Pogues deserves one last drink after the war.Pub Date: May 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-55652-950-4
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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