A must-read for pop-music lovers.
An influential rock critic shares highlights from more than 40 years in the business.
Longtime Los Angeles Times pop-music journalist Hilburn (Springsteen, 1986, etc.) looks back on the path he followed into what he calls “the best job in the world,” from a boyhood spent listening to his uncle’s blues and country records in Louisiana to a stint as a reporter for his San Fernando Valley high-school newspaper, for which he reviewed Elvis Presley in Love Me Tender. The book is not exactly a memoir, but rather a review of the major developments in popular music that the author played a part in shaping, both as a prescient champion of performers (Elton John, Bruce Springsteen and U2, for example) and as a sensitive interviewer who earned the trust of some of the most notoriously difficult subjects in music (most notably, Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan). Fans of Springsteen, Dylan and U2 will be thrilled to find multiple chapters devoted to their idols, who are clearly Hilburn’s favorites as well. He generously shares pages of quotes from his interviews on subjects ranging from musical influences—not surprisingly, almost everyone cites Elvis—and the craft of songwriting to the difficulty of maintaining a personal life apart from career and celebrity. The most intriguing sections, however, are the glimpses into the private lives of a who’s who of popular music in the 20th century: Johnny Cash preparing to take the stage at Folsom Prison and, late in life, at a rural Virginia barn dance; Colonel Parker keeping a tight rein on Elvis in Vegas; John Lennon sneaking chocolate and relishing cornflakes and cream at the Dakota; Michael Jackson pillow-fighting with six-year-olds while Brooke Shields and her mother waited for a date; Courtney Love beside herself worrying about Kurt Cobain. Because the incidents illustrate Hilburn’s main points about the character of the acts he believes are most worth listening to, the gossip is guilt-free.
A must-read for pop-music lovers.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-59486-921-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Rodale
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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