Earnest, likable account of the child TV star who was ``shamefully undersung'' as a grown-up rock star. When Rick Nelson's private plane burned and crashed in 1985, killing him, his fiancÇe, and members of his band, it was widely rumored that Nelson—then 45, and supposedly despondent at the decline of his music career—had accidentally started the fire while freebasing cocaine. Very unlikely, says Bashe (coauthor, That's Not All Folks!, 1988, etc.): Nelson, he argues, was a basically secure entertainer who did not need acceptance to remain happy. Nelson was born into a wealthy show-business family and made his TV debut at age seven on the phenomenally successful (1952-66) sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. That show, starring the real Nelson family, was masterminded by workaholic Ozzie—a benevolent despot who completely arranged his youngest son's life for him. By age 17, Nelson had started singing on the show and issuing records (``Poor Little Fool,'' ``A Teenager's Romance,'' etc.) that were snatched up by an estimated ten million teenage fans. His ``role in spreading the rock & roll gospel and his consummate musicality,'' says Bashe, ``remain glaringly overlooked.'' Many critics regarded Nelson as a cleaned-up, parentally sanctioned Elvis: ``An inspired fake,'' stated the Village Voice's Robert Christgau. In 1969, Nelson put together the Stone Canyon Band to feature his singing and songwriting, but for the remainder of his life, only one hit, ``Garden Party'' (1972), was forthcoming: The public refused to accept Rick Nelson and wanted only to see cute little Ricky singing his hits from the 50's. By his death, Nelson was playing 250 dates a year—many in suburban supper clubs and shabby steakhouses—to remain solvent. Fluidly told and thoroughly documented (including accounts of Nelson's prodigious love life): a singular and interesting biography. (Eight-page photo insert—not seen.)
Pub Date: May 8, 1992
ISBN: 1-56282-969-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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