A serviceable rock bio in which nobody, including the author, takes it easy.
A veteran British rock journalist takes creative flight in a book about an all-American band.
In the acknowledgments, Wall, the author of When Giants Walked the Earth and other music bios, doesn’t thank the members of the Eagles or anyone in their orbits. Instead, he leans heavily on those who have written about the Eagles before, along with a “distillation” of his own “archive of interviews not just with members of the Eagles but with hundreds of other significant figures from the same period.” Much of the material feels secondhand and sometimes stale, and the narrative is often scattershot. However, it’s also entertaining and often edgy. At the very least, Wall captures the spirit of that era’s “fast lane” in a manner reminiscent of a highly caffeinated Tom Wolfe, treating the band in the manner that Wolfe did Phil Spector or the Merry Pranksters. In one early scene, Wall takes us to the Troubadour in LA, where you go “to get drunk, get loaded, and get laid.” There, he introduces us to “Linda Ronstadt—the cute cut-off denim shorts and sweet brown doll’s eyes, the Troubadour girl with the sunny small-town smile and the voice of a cactus mountain goddess, the super-groovy chick that all the would-be groovy guys want the most.” There’s still more to that sentence, about how Ronstadt (apparently) says, “there are two sets of Troubadour regulars, ‘the musician pool and the sex pool.’ ” As an exercise in style, the text provides most of the substance of the band’s stories, including the shifts in balances of power, management issues, and the passage of time that left leaders Glenn Frey and Don Henley at loggerheads. Then they vowed that they would never engage in a cash-grab reunion—until they did, with a “farewell” that has now lasted decades longer than the band’s original “long run.”
A serviceable rock bio in which nobody, including the author, takes it easy.Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781635768909
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Diversion Books
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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