Tag Archives: Rock and Roll

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.

Deliver Me from Nowhere, by Warren Zanes*****

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I’m a diehard Springsteen fan and also loved Zanes’s biography of Tom Petty, and so when I saw this book, I was all in. My thanks go to Net Galley and Crown Books for the review copy; this book is for sale now.

Springsteen, yes; but why Nebraska, of all albums? Nebraska just may be the one song that leaves me cold. In the early portion of this story, I wasn’t as enthused as I expected to be, but as the narrative moved forward, I totally got it. Nebraska was written and performed during a crisis period in Bruce’s life. He had grown up in horrible, grinding poverty, and now suddenly he had all this fame and money. On the outside, his life was looking mighty good, but inside, the walls were crumbling. He was clinically depressed, sometimes suicidal, having never dealt with the traumas of his formative years. He rented himself a farmhouse and went there by himself to write songs and tape some demos. He took no friends or family, nor his band; he took one guy along to see to his creature comforts, and that guy’s second job was to be invisible. For most of the book I was convinced that the farmhouse was in Nebraska; nope. New Jersey. And it seems that my lack of enthusiasm for this music was not atypical:

“Nebraska was going to ask a lot of the listeners. If they loved Springsteen for the sliver of hope and possibility of redemption his songs offered, they were out of luck with Nebraska. If they loved the sound of the E Street Band and the way Springsteen led the group, that, too, was gone. If they loved the way he produced and arranged the songs into recordings rich in dynamics, nope, it wasn’t there in the same way…This was the sound of a man forcing out songs while held under water, a rough hand on his neck.”  

The album’s structured to tell the story of murderer Charles Starkweather and his accomplice, Caril Fulgate. He tells the story without judgment, and considers the characters to be a pivotal part of his work.

Here’s the fun part. As Springsteen wrote and recorded the songs, one after another, right there in the master bedroom of the house he was renting, he didn’t worry about any of the finer points of recording, because these were essentially supposed to be demos. For musicians that don’t read or write music in the formal manner, the demos are critical. How will you remember the song you came up with when it’s time to put the album together? You need a recording. So there was Bruce, perched on the end of the bed, with the water damaged Panasonic boom box nearby. He pops in a cassette and commences recording. He writes prolifically, practically vomiting up song, after song, after song. Sometimes you can’t feel better until you get it all out of your system, right?  

But later on, when it’s time to do the mixing and whatever technical processes usually go into a professional recording—which Zanes describes in an easy to follow manner—nothing works. After trying every imaginable method, they end up publishing the music on the cassette, exactly as he recorded it.

Those that want the full story of Springsteen’s life should read his autobiography, Born to Run, which is excellent. But there’s a lot to recommend this smaller little slice of the least known part of this rock and roll icon’s life. For those that love Springsteen’s music, and for those interested in rock music in general, or the technical side of recording, this book is highly recommended.

Falling Onto Cotton, by Matthew E. Wheeler*****

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“This is the most famous thing to happen in Milwaukee since Laverne and Shirley got cancelled.”

Chance McQueen is a musician and restauranteur, an honest man doing his level best to tiptoe around the morass of organized crime that exists around him without getting his toes wet. It isn’t easy. His ancient Uncle Vinny is the local don, and he’s dying. Chance has told him many times that he would prefer to avoid this part of the family business, but he’s been dreaming. Uncle Vinny has stage four lung cancer, and he summons his nephew to share some hard truths:  “It’s simple. Either you take over the family before I’m dead, or Frank will have you killed before my body’s cold…Charles, when did you ever get what you want?”

This oddly charming debut came to me free and early, and my thanks for the review copy go to Net Galley and M.D.R. Publishing. This book is for sale now.

Wheeler’s debut reads as if scribed by a seasoned novelist, and he introduces a lively collection of memorable characters. He serves as mentor and father figure to Winnie, a dapper young man that has it bad for a sweet young thing named Alex; Geoff, his best buddy, who is Black and gay, and endlessly loyal; a homeless veteran living behind the restaurant, who is never a caricature; and Chance’s nemesis, Frank Bartallatas: “Frank Bartallatas was pure evil in a massive frame. More than one little fish had disappeared after swimming too close to Mr. Bartallatas.”

The story is set in 1990, and each of the agreeably brief chapters is headed with the title of a rock song from the 1970s and 80s, which is a portent of what the chapter brings. I like this guy’s playlist, and I stopped reading more than once to add his songs to my own collection.

Here are the things I like most, apart from the playlist: I like the strong, resonant characters, which are well enough developed that they are easy to keep straight; the setting, which hasn’t been overused by other writers, and is a credible choice; the selective use of violence, which cannot be left out of a story like this, but never feels excessive, sickening, or prurient; and the pacing, which never flags. In addition, I like the mobster aspect of this story, an angle that we aren’t seeing much in new fiction.

I have no serious complaints, but if I could change anything here, there are two things I’d tweak: First, Geoff practically can’t have a conversation with Chance without making awkward race jokes, and Caucasians that spend time with African-American people will tell you that never happens, no matter how close you are; and second, the alcoholic protagonist is becoming trite, so I’d either let Chance kick his habit without a protracted, detail-laden struggle, or I’d just let the guy drink. Chance’s dead fiancée is enough hubris all by herself. But clearly these are minor concerns, or this wouldn’t be a five star review.

This rock solid debut signifies great things to come from this author, and a little birdie tells me that there may be future novels featuring Chance McQueen. My advice to you is to get in on the ground floor of this series-to-be, because it’s going to be unmissable. Highly recommended.

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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infinitetues

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!

Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir, by Linda Ronstadt***-****

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simpledreamsI came of age just as Ronstadt’s career exploded. I was eighteen years old, headed down a winding staircase in the administrative building at Portland State University, when I first heard the song “Blue Bayou”. I was a music major at the time myself; her haunting vocals literally stopped me in my tracks. Fortunately, no one else wanted to use the staircase just then, because I could not move until the song was over. After it ended, I accosted fellow students going about their business, saying, “Excuse me”—pointing to the speakers through which music was piped into the common areas—“but who was that?” They looked at me like I was crazy. Who was who? What? They hadn’t been paying attention to the music.

Later, of course, I learned that the song was performed by Linda Ronstadt, and right away, I knew I had to have that platter. And when I saw that Ronstadt, by now a musical icon holding the record as the only female artist to have four consecutive platinum albums, had published a memoir, I knew I had to have that too. Sadly, I had barely begun collecting galleys and reading them to review, and I missed out. Happily, the Seattle Public Library came to my rescue. I got this book there, and I rate it 3.5 stars rounded up.

I finished reading the memoir about a week ago, and was impressed in some ways, ambivalent in others. What is it about musicians and other entertainers that makes their admirers want to gobble them up, body and soul? How much of her personal life is an entertainer morally obligated to share if she is publishing a memoir and wants the public to pony up what, in these times, is often the only disposable income a retired member of the Boomer generation may have in a given month?

Here’s what I came away with. Ronstadt tells us, right there in the title, that this is not going to be a prurient, tell-all bloodletting. She is giving us the history of her musical life, and that’s what she is giving us, period. And I think the unhappy reviews I have seen from many other reviewers, together with my own strange dissatisfaction when I turned the final page, comes not from her failure to give out personal information, but from her inconsistency in doing so.

As the memoir begins, she provides abundant personal details of her early life, filled with some really funny anecdotes. We see her born into a middle class, very musical family, with her sister turning to her brother and commenting on four-year-old sibling Linda: “I think we got a soprano here.” We read about her forming “mud huaraches” in the hot desert so as to go barefoot without burning her feet, and many, many anecdotes that have nothing, nothing, nothing at all to do with music. And so we bond with her, not just as a performer, but as a person, and we develop the expectation that we will at least hear the broad contours of her personal life and maybe some more fun anecdotes as her mainly-musical memoir progresses.

Before I go any further, I also have to say that she is a strong writer; no ghosts needed here. And her keen intelligence lights the pages as she takes us down her musical pathways.

Even in the 2000’s, women in the music industry have not reached parity with male performers; Ronstadt takes us back, back, back to the days of folk rock, and to a conversation she had with Janis Joplin at a venue where they would both be performing:

“Because of the phenomenal success of artists like the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan,
earthy funk was God, and the female performers in the folk pop genre were genuinely
confused about how to present themselves. Did we want to be nurturing, stay-at-home
earth mothers who cooked and nursed babies, or did we want to be funky mamas
at the Troubador bar, our boot heels to be wandering an independent course
just like our male counterparts? We didn’t know.”

Those with a strong interest in vocal music—not just as listeners, but as individuals who have studied the craft—will find her memoir more satisfying than those that just enjoy tapping the steering wheel while her songs fill the family car. I had already noted the problems with phrasing in her early work, and was gratified as I read the progression of her training. I was, and am still, dumbstruck by the professional risks she took. She had an established career, and yet dared to venture into areas of music where no one was making money. She had a solid country rock pedigree, yet decided to record orchestral, old-school music with Nelson Riddle. She performed in Pirates of Penzance, and you can bet she knew the finer points of musicianship by then! She released mariachi music, and it sold like crazy.

But the book’s ending feels tremendously abrupt. I respected the way she referred briefly, toward the middle of the book, to her liaison with Californian governor Jerry Brown (“keeping regular company”), and the fact that she didn’t drag us through their affair seemed appropriately modest to me; the woman isn’t a name-dropper, and her own editors had to tell her to put more musicians and fewer horses into her memoir before publishing it.

But at the end, she mentions staying at home with her two small children and we have no clue where they came from. Did she marry? Did she adopt? We don’t need all of the most intimate ends and outs of her personal relationships or her decision to become a mother, but she could toss us a paragraph or two. Even had she handled these more personal aspects of her later life as she did her relationship with Brown, with a mention here and a segue there, the entire thing would have flowed better, leaving the reader more satisfied, and less likely to feel, in some odd way, cheated.

Should you pay the full jacket price for this memoir? I guess it depends how deep your pockets are, and how much you enjoy a conversation that is, more than anything, the history of Ronstadt’s musical career, and those she knew professionally as a side bar of sorts. There was a time in my own life when I thought nothing of stopping by my favorite bookstore and coming out loaded down with bags of books. I bought anything I wanted, as long as each selection was under a particular dollar amount. Some teachers went on ski vacations or cruises, I figured; some smoked and drank, spending great sums in that manner; and as for me, all I wanted was a decadent chocolate bar and a vast trove of paperbacks. It didn’t seem so much to ask, while I was earning a professional’s salary.

These days it’s different. My pockets are a lot lighter, and I have much greater access to books I don’t have to pay for. So for me, this was a splendid library find, but I think I would have been put out if I’d spent jacket price on the memoir that sort of peters out at the end, with no satisfying resolution.

In the end, this book is recommended for those with a strong interest in the professional development of Linda Ronstadt, and of the genre of country rock. Those looking for a more personal glimpse will likely have to wait for an unauthorized biography to pop up.

Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley, by Peter Guralnick *****

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CarelessloveThis is the second volume of the definitive biography of Elvis Presley, renowned as the king of rock and roll. The first volume is Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley, which I have also reviewed. Biographer Guralnick spent 11 years with Presley, and he conducted hundreds of interviews in order to create a fond but balanced portrait of this key figure in American musical history. If you are going to read an Elvis bio, this is the one.

I came to read this through a combination of opportunity combined with respect for that historical role of this legendary musical figure. I was born too late to be much of an Elvis fan; he was falling fast as I was coming of age. By the time I was old enough to really hone my musical tastes, he had become a caricature who was mocked by stand up comedians. It was only recently, when I ran across the first volume in a used bookstore that I began to take a serious look at his career. I had read over 300 biographies and memoirs, and it seemed to me that anyone that takes contemporary musical history seriously ought to at least have a look at it, and so I did. I was amazed to find that before his tragic decline and death, he had enjoyed two decades of unparalleled success, outselling even The Beatles at one point. The first volume chronicled his rise to fame, and it was a lot more fun to read. This one is a like reading about the Titanic; it’s too huge to be ignored, but you know it isn’t going to end well.

Whenever I read a music bio, particularly of someone I did not follow closely, I get online and find the songs that are mentioned most often. As I read this one I moved from the book to my desktop and back again, checking out some of his work on YouTube…and I actually purchased one song, because it was catchy.

This volume takes up the life of our musician following his service during World War II. In Germany, he had met Priscilla Beaulieu, who was still in high school. Elvis was, for all his celebrity, not a real mature fellow, and she was just what he needed. He enjoyed her company while being careful not to break any US or military laws, nor damage either of their reputations. He wondered whether the American public would have forgotten him when he came back to the States, but thanks to the Colonel, his non-military manager who adopted the nickname for fun, he was very much in the mind of America’s teens.

“Colonel” Tom Parker was a real piece of work, a cold, calculating capitalist who would shove paperwork under the nose of Elvis’s grieving father the very day Elvis was buried lest the licensing of his image and music be usurped. Guralnick also gives a fair amount of detail to this old-school huckster, who nevertheless helped keep Presley’s musical career afloat for decades.

Elvis’s descent into the world of addiction and depression is a terrible thing to read about. Following the death of his mother, Gladys, who was the center of Elvis’s life, he struggled with insomnia. Though Guralnick never actually says as much, I got the feeling that he was afraid of the dark, and afraid of death. At night he always had a good-sized crowd of good ol’ boys ready to hang out with him at Graceland, rent the nearby movie theater during its off-hours for their private enjoyment, or enjoy the local entertainment when he traveled. Only when the sun rose did he sleep. And like so many celebrities that rose to fame before adulthood, he soon sank into a dark place where he had to travel with his pet physician, who would feed him Demerol and numerous other heavy-duty, hospital-grade drugs when there was nothing the matter with him that a decent diet and some exercise could not probably have cured, at first anyway.

The last years of Presley’s life were strange, and before he left us they became stranger. He did a lot of things commonly associated with bipolar disorder (my term, not the author’s): he couldn’t just buy a fancy car for his wife or girlfriend, but had to buy one for each of the guys, and then another for their wives. He bought houses for himself, and then he bought houses for others. He bought diamonds for himself, and each of the closer members of his entourage was given a giant diamond custom-set into a pendant with “TCB”, for “Taking Care of Business”, with his own signature lightning bolt all spelled out in smaller diamonds. He needed a ranch, so he needed a horse; then each of the guys needed a horse; they each needed a mobile home on the ranch and a truck to drive while they were there…and so it went. Vernon, Elvis’s father, was in charge of paying the bills, but when Elvis’s spending spun out of control, Elvis didn’t want to hear what his father had to say about it. He knew he was making money hand over fist, and the notion that he might truly go broke didn’t compute. Toward the end, as his life became more desperate, he decided he needed an airplane, customized inside so he could sleep while on board, and then he decided to buy one for the Colonel too.

It wasn’t just his spending that was bizarre. He developed a fixation on law enforcement, and he wanted to be a special private agent for the government so that he could turn in celebrities that used illegal drugs. (The irony would have been entirely lost on him, even had anyone had the guts to point it out.) He wanted a meeting with J. Edgar Hoover, and sent him an obsequious letter calling him the country’s greatest American. It didn’t work. He collected cop badges from departments in the cities where he performed; a few turned him down, but usually he could get them to give him one by cranking up the pressure while turning on the charm…and of course, as always, he gave a lot of gifts.

Then he decided to go to Washington D.C., and a desperate President Nixon, who had been spurned by nearly every celebrity musician and actor he’d ever had his people approach, invited him in and got him the badge he wanted.

But then, what’s a badge without the gun? Presley’s gun collection, together with his unsafe habits, sometimes firing a gun while he was personally loaded with a bellyful of narcotics just to get people’s attention in his home, frightened away the women that were in his life during and following his marriage to Priscilla and the birth of his daughter, Lisa Marie.

It just makes you want to sit down and cry.

The one time I visited New York City, I got a garrulous cab driver and asked if he had driven for celebrities. Indeed he had. There were some that were very rude to him, but he said Elvis Presley was a really respectful man, a true pleasure to drive around.

If you have never heard this legendary man’s music, get on YouTube or the streaming source of your choice and check out some of his work. Musically he was a genius, perhaps a savant, and that remained true for over a decade after he had served in the military. His place in musical history cannot be contested.

If you have a strong interest in music history and/or biographies, get this book, together with its companion mentioned above. It may be out of print, but used copies are not hard to come by. And keep a box of tissues nearby; this is one of the saddest endings you can imagine. A great legacy in spite of everything, and a tremendous tragedy.

Billy Joel, by Fred Schruers *****

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BbillyJoelilly Joel is a legend. He has rocked this world from Leningrad to London, from Tokyo to New Orleans. His working class roots and his family’s history as survivors of Nazi Germany have kept a boxer’s spring in his step, on stage and in the wider world. Pretension irritates him, and he can spot it a mile away. And all of these aspects of who he is, together with an innate musical sense, have created some of the best songs this world will ever see. Someday the Piano Man will leave us, but his legacy will be with us forever.

My thanks to Net Galley and Crown Publishing for the chance to read and review this one in advance. It will hit the shelves October 28, just at the time you want to crawl into a warm place with a great book.
Joel began his musical career in adolescent garage bands. They didn’t really go anywhere, but he did. He would have been content, in the beginning, to write music for others to perform, but others counseled him that the artist needs to make a demo. And whereas musical greats like Carole King, Barbara Streisand, and Garth Brooks have performed hits he has written such as New York State of Mind, Shameless, and a number of others, his most outstanding work has been that which he has performed himself.
For this reviewer, his most memorable album is Glass Houses, which came out in 1980. In the mid-80’s, I had been married for nearly a decade, and when I turned thirty, it occurred to me with a startling immediacy that I could break free if I wanted to. The sound of breaking glass followed by the authoritative, take-charge chords and Joel’s sassy, do-what-I-feel-like voice was a tonic, and I listened to it over and over and over again. I can never think of that time period without hearing “You May Be Right”. Later I would dance at a high school reunion to “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me.” And it was, and it is.
Joel has given so much of himself in his work that it is no surprise that he has in turn stepped into untold people’s lives as he did into mine. There seems to be a running joke between Joel and those around him about the number of weddings at which his music has been performed. And while this is just one more sign that the bond between Billy Joel and his audience is rock solid, it is also a little bit worrisome.
According to Schruers, every time something monumental has occurred in Joel’s life, he has headed for the piano. It has been his therapist and his source of cartharsis, and so for decades, his personal life and his innermost feelings have been out there on display in the work he performs. He isn’t the first to feel the best understood and maybe the most alive when communicating with fans that are listening to him perform. I could reel off a string of names, but I don’t need to, because the reader has probably already thought of half a dozen such people. Joel’s marriages to Elizabeth Weber; Christie Brinkley; and Katie Lee are all out there for the world to share. We bounce joyfully to “Uptown Girl”, and when he makes a joke at a concert where a fan is proposing marriage, telling the groom to get a pre-nup, everyone who isn’t Billy laughs.
So what happens when such a man reaches his sixties and finds that he now wants a modicum of dignified privacy? Many of those he loved best in his personal life have moved on and left him behind. His fans are ready to receive more, more, more, but there is a point in life when we become a little more reticent about spilling all the beans to whoever wants to know. And here it was inevitable, this being the time it is, that I think about Robin Williams, and about Michael Jackson. They gave us everything, and look what happened. And I think those who bond with the public in such an unfettered fashion are in a way set up for that kind of ending. It scares the hell out of me. I am not the weepy type, but I am struggling a little as I write this.
Billy Joel is a legend, a working class guy from Levittown who made good through hard work and immeasurable talent. He has used remarkable restraint in dealing with those who have shown him bad faith; have cheated on him romantically and financially; and in some cases, all but robbed him blind. He has climbed back, but of course it has cost him emotionally. He would have to be stupid to remain unaffected by it, and the man is anything but stupid.
He credits as his early influences Ray Charles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Otis Redding, and a host of other musicians. His love of the classical causes him to reference Beethoven and Bach when he talks about music, and his album of classical piano music went straight to the top of the Billboard charts; I think I want that album. Apparently he has been called “derivative” at some time in the press, with which he initially had a similar relationship as one of my personal heroes, General Sherman. Derivative of what, and of who? He freely admits that the genre was begun by brilliant Black musicians, but does that mean nobody else can do that or go there? Of course not! And it should be noted that the press, from the New York Times to Rolling Stone to Billboard, lauded him unconditionally in more recent coverage.
The man has more than paid his dues. He has been around the block a time or two, and he knows more about the business and about life than when he was brand new to the world of professional music.
I recently wrote a review for Mark Kincaid’s bio of comedy king Bill Cosby. When Cosby’s manager was dishonest, Cosby solved the problem by handing the business end of his work to his wife, Camille, and it was a strong move. But Billy did the same thing, and it took the warnings of several trusted friends and associates to help him understand that his faith in his wife was misplaced; she too was robbing him blind, and putting plenty of resources into her own name in anticipation of the inevitable split.
What’s a guy gonna do?
After their separation, estranged wife Christie Brinkley and beloved daughter Alexa are injured in a helicopter crash in which Christie’s boyfriend died. Joel had them taken to his home, arranged for medical care and paid for everything, and came home one day to an empty house. Was there even a note? We don’t know.
There are two sides to every story, and I am sure the women who have loved him and left him have theirs. This writer grew up with two parents with serious alcohol problems, and so I know it isn’t easy. Brinkley’s heartfelt plea that he deal with it—though I question the public nature of the plea—hit a resonant chord for me.
At the same time, I want to cheer when Joel says flatly that he is an atheist, and there is no Higher Power to whom he wants to give his worries. He doesn’t want to let go and let god. WHO? Oh, hell no. And again, this reviewer remains close to two (other) family members who cast off the demon alcohol without any kind of religious juju, and without standing up in front of strangers to testify. It can be done, and if Joel hasn’t, I too hope he will.
But there we are again, in the middle of his private business. See what I mean?
In his path to glory, this iconic musician has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, honored at the Kennedy Center, has played with Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, and a host of others. He has collected Grammys like some folks collect baseball cards; in 1989 he was honored with the Living Legend Award. And since the baseball simile has arisen, let’s note that he was also there to close Yankee Stadium, and then help McCartney reopen it under its new carnation. Leonard Bernstein asked him to write musical scores. Joel not only has a record for the number of appearances in Madison Square Garden, he had, at the time the biography was written, a standing engagement there, for as long as his new, bionic hips and aging spinal column can hold on.
What then? Joel has developed side interests. He has customized motorcycles and also has a boat business. His financial empire has recovered many times over despite the double dealings he was dealt when he was younger and more trusting. And he has a bond with daughter Alexa that nothing can take from him.
And so, when it’s time to go home, when the last curtain comes down and Joel has had enough of life on the glittering stage, I hope that the satisfaction of a career well managed; a high road held both in terms of how he has dealt with the ticket-buying public, his former loves, and his former associates; his new, more physically manageable interests; and the love of his daughter and other family members, will suffice.
As for our scribe, Fred Schruers, I was initially taken aback by the lack of documentation and footnotes, but after reading the postscript, I came away reasonably satisfied that he had covered his bases. He sure knows how to tell a story.
And what a story it is!