An appealing look at a friendship that spanned more than six decades and shaped the life of a musical legend.
The country music icon offers a touching tribute to his late friend and drummer.
“In 2020, my closest friend left me. Into the infinite abyss. The mission of this book is to bring him back,” writes Nelson at the start of this chronicle of his many adventures with his longtime drummer (since the mid-1950s), dear friend, and partner in crime, Paul English. He continues, “I’m at the age when I’ve long stopped fussing around and started focusing on stuff that matters. Remembering Paul matters. If anyone, Paul must be immortalized.” Much more than just a collection of crazy antics, the narrative is a heartfelt resurrection of a key figure in Nelson’s life. English not only kept the beat during thousands of performances; he was also a guiding light during many pivotal moments in the singer’s journey. Written with veteran music journalist Ritz, the book reads likes an extended eulogy. Nelson regales us with countless tales of English rescuing him from romantic trysts gone awry, getting money from crooked promoters, and helping him navigate the music industry at multiple significant eras in his career. Like all good tales from a life in music, these are clearly the kinds of stories that shift ever so slightly with each telling. At the end, we might not know the exact truth about each detail, but when the stories are so entertaining, who cares? Diehard fans of Nelson and his band will surely appreciate the rough-and-tumble anecdotes about the legendary drummer, and others will see the text as a genuine testament to the power of friendship, loyalty, and what it means to live from the heart. As the author notes near the beginning, “if someone tries to tell my story without putting Paul by my side, don’t bother reading it.”
An appealing look at a friendship that spanned more than six decades and shaped the life of a musical legend.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-7852-4560-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper Horizon
Review Posted Online: Aug. 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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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