This impressive, compendious biography is a must-read for fans of the Beatles and other seminal rock groups of the 1960s and...
A Beatles expert recounts Sir George Martin’s (1926-2016) years producing the Fab Four’s final records, their breakup, and his career afterward.
In this final volume of the meticulous and lively biography of the famed Beatles music producer, Womack (English/Monmouth Univ.; Maximum Volume: The Life of Beatles Producer George Martin, the Early Years, 1926-1966, 2017, etc.) resumes after the release of the groundbreaking album “Rubber Soul.” The author invites us into the Beatles’ world with assurance and aplomb as he guides us through the creation of some of the group’s greatest musical achievements. In 1966, Martin observed the band grumbling about live performances and complaining about deficiencies in Martin’s Abbey Road studio. Brian Epstein, the band’s manager, explored recording at Stax Records in Memphis, but Martin was never keen to move. Meanwhile, Paul McCartney had a song about a spinster, and John Lennon wrote one influenced by his first LSD experience. As Martin recalled, “their ideas were beginning to become much more potent in the studio.” While working on a new album, the band’s “Penny Lane” single kept them high on music charts. Womack is excellent at chronicling the group’s ever increasing creative relationship with Martin as he helped channel their energy and excitement into exploring new ways of producing records. He called McCartney’s idea about using “alter egos” to sing songs on “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” a “revelation” and “She’s Leaving Home” one of the “best constructed songs they ever did.” Martin helped them score the end of “A Day in the Life” and drew upon his orchestral expertise to add strings and brass to their compositions. Womack also reveals how much influence Martin had on the placement of certain songs on the albums. After the Beatles, the wizard behind the curtain continued making his own records and producing for Jeff Beck, Cheap Trick, and Elton John.
This impressive, compendious biography is a must-read for fans of the Beatles and other seminal rock groups of the 1960s and '70s.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-912777-74-0
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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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