Gossipy account of the rise and fall of Brian Jones, founder of the Rolling Stones. Jackson (a British freelance writer) tells us that though Jones was a loner as a child, his natural proclivity for music expressed itself early on and, by age 12, he was ``already a brilliant guitarist.'' Jones took up the saxophone to emulate his hero, jazz great Charlie Parker, and became enamored of blues and R&B. By age 14, he'd fathered his first child—an ominous sign of troubles ahead. Settling in swinging London in his late teens, Jones soon became a central part of the exploding blues scene and, from among hangers-on, began to assemble the band that would become the Stones. The group's rapid rise to the top—followed by increased tension as Mick Jagger and Keith Richards tried to edge the unreliable Jones out of the band—is chronicled here, along with Jones's fatal attraction to beautiful but self-centered model Anita Pallenberg (who would eventually dump him, when his weakened position in the band became apparent, for the more powerful Richards). Jones's brutal ouster from the band, as well as the mysteries surrounding his death by drowning in his own swimming pool, are recounted in all their gory detail. But Jackson inflates Jones's importance to the Stones through incessant hero worship (he was ``undoubtedly the most talented member of the band,'' she assures us more than once). Moreover, although Jones's contributions to the band's recordings are discussed briefly, Jackson's repetition of age-old mistakes (such as referring to the Robert Johnson/Elmore James classic ``Dust My Broom'' as ``Dust My Blues'') makes her musical analysis the weakest part of the book, while her fanzine-style writing (``His tantalizing body language whipped girlish screams into howling hysteria'') makes for some rough going. An engrossing story, lamely told. (Thirty-four b&w photographs) (For a look at another Stone, see Davin Seay's Mick Jagger, reviewed below.)
Pub Date: Nov. 15, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-09820-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1993
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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