This collection of memoirs from the veteran Nashville musician, disc jockey, and broadcast personality is full of good-natured humor and thoughtful insights. Emery begins on a somber note, with a recap of Conway Twitty’s untimely death and the ensuing battle of his estate with his third wife, Dee, and his children, who viewed Dee as opportunistic and flighty—particularly when she moved to have his body exhumed and cremated, only to withdraw the request a few days later. While many of his subjects (Patsy Cline, Tex Ritter, Carl Perkins) are likewise dead, Emery’s tone seldom sounds morose after the Twitty section. Instead, he’s apt to recall humorous instances, such as Maverick Records founder Fred Foster’s run-in with old-time Nashville bigshot Wesley Rose, who objected to Foster’s making “race records,” and how Foster was reassured by legend-in-the-making Owen Bradley, who told him, “You keep doing what you’re doing—making great records.” Some of Emery’s best stories concern unlikely country music figures, such as Ray Charles, who recorded a crossover hit with “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” and George Bush, who defends his taste for country music despite his patrician background. Emery’s perspective is refreshing: though no longer young, and obviously a conservative politically, he keeps alive a positive attitude toward change. He can condemn the “reverse discrimination” of a word like “hillbilly” and at the same time express indignation over some Nashville establishment icon’s treatment of black country musician Charley Pride . . . and never lose his credibility. His telling of white country singer Faron Young’s support of Pride is among the most poignant vignettes in the collection. (Co-author Cox also co-authored Tanya Tucker’s autobiography.) Fans of any kind of music can open this at any page—and enjoy it. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Nov. 4, 1998
ISBN: 0-688-15150-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
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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