Overlong but intermittently fascinating behind-the-scenes look at one of punk’s most unlikely icons.
The late Joey Ramone is feted with tough love in these cradle-to-grave memories from his kid brother Mickey Leigh (born Mitch Hyman).
In Leigh’s collaboration with longtime punk journalist McNeil (co-author: The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry, 2005, etc.), Joey Ramone (born Jeff Hyman) is the classic middle-class misfit whose salvation came in the rock ’n’ roll teen culture of the late 1960s. Growing up in suburban Forest Hills, N.Y., Leigh witnessed his sickly, awkward OCD brother transform from a freakish, sometimes violent kid to a moon-booted glam-rocker known as “Jeff Starship.” In the early ’70s Jeff transformed again—into Joey Ramone, the charismatic Ramones frontman and punk-rock heartthrob. Although Leigh planned to pursue his own dreams of rock stardom, initially he settled for being the Ramones’ underpaid roadie. From this vantage point he saw the band’s rise to international cult stardom through New York City’s fledgling CBGB punk scene. He also experienced firsthand the Ramones’ perpetually dysfunctional, dark netherworld governed by the near-psychotic dictatorial ways of guitar player Johnny Ramone. Frustrated and broke, Leigh eventually cut his professional ties with the Ramones and pursued a series of dead-end musical and occupational activities. When the author focuses on his own uphill battles, the memoir hits occasional snags. He hit up Joey for residual money for his backup vocals on the Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop”—used in a 1991 Budweiser commercial—and had constant feuds with his brother about songwriting credit on their several musical collaborations. This belated demand for money and recognition seems somewhat hypocritical, especially considering Leigh had previously been determined to stake out his own identity apart from the Ramones. Nevertheless, Leigh showed dogged persistence in the face of constant futility. Sadly, though, it took Joey’s losing bout with cancer to fully reconcile the two brothers’ differences and bring them together again.
Overlong but intermittently fascinating behind-the-scenes look at one of punk’s most unlikely icons.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-7432-5216-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2009
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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