Well-stocked with interviews and evidence—a respectful, understanding portrait of a talented and unique soul who never...
The lost life of a groundbreaking musician and artist, murdered on the (possible) cusp of fame.
When researching his history of the iconic underground rock band Pixies (Fool the World, 2006), Frank came across a haunting song they often covered in concert called “In Heaven, Everything is Fine,” which he remembered vaguely from Eraserhead. He then found out it had been written for David Lynch by some guy named Peter Ivers. The book that Frank creates with freelance writer Buckholtz out of that serendipitous moment pays tribute to a gifted but unknown 20th-century American artist. A precociously talented child of Brookline, Mass., Ivers decamped for Harvard in the mid-’60s. The college was a font of theatrical and comedic energy, a staging ground for a bunch of high-voltage artistic personalities ranging from Stockard Channing to the entire National Lampoon crowd, which would utterly change American comedy in a few short years. A master blues harmonica player who often jammed with Muddy Waters, Ivers used his phenomenal musical talent, quick wit and bright-eyed enthusiasm to make himself indispensable in this fast-track crowd. But fame eluded him. A few albums went nowhere, and a disastrous opening performance for Fleetwood Mac put an end to his dreams of rock stardom. Relocated to Los Angeles, the gregarious Ivers again became a nodal point, this time in the city’s raw punk scene. As the host of a surreal, cult cable-access show, New Wave Theatre, he brought together Lampoon star Doug Kenney with punk agitators Fear and Dead Kennedys, while Hollywood friends Harold Ramis, John Belushi and Lynch came by to groove on the vibe. In 1983, on the verge of achieving some industry recognition, Ivers was found bludgeoned to death in his loft; the killer was never apprehended.
Well-stocked with interviews and evidence—a respectful, understanding portrait of a talented and unique soul who never managed to find a solid perch in the world.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4165-5120-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.
Jackie Kennedy's secret service agent Hill and co-author McCubbin team up for a follow-up to Mrs. Kennedy and Me (2012) in this well-illustrated narrative of those five days 50 years ago when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
Since Hill was part of the secret service detail assigned to protect the president and his wife, his firsthand account of those days is unique. The chronological approach, beginning before the presidential party even left the nation's capital on Nov. 21, shows Kennedy promoting his “New Frontier” policy and how he was received by Texans in San Antonio, Houston and Fort Worth before his arrival in Dallas. A crowd of more than 8,000 greeted him in Houston, and thousands more waited until 11 p.m. to greet the president at his stop in Fort Worth. Photographs highlight the enthusiasm of those who came to the airports and the routes the motorcades followed on that first day. At the Houston Coliseum, Kennedy addressed the leaders who were building NASA for the planned moon landing he had initiated. Hostile ads and flyers circulated in Dallas, but the president and his wife stopped their motorcade to respond to schoolchildren who held up a banner asking the president to stop and shake their hands. Hill recounts how, after Lee Harvey Oswald fired his fatal shots, he jumped onto the back of the presidential limousine. He was present at Parkland Hospital, where the president was declared dead, and on the plane when Lyndon Johnson was sworn in. Hill also reports the funeral procession and the ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery. “[Kennedy] would have not wanted his legacy, fifty years later, to be a debate about the details of his death,” writes the author. “Rather, he would want people to focus on the values and ideals in which he so passionately believed.”
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3149-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
