A genial if surface-level glimpse into a brief but critical period of Bowie’s career.
One of David Bowie’s former drummers recalls his brief and occasionally baffling tenure with Ziggy Stardust.
Woodmansey kept the beat for Bowie during his meteoric rise to stardom in the early 1970s, playing on classic albums like “The Man Who Sold the World,” “Hunky Dory,” “Ziggy Stardust,” and “Aladdin Sane.” But he was initially skeptical when he got Bowie’s call to move to London from Yorkshire in northern England, where he’d apprenticed under Bowie guitarist Mick Ronson: Woodmansey had just been offered a stable job as an eyeglass-factory manager, and Bowie was a quirky one-hit wonder (“Space Oddity”) without a clear trajectory. By throwing in his lot with Bowie, Woodmansey hit the glam-rock jackpot, touring the world and honing his craft. However, as his workmanlike memoir shows, it didn’t gain him much insight into the bandleader himself: he recalls being oblivious to Bowie’s growing cocaine use and remembers him as a hands-off frontman who never wanted more than a handful of takes and trusted his sidemen to handle arrangements (only on “Panic in Detroit” did he deliver explicit directions about the drum sound). Woodmansey has some tart complaints about his low wages and sudden firing (on his wedding day, no less) from the Spiders from Mars in 1973. But his memoir is generally absent of bile, as the author prefers to riff on tour pranks, drum technique, and—especially—clothing and makeup, which played a significant role in the group’s rising fame. (The first thing Woodmansey noticed upon meeting Bowie was his clothing.) Hard-core fans might thrill to the minutiae about Bowie’s classic period, but even they might be tempted to tune out the writer’s praise for Scientology and his dry accounting of post-Bowie stints leading the cult band U-Boat, backing Art Garfunkel, and playing in a tribute band to his late meal ticket.
A genial if surface-level glimpse into a brief but critical period of Bowie’s career.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-11761-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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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