Among Frank Zappa's last public statements was this: ``U2 is maybe the most popular and successful export coming from Ireland today, but there's no comparison between the musical quality of what they do and what the Chieftains do.'' Glatt ably explains why. Zappa is one of dozens of musicians, writers, and actors to go on the record for Glatt (Rage & Roll: Bill Graham and the Selling of Rock, 1994, etc.) in this heavily researched account of the career of 58-year-old Irishman Paddy Moloney, the band's leader and driving force, et al., from relative obscurity during the folk and rock eras of the '50s and '60s to their Grammy-winning albums of the '90s and their collaboration with several prominent musicians on The Long Black Veil. All along, the Chieftains have enjoyed the admiration of Seamus Heaney, Peter O'Toole, and the Rolling Stones, and Glatt's legwork is apparent in interviews not only with such diverse luminaries, but also with the the band's families, former members, and associates, and even with actor/director Ron Howard, whose film Far and Away is one of many scored by Moloney. Particularly amusing episodes feature the always cantankerous Ulsterian Van Morrison and a band visit to China that ultimately led to their being named the official musical ambassadors of Ireland. As an unofficial ambassador, Moloney has dabbled in the music of French Brittany and Spanish Galicia, and Glatt does a fine job of impressing upon the reader the Celtic heart of the Chieftains, from their fluency in the Irish language to their endless searches for links between Celtic culture and music in other corners of the world. And unlike other writers, Glatt avoids the temptation to slap a political label on this band that comes from such a politically torn country. Though he offers little to the uninitiated, Glatt has written an indispensable chronicle for the casual listener, the die-hard fan, and all levels in between. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: July 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-16605-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1997
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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