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Recent Reviews
David Browne
Mixed the Guardian ...Browne is...likely to produce sentences such as: \'Between snorts of cocaine, the trio rounded up a few other musicians...\' He seems not to know what \'unison\' means, which is odd for a man writing a book about one of the world’s most famous vocal harmony groups, and has a regrettable fondness for telling us that people \'reached out\' to each other. But he does have the granular detail ... Browne spends 230 pages labouring through the endlessly repetitive disintegration of all that bright promise, by the end of which the reader’s spirits are thoroughly lowered. Even the glistening harmonies, finely crafted songs and lovely playing of that first album are dulled by the litany of excess and its concomitant unhappiness. And it all seemed such fun at the time, at least from a safe distance.
Nick Coleman
Positive The Guardian Sometimes his descriptions of the sound and the effect hit the target perfectly ... Expanding the definition of \'voice,\' there’s also a chapter on jazz instrumentalists. This gives him an excuse to suggest that jazz musicians work so hard to perfect their skills in order that \'they can never be caught out with nothing to say\'—which is amusing, if not really profound. Much sharper is his observation that \'rock music, as constructed by the Rolling Stones for the British audience and then a wider international one in the 1960s, was … an account of an experience, not an appeal to the heart\' ... you can hardly blame Coleman for occasionally letting his ideas and enthusiasm run wild. Many of his readers will find their enjoyment of the book extended by the need to keep getting up and finding the record he’s writing about, or perhaps locating it via Spotify—but that’s not really the same thing, is it?
Philip Norman
Mixed The Guardian These were rock’n’roll’s Bullingdon years, and there are times in this account when the reader feels that the examples of debauchery are being held up for inspection between the thumb and forefinger of a white-gloved hand. No such close examination is applied to the music, which is described in the most cursory terms, sometimes inaccurately (there is nothing \'atonal\' about Cream’s \'As You Said\'), and with little attempt to place it in a wider context. This is a pity, since the true value of Clapton’s music remains a subject worthy of debate, but there is a sense that the author can’t wait to get back to the themes that enable him to end a chapter with a sentence such as: \'Pattie could hold out no longer.\'
Seymour Stein
Positive The Guardian On a New York City night in late summer, 1976, three former art students were playing at a club called Max’s Kansas City. Observing them from a ringside table were a couple who looked a little older than most of the club’s clientele, and a lot less cool. But there they sat, front and centre, staring at the stage with encouraging smiles ... Anyone who had worked in a record company’s A&R department would have recognised the couple’s behaviour as an impressive example of the art of seduction – and, as it transpired, a highly successful one for Seymour Stein and his wife, Linda, the singalong pair ... That’s a story from personal observation, not from Stein’s new autobiography, in which he makes no claim to have foreseen such enormous success, as he and Linda tracked Talking Heads from club to club in an effort to persuade three young musicians sceptical of the established record industry that this Brooklyn hustler and his noisy wife could be trusted to help them get their music to a wider public. But he knew that something was happening. That was what he did. It was his gift, his vocation.
Billy Bragg
Positive The Guardian No secrets are uncovered, and a slight suspicion takes hold that some of the frequent digressions are there to bulk up a slender core narrative. Bragg’s trawl through newspaper archives fleshes the story out in an entertaining and illuminating way. Another author, though, might have felt it worthwhile to acquire first-hand memories and reflections from some of the many participants who are still alive, counting the royalties from the careers for which skiffle provided the somewhat rickety launch pad. As it stands, Bragg’s unquestionable enthusiasm is slightly undercut by a sense of authorial distance from the subject (he was born, as it happens, in 1957).
Robbie Robertson
Mixed The Guardian His memoir has a discreetly self-admiring tone – the good ideas seem invariably to have been his – but in its early passages it provides an entertaining and valuable description of a rock’n’roll apprenticeship
Bruce Springsteen
Positive The Guardian In a book that bears the hallmarks of having been written by his own hand, Springsteen is particularly good at capturing the exhilaration of his rise to success ... The book is as rich in anecdote and detail as in anguish and doubt ... Overwriting and repetition sometimes make it feel as though he has chosen to issue the literary equivalent of the four-CD deluxe version.
Ben Ratliff
Positive The Guardian Sometimes he seems to want to use the book as a pretext for gathering up every piece of music he has ever loved and finding a theory to make collective sense of it all. Occasionally losing himself in his own reveries, he can lapse into the bafflingly obvious. More often, as in his description of Eric Dolphy’s alto saxophone improvisation on Charles Mingus’s version of 'Stormy Weather', his deep listening can produce passages of sensitivity and precision.