Category Archives: music history

Tonight in Jungleland, by Peter Ames Carlin*****

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“And then the door flew open, and the wolf of doubt came slinking in.”

Springsteen fans, get your plastic out. Peter Ames Carlin has crafted a riveting Springsteen biography about the making of the iconic album, “Born to Run.” Having read it, I have gained even greater appreciation for the Boss’s rock and roll genius. My thanks go to NetGalley and Doubleday for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

“Born to Run” is Springsteen’s third album; the first and second albums received rave reviews from industry publications, but they sold poorly, and Columbia Records had Bruce on their kill list. He was contracted for three albums, but since they had already decided he wasn’t going anywhere, it was difficult to get them to finance the third album’s production or even listen to it once it was done. Take a brilliant, charismatic singer/songwriter, a talented, loyal band, and a couple of industry influencers that would all but starve themselves in order to see this album succeed, and it was nevertheless a nail-biter.

Mike Appel was Bruce’s manager, and he believed in his client so passionately that he was ready to bend a few rules and take a blow torch to a few others. When expenses exceeded the support from Columbia, when everyone’s charge cards were maxed and there was still a record to finish, he dumped his children’s college funds into the general kitty so that the album could see daylight. Columbia Records had told him they’d review his client’s work if he could make a hit single, so “Born to Run” became the song on which the album’s success was hinged. Then Jon Landau, a much-revered industry journalist, heard Bruce’s music and wrote, “I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.” Landau became his producer, and it is due to this holy musical trinity that Springsteen and the E Street Band became world renowned. In fact, they went so far as to send bootleg copies to friendly deejays, since the record company was doing absolutely no promotion, and it worked!

I have never been a sufficiently rabid fan to go into the weeds on this band or any other. I didn’t know who else was in his band, apart from his wife. I also had no idea what was required of anyone attempting to get an album financed and promoted by a major house—particularly during the pre-digital days of the late 1900s. Two things have always drawn me to Springsteen’s music: tunes so impossibly resonant that I am unable to sit still when I listen to them, and the lyrics that speak to the industrial working class. These are not the songs of a pretender. Bruce grew up lean and hungry, and because of that, and his rare talent for communication, the songs ring true.

Springsteen was, and I suspect still is, a perfectionist. The following quote is lengthy, but that seems appropriate, given the amount of time, toil and sweat they put into this album:

Ensconced in 914 in the wee hours, Appel and Bruce seemed to try every idea that occurred to them. A string section. An ascending guitar riff repeating through the verse. A chorus of women chiming in on the chorus. An even bigger chorus of women oooh-ing behind the third verse. Still more strings on the bridge and on the last verse, doing those disco-style swoops, like sciroccos whipping up from the dance floor. They’d work out a part, hire whatever musicians or singers were needed to get it on tape, then mix it all together to see what they had. Sometimes it would stick, sometimes they’d just laugh, shake their heads, and slice it out… Work on the instrumental track went on and on, but it still didn’t rival Bruce’s laboring over the lyrics. He had always put energy into his narratives but the pressure he felt to get “Born to Run” just exactly right pushed him to a whole other level of perfectionism, determined to get every word, every nuance, every syllable, something like flawless. No, exactly flawless. Sometimes he’d be in the midst of a take, sing a few lines of a verse, shake it off, then take his notebook to a folding a chair. He’d find a pen, open the book, look at the page, and just …think. He’d be there for a while. An hour, two hours, maybe more. Meanwhile in the control room Appel would be at his place at the board, Louis Lahav in his. This happened a lot. How long would it be this time? They’d peer through the glass, chat a bit. Fiddle with paperwork, try to see what Bruce was up to. Still staring into space? Reading back through his pages? Writing? Impatience was not an option. Appel was paying the bills but as far as he was concerned Bruce could have all the time he needed. Eventually he’d look up, reach for his headphones, and say he was ready to record. Lahav would roll the tape and they’d begin again.

When I read a musical memoir or biography, I take frequent breaks to stream the music in question. Ames’s narrative has made me appreciate the musician and his band more deeply. I also have to say—as a person that once aspired to become a musician also—that I am dumbfounded by anyone that can write and then play their music without knowing how to read music, or assembling a score to help them recall it later. The same is true for band members that can hear a song and create their own accompaniment without benefit of a written score. As a youngster, I thought such an approach was stupid. Now I stand in awe of it.

If you’ve made it all the way through this review, the book will be a snap. If possible, read it in a time and place where you’ll be free of distraction. It’s worth it. Highly recommended.

Heartbreaker, by Mike Campbell and Ari Surdoval*****

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Mike Campbell is a musician and songwriter who served as Tom Petty’s lead guitarist and songwriting partner from the band’s inception until Petty’s death in 2017. I’m a sucker for a strong musical memoir when I can find it; although the galley for this book was available, I chose not to request it, instead using an audiobook from Seattle Bibliocommons. I didn’t want the pressure of a deadline. I wanted to be able to lose myself in Campbell’s story, to take unlimited side trips to stream songs that he refers to, either because I haven’t heard of the song and want to listen to it, or because he’s identified a song that I have loved for a long time and want to hear again.

Although I listened to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers from the late ‘80s onward, I was never one to follow the news about individual band members. In fact, before I read Warren Zanes’ biography of Petty, I didn’t even know who was in the band. I just knew that when I was in the car and I heard Petty’s voice on the radio, it was time to turn up the volume. And so I come to this memoir without any preconceived ideas, and also without a lot of prior knowledge. Sometimes when a luminary dies, people that have only known them peripherally come out of the woodwork with their stories, looking to make some quick money by inflating their own importance in that person’s life. Once I begin listening to Campbell—who narrates his own audiobook—I can see that this is definitely not that.

It’s also not a Tom-and-me kind of memoir. Petty appears in it of course, but this story is about Campbell, not about Petty, and once it gets rolling, I can tell that Campbell has plenty of interesting experiences worth hearing about independent of anyone else.

The audio takes me a little while to get used to. As it begins, I note the delivery that is nearly a monotone, and a less than fluid reading style. In a strange way, it reminds me of being in an elementary school classroom that’s doing round robin reading aloud. We have come to the student that doesn’t want to read aloud because he knows he won’t sound good. And just as I am thinking that surely for a book that has the kind of reach I expect it to have, they could have found a more engaging narrator, the penny drops, and I realize—oooh, this guy is reading his own book! That being the case, I resolve to stop being so picky and accept the author’s narrative style. Eventually I grow accustomed to it, and it’s a good thing, because I find Campbell’s experiences fascinating! What a lot these musicians endured in order to be heard. Hunger, homelessness, and the derision of their elders; broken down cars, unfriendly cops, and shifty bar owners that want the music, but don’t really want to pay for it. And I am so glad they persevered, because the world of rock and roll would have been so much poorer without them.

I strongly recommend this memoir to those that enjoy listening to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Carl Perkins, the King of Rockabilly, by Jeff Apter*****

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“’I had only three childhood idols,’ John [Lennon] would tell a friend. ‘Elvis, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis.’ Paul McCartney would go one step further: ‘If there were no Carl Perkins,’ he’d state, ‘there would be no Beatles.’”

When I saw this book, I felt a slight buzzing at the back of my mind. Huh. Carl Perkins. Have I heard of him? Sounds familiar, but…? And then I read the synopsis, which said that he wrote Blue Suede Shoes, and was the first one to perform it. I went to my streaming service and typed it in; since he wasn’t the one to have made the song iconic, I figured his rendition of it would sound lame. But no! No, it didn’t. So now I knew that I had to read this biography.

My thanks go to NetGalley and Kensington Books for the review copy. This book will be available tomorrow, November 26, 2024.

Perkins was born in 1932,  grew up the son of a Tennessee sharecropper, and starting at age 6, he worked in the cotton fields with his family all day, “from can to can’t.” Had he not, he and his family might have starved. This was a time when no governmental safety net existed, nor did child labor laws. The man who would become his closest friend, John Cash—who would perform and record as Johnny—lived in nearly identical circumstances across the Mississippi River in Arkansas. The only good aspect of this grueling life was the singing. His family sang with the other field laborers, who were mostly African American, and while still a child talked his father into purchasing a guitar.

Perkins was 21 years old when he went to Memphis, where Sam Phillips, founder of Sun Records, had advertised that he would record anyone, anywhere, any time. He had some original music that Phillips liked; not long afterward, he and his wife, Valda, heard his record on the radio. Perkins said, “Valda, she dropped the baby, and I like to fainted.”

Phillips had three other promising musicians signed, and they got to know one another well, sometimes performing together. The other men were Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, and Jerry Lee Lewis. The first two became Carl’s lifelong friends; Lewis was unpredictable, sometimes violent, and Perkins avoided him when he could. But on one occasion, when the four were together, Lewis complained that the three men with guitars could move around, whereas he was stuck at his piano. Perkins asked him whether he could play standing up, and suggested he “make a fuss” while he did it, advice which altered and improved Lewis’s career.

Perkins’s hit original song, “Blue Suede Shoes,” sold millions, and Perkins was on his way; but just as his momentum was growing, he and his brothers were in a serious car wreck and hospitalized. Once Perkins was able to play again, he felt that loyalty demanded he wait for his brothers—his bandmates—to heal. By the time they could play again, Elvis had also recorded the song, and his career was catapulted into the stratosphere. For a while it appeared that Perkins’s career was finished, but soon help came from an unlikely source: The Beatles wanted to meet him. They wanted to record his songs. They looked up to him as a mentor, and became his lifelong friends.

Reading about Perkins, I am amazed at his capacity to remain grounded and retain the values with which he was raised. Some men would have resented Elvis, but Perkins was delighted for him—and enjoyed the royalties when Presley recorded and performed Perkins’s music. How many men, raised in such horrifying poverty, would place family loyalty over fame and fortune? How many could be so reasonable? Perkins later said that when he saw Elvis perform, he could see why the man was rising so quickly. Elvis was immaculately turned out, and the girls went crazy for him. Perkins wasn’t much to look at, and he knew it, and he would never flirt with his audience, because “I was a married man.” And indeed, he remained faithful to Valda for all the decades of their lives together, and he counted himself lucky to have her. Meanwhile, the royalties from the Beatles, Elvis, and others enabled him to buy a modest but much loved house for himself, Valda, and their growing family, and later he would be able to do the same for his parents. And as it happened, his career as a performer was not dead, only sleeping.

I have read many musicians’ biographies and memoirs, and all of them had greater name recognition than Perkins; but from what I can see, Perkins was the most decent person among them. This is not to detract from others, but seriously…what a nice guy!

Meanwhile, author Jeff Apter writes in an intimate, conversational way that makes this book surprisingly hard to put down, and his research is beyond reproach. Highly recommended.

Elvis and Me, by Priscilla Presley****

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Priscilla Presley is the ex-wife of the king of Rock and Roll. I was a teenager when he died, and neither I nor most of my peers were fans; in the event his name did come up, we’d invariably ask, “Wait. Do you mean young hot Elvis, or old pudgy Elvis?” But I do love a good memoir, and those written by or about musicians are high on my list. My thanks go to Net Galley and Macmillan Audio for the review copy. This audio version of the author’s 1985 memoir is for sale now.

The relationship between Priscilla and Elvis took place in a completely different time, with completely different sexual mores and assumptions. That said, this was still a truly messed up pairing. Today, Elvis would probably be considered a predator, but within the context of the American South in the 1950s and early 1960s, he was regarded as a romantic, and women threw themselves at his feet. A quick online peek at old film and television clippings says it all.

Priscilla grew up in a strict but loving household. Her stepfather, the only father she knew, since her own died when she was an infant, was a military man, and so the family moved often. It was while they were stationed in Germany that one of Elvis’s employees saw Priscilla and invited her to meet with Elvis, who was doing his own tour of duty.

I have to feel for the bind her parents were in. On the one hand, she was just fourteen years old, and Presley was twenty-four, a grown man. On the other hand, if they refused to let her go, she would never have forgiven them; this was an invitation that literally millions of girls yearned for. Seeking a happy medium, her stepdad set boundaries: they were to be chaperoned, never alone together, and he wanted her home at a certain time. He groused about the fact that someone other than Elvis would be transporting her, but the reason was a legitimate one: Elvis could not drive himself anywhere without the car being mobbed. It was genuinely unsafe.

Rather than being the single event that the family anticipated, Elvis made their visits regular ones; when her parents balked, Elvis spoke to them personally, turning all of his charismatic charm on them, and telling them everything they wanted to hear. Most of it was untrue, of course, but the one thing he adhered to was not having sexual intercourse. During this time period, the Madonna-Whore dichotomy was alive and well, and any girl or woman known to have sex outside of marriage was likely to be ostracized by former friends and in some cases, family. It’s hard to imagine now, but at that time, no birth control pill had been invented, and a pregnancy outside of marriage was likely to ruin a young woman’s entire life.

Priscilla reads this memoir to us herself, and that makes it much more fun to hear. As we age our faces and our bodies change a lot, but our speaking voices change very little. Remembering some of the silly moments from that time, the author lets out a brief, girlish giggle, and it’s almost impossible to believe that she is now a grandmother.

Priscilla acknowledges that this was a monstrously unequal relationship. Elvis dictated whom she could talk to, what she wore, and sometimes even what room in the house she was supposed to be in. At one point, when he is going to be touring for months on end and she will be left at home with his grandmother, she goes out and gets a job. She’s so proud of herself. He makes her quit immediately. When he phones from the road, she had by God better be there. Priscilla compares this to Pygmalion. He has all the power, and she is in his thrall before she has even had a chance to grow up.

I have read two other Elvis biographies, and as dreadful as all of this sounds, the other authors were less gentle. In fact, this is part of Priscilla’s stated reason for deciding to tell her own story.

There are advantages to reading this particular biography. The official version of events is often what is published, but Priscilla is positioned to know the real story, more often than not. For example: when Elvis is drafted, the official story is that, although stars of his caliber are often offered soft assignments that involve singing to the troops, or making inspirational training films, Elvis insisted on doing the same job as every other American man.  On the other hand, Priscilla states that this is all his manager’s doing, because it will make Elvis appear noble. Enough new songs were taped in advance for there to be regular new releases on the radio throughout his tour of duty; toward the end, Elvis feigns illness because he’d prefer to be in the hospital being swarmed by nurses than marching around and getting dirty.

Her memory of Elvis, despite everything he put her through, is mostly a tender one. The spiral that led to his death, his issues with mental health, back before much was known, coupled with the immense number of strong prescription drugs he used to wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night—or to NOT go to sleep at all, and just stay up, night after night—set him up for relationships with unscrupulous characters, and nobody could rein him in, because he was the King.

Recommended to those that like vintage rock music or well-written memoirs of famous musicians.

The Confidence Men, by Margalit Fox****

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This stranger-than-fiction story of two World War I captives, one an English officer, the other Australian, that trick their way out of a Turkish prison camp via a long, elaborate con centered on a Ouija board is compelling and at times, funny as hell. My thanks go to Net Galley and Random House for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

The beginning is grim; grim enough that I abandon this story twice before ordering the audio version from Seattle Bibliocommons to help me get over the hump. There’s torture, deprivation, and every ugly thing that the notion of an enemy prison brings to mind. I am especially horrified because I thought this book was going to be funny! Reader, it is, but you have to get past the grim and at times, dull beginning to get to the amusing bits. Somewhere between the fifteenth and twentieth percentiles, the shift occurs, and that’s when you can expect to enjoy yourself. You may want to skim a bit through this part; I do, and it works out well.

Harry Jones was an attorney before the Great War commenced; Cedric Hill was an Aussie auto mechanic. Once captured, the two have no chance at all making a conventional escape; the camp is too isolated for either of them to get anywhere, even if they were able to leave. Instead, what they have is nothing but time, and ultimately, that and their excellent imaginations and problem-solving skills, aided by some genuinely stupid captors, is what saves them.

The most impressive aspect of their scheme is that it takes place over a very long period of time. Not many con artists would be able to keep their story straight for so long. Jones and Hill have a great deal of self-discipline and organizational skill. Also, they’re afraid, and fear can improve one’s consistency and attention to detail. Once the meat of the story begins, it is absolutely riveting!

I flipped back and forth between my digital galley and the audio version. Both are equally good, but I would give a slight edge to the audio version, assuming the reader is primarily seeking entertainment. For a researcher, the print version is better for keeping details and sources straight.

Recommended to those that enjoy history and intelligent humor.

All We Are Saying, by David Sheff*****

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This is a digital reprint of the last interview of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, two days before John was murdered on December 8, 1980. David Sheff is a journalist and also a die-hard fan of the Lennon’s. Lucky me, I read it free. Thanks go to Net Galley and St. Martin’s Press for the review copy. It’s for sale now.

This interview is a treasure trove for anyone interested in John Lennon, Yoko Ono, or the Beatles. 192 pages makes for a short book, but as interviews go, it’s a whopper. Lennon and Ono were about to release an album together, and so when Playboy requested an interview, they consented. The most wonderful thing about it is that because of the format, nearly everything is a direct quotation of either John’s or Yoko’s. Nobody knew during the course of the interview, which took multiple days, that John would be shot to death by a stranger two days later.

It makes for interesting reading. There are passages I love and others that make me see red, but I am not irritated with the author, who’s done a bang-up job, but rather, in places, at things said by his subjects. Most of it is tremendously entertaining. And in some places, it is almost unbearably poignant. At the outset, John makes a comment, almost off the cuff, about how the way to be really famous as an artist is to die in public, which he surely isn’t planning to do. Later, he quotes someone that says it’s better to burn out than to rust, and he says he disagrees, that “It’s better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out.” And he notes that he has another forty years or so of productivity ahead of him.

Lennon was a happy man when this interview took place. He’d been a “house husband,” staying home and taking care of Sean, their son, although they acknowledge that it’s easier to do that when there’s a nanny available anytime he needs to go out for some reason, and someone else that will clean the house and so forth. Ono, on the other hand, is the one who’s handling their finances, and it’s a princely fortune at that.

And to me, the most interesting aspect of this interview isn’t him, it’s her. I was a child in elementary school when John left his first wife and married Yoko, but I remember the virulent, nasty things that appeared in the media. Those that don’t think any progress has been registered regarding race and gender should look through some archives. And John comments that the press treated their relationship as if he were “some wondrous mystic prince from the rock world dabbling with this strange Oriental woman.”

Ono said, “I handled the business…my own accountant and my own lawyer could not deal with the fact that I was telling them what to do…”

 John continued that there was “…an attitude that this is John’s wife, but surely she can’t really be representing him…they’re all male, you know, just big and fat, vodka lunch, shouting males…Recently she made them about five million dollars and they fought and fought not to let her do it because it was her idea and she’s not a professional. But she did it, and then one of the guys said to her, ‘Well, Lennon does it again.’ But Lennon didn’t have anything to do with it.”

There’s a lot that gets said about the women’s movement and all of it is wonderful. Once in awhile John holds forth about something he knows nothing about (anthropology and the early role of women) and he makes an ass of himself. He may have been more enlightened than most men, but he still hadn’t learned to acknowledge that there were some things he just didn’t know.

There are passages that make me grind my teeth, and all of them have to do with wealth in one way or another. Ono is from a ruling class Japanese banking family, and the airy things she and John say about being rich make me want to hit a wall. People shouldn’t pick on them for being wealthy. And oh my goodness, when Sheff mildly suggests that John and the other former Beatles surrender and do a single reunion concert for charity, his response is horrifying. He points out that the concert for Bangladesh that George Harrison roped them into doing turned out to raise no money at all for the cause because all of it went to red tape and lawsuits; ouch! But the truly obnoxious bit is when he whines about how the world just expects too much of him. He wants to know, “Do we have to divide the fish and the loaves for the multitudes again? Do we have to get crucified again? We are not there to save the fucking world.”

The part that makes me laugh is when Ono describes how The Beatles broke up at about the same time she and John got together: “What happened with John is that I sort of went to bed with this guy that I liked and suddenly the next morning I see these three guys standing there with resentful eyes.”

Those that are curious about Lennon and Ono, or that are interested in rock and roll history, should get this interview and read it. There’s a good deal of discussion about the roots of the music, and about the music he made that the radio never played. There’s a good deal here that I surely never knew. For these readers, I highly recommend this book.

Petty, by Warren Zanes*****

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pettyI posted this review almost two years ago, and at the time most of us considered that Petty had a lot of gas left in his tank. Of all the musical memoirs and biographies I have read–and there are many–this is the one I loved best. The loss of this plucky badass rocker hit me harder than the death of any public figure since Robin Williams died, so reposting this here is my way of saying goodbye to him. Hope he’s learning to fly.

Petty, by Warren Zanes*****

Infinite Tuesday, by Michael Nesmith****

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Michael Nesmith is a veteran of the entertainment industry, but his name is most recognizable as the wool-beanie-wearing member of The Monkees. Nesmith has a treasure trove of experience and insight, and he’s very articulate. I really enjoyed this memoir, and if American musical and cultural history interest you, I recommend you get a copy when it comes out April 18, 2017. Thanks go to Net Galley and Crown Archetype for the DRC, which I received free of charge in exchange for this honest review.

Nesmith came of age in Texas, the child of a single hardworking mother, and was mentored by the profane elderly Uncle Chick, whose spoken cadence Nesmith would later find in his own sense of musical rhythm. Because Texas was the exclusive province, at the time, of country and gospel music, Michael and his pregnant girlfriend loaded themselves and Mike’s guitar into his mother’s car and took off for Los Angeles. It proved to be a good move.

Those that cannot remember the birth of rock and roll have no idea how polarizing it was. The cliché term “generation gap” represented a genuine source of friction and alienation in a lot of families; some parents decided that rock was not an art form but instead a type of devil worship. Some disowned their children over it and didn’t take them back later. I’m serious. And so when Nesmith credits his mother for her patience and forbearance—he actually didn’t ask if he could take her only car, for instance—he’s not just being gracious. Here, let him tell you:

 

It was unthinkable to everyone who had just fought World War II that the music…the whole cultural imperative of the victorious warriors would be torn down by their kids as if it were ugly curtains in the den.

 

Soon Nesmith would be chosen as a member of The Monkees, which catapulted four little-known young men to instant fame; Nesmith recalls that although seventeen to twenty-year-old Beatles fans were incensed by the TV imitation, the nine to twelve-year-old television kids—of which this reviewer was one—saw them as a fact:

What followed was what Nesmith calls “Celebrity Psychosis”, a sense of disproportion and entitlement caused by instant stardom, obsequious handlers, and bizarre social circumstances. He humorously recounts strange experiences, such as singing at a local school and being pursued by screaming adolescent girls, and being “sighted” shopping in a grocery store.

He recalls his experience as John Lennon’s house guest in London, and he cites Jimi Hendrix as the best rocker that ever lived. He also drops a rather nasty slam at Bob Dylan without any real explanation, and I confess that is part of the missing fifth star. What the hell?

Bette Nesmith, Michael’s late mother, invented Liquid Paper while he entered show business, and her fortune helped finance some of his creative products. Nesmith was a pioneer in the field of country rock as well as the music video. He produced movies and won a Grammy for “Elephant Parts”, an early music video:

 

He is also an ardent feminist, and his recollections show that he was one before it was cool. Thank you, Mr. Nesmith.

I have to admit that I find the first half of the memoir more interesting than the second half. The author goes on in the latter half of the book to speak at length about his spiritual experiences with Christian Science and the ways in which wealth distorts a person’s character, though he recognizes the latter doesn’t garner a lot of sympathy.  “Never complain about the air-conditioning a private jet.” He also does a lot of brow-beating about having stolen a friend’s wife, and attributes the failure of that marriage—his second, or his third maybe—to guilt.

Despite the aspects that I didn’t enjoy, I do recommend this memoir, because it eloquently describes a wide, enormously dynamic period in American film, music, and television. Nesmith unspools the last half of the 19th century with the wisdom of his experience, and it’s a perspective completely unlike any other I have seen.
Recommended for those with an interest in contemporary American cultural history, as well as to fans of Nesmith and The Monkees.

Petty, by Warren Zanes*****

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pettyOh my my, oh hell yes! If Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers is a band that lights your fire, you have to read this biography, which comes out Tuesday, November 10. You’ll be happiest if you can do it near a source of music, and the very best of all is to be near a desktop or other screen where you can view and hear the music videos as you read about their inception. Petty made it big just as I graduated from high school. By the time my first-born entered elementary school, I had a backseat full of little kids who bounced their heads along to the unquestionable rhythm of his music playing on the radio. And right about now I am supposed to tell you that I got this DRC free for an honest review, courtesy of Net Galley and Henry Holt Publishers.

Zanes has really done his homework here, interviewing Petty extensively, and also interviewing members of the band past and present, as well as other musicians (Stevie Nicks foremost among them) with whom he occasionally partnered. This was my first exposure to the Traveling Wilburys, a superstar group formed just for the sheer joy of it and consisting of George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, and Jim Keltner. Well, here:

and after Orbison died, his chair was represented in the circle, with his guitar (I assume it’s his anyway):

Petty’s story is one of the ultimate success in spite of everything. Born into the kind of messed up, abusive, impoverished Southern home that America’s shot-to-hell social work system can’t even begin to repair, with a father that got along better with alligators than children and a mother who was stricken with both cancer and epilepsy, Petty was ready to get the hell away from the swampland and Florida immediately if not sooner. Petty tried school several times, but English (oh yeah, poetry right?) and art were the only courses that held any magic for him. He had one marketable skill, and unlimited ambition. As it happens, that was plenty.

If you want to read his story, this is the place to get it. Zanes has filled it with lots of vignettes, some of which are very funny. When a particular episode or situation is remembered differently by different musicians, producers and what have you, he tells what each has to say.

What you won’t find much here is his family, and that is oddly appropriate. Petty himself recognizes that when a guy is a professional musician doing the album cycle—write the songs, record the songs, make whatever changes need to get made, release the album, then go on tour to promote the album, and come back and do it all over again—family just gets left out. His first wife Jane developed some serious problems with chemical dependency and mental illness, and he experienced serious guilt over leaving their two daughters with her, but what else was there to do? Taking them on the road wouldn’t exactly be a healthy environment. Even if he quit making music, who’d pay the bills then? And so it went. So his elder daughter Adria puts in her two cents here and there, but mostly this is a story of Tom’s life as a musician. But reading about Jane’s addiction issues and then watching this video gave me chills (not great for small children, if you have them near you):

There aren’t really any slow parts to this biography; the least interesting to me were the various bands he formed or joined prior to his success as a soloist and then as the leader of the Heartbreakers.

That much said, this is the first, the VERY first time this reviewer (and all the reviews on this site are mine) has ever gone back to read a galley a second time before reviewing it, not because I didn’t get enough notes (oy, the notes!) but because it was just so much fun to follow Petty’s music and read the stories behind the songs.

If you don’t like Tom Petty, I question why you are even still reading my review. But if you’re a fan, this is a great bio to read, intimate without being tawdry or prurient, carefully researched, tightly organized. I am glad I didn’t have to edit it, because he probably had a mountain of extra information that was either cut or not included in the first place. But from anyone that loves good rock and roll, it’s uplifting and absorbing.

The ultimate holiday gift for someone close to you that loves Petty’s music would be his giant discography, the Traveling Wilburys DVD and CD, perhaps the documentary (which is on my own Christmas list), and this book. Rock and roll forever!

MJ: The Genius of Michael Jackson, by Steve Knopper****

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MJthegeniusofmichaeljacksonJackson was a musical prodigy whose talent was almost limitless. His brilliant career was derailed by scandal, and his final 50 city tour was aborted by his death the night before it was to commence. Knopper does the best job of objectively recounting Jackson’s life and death that I have seen so far. His portrait is intimate without being prurient. Thanks go to Net Galley and Scribner for the DRC, which I received in exchange for this honest review.

Jackson was born in the 1950’s, a time when the race barrier kept Black performers from being seen by a general audience, with only the rarest exceptions. Black folks could play music for Black folks, and nobody else. The family was terribly poor, with eight or nine people crowded into a house better suited to three or four. They lived in Gary, a steel town in which Black poverty was more the rule than the exception. His father was a struggling musician until it became obvious that his sons had inherited his talent plus some. By the time Michael was five years old, he was the charismatic center of the Jackson Five, who soon were contracted to Motown, the center of African-American music in the USA.

Knopper explains how the family’s progression from a Motown act, where they were not allowed to actually play their own instruments on stage and could not use music they wrote themselves; to an independent family act, apart from one son who chose to remain with Motown; to the final day when Michael got himself an agent and a lawyer and set out on his own, divorcing his family so that he could have full control over a solo act. Until he was independent, iconic creations such as Thriller and Smooth Criminal would most likely never have been launched. And he recounts the family drama that ensued, with bodyguards pulling guns to discourage Michael’s angry brothers when they tried to force their way past the gates of his estate, shouting that he owed them money.

As a fan of excellent music and performance, I was sucked into the maelstrom produced by the press both during his life and afterward. It’s embarrassing to admit how completely I was played. For years I would not permit Jackson’s music to be played in my home because I thought he was a sick creep who used his fame to gain private, inappropriate contact with smooth-faced young boys. Somehow it escaped me that he had never been proved guilty in a court of law; on the one hand, it made sense to pay one family off in order to take the heat off his career, and Knopper documents the advice experienced, famous musicians gave Jackson to do whatever he had to do to shut that shit down so he could go back to focusing on music. But the press was merciless, and the payoff, which came too late to do damage control effectively, was portrayed as a tacit admission of guilt. And I bought it.

A few months after Jackson’s death, I was in a hotel room on vacation with my family, and my youngest son, who is Black, turned on the television, and there was the second round that Knopper documents, the round of memorial tributes that brought a lump to one’s throat as we saw Jackson’s miraculous career unspooled. He pioneered music videos in so many ways I had failed to appreciate, and he employed so many Black musicians that might never have had a steady job, while at the same time reaching out to Caucasian performers as well, creating a bridge between Black music and Caucasian sounds, transitioning from disco-like R and B to the “King of Pop”. I was horrified at the way I had misjudged him.

About a year ago, I read Michael Jackson’s memoir, Moonwalk, and while I took parts of it with a grain of salt, I also came to believe that the guy just didn’t know what was socially appropriate at times because he had never had a normal childhood. I was sold. Poor Michael.

Knopper has a more realistic take on all this. He certainly should; he used over 450 sources, and he wasn’t anybody’s mouthpiece. And so the truth turns out to be more complicated.

What left me somewhat stunned, in the end, was not the sex scandal, and it wasn’t the postmortem resurrection of Jackson as some sort of musical saint. Instead, I was absolutely floored at the number of people that worked for the guy, some of them for a lot of years, who he left without paychecks for weeks, then months on end. Jackson had a tremendous load of debt, was on the verge of bankruptcy and was saved only by his investment in song publishing, a piece of advice given him by friend Paul McCartney that he had followed through on. Yet he continued to buy one extreme luxury estate after another, holding residences he would likely never use again, shopping extravagantly (the example of taking a new friend shopping and telling him to do it “like this”, as he swept entire shelves of merchandise into his cart, astounded me) while leaving his employees, regular working folk with bills to pay for the most part, with no paychecks. There was money for shopping, but not for them, and some of them took him to court for it. It made me a bit sick. This man knew what it was like to be poor, and he knew what hunger was like, but as long as he didn’t have to see the people that he had betrayed, he could continue to play out the Peter Pan thread, irresponsibly trashing the lives of those he had told they could count on him, then leaving them with empty wallets and eviction notices.

Maybe you think I have over-shared. I have news; this is only the tip of the iceberg. If you have followed this review all the way to its conclusion, you will like this book. It is available for purchase October 20.