Musical Memories

     In the last year, I've read several biographies and autobiographies of some of my favorite musical performers.  

    Anyone who knows me knows that I  am a huge Prince fan, and I have been since his earliest albums in the late 70s and early 80s.  I followed every twist and turn in his career, and I was devastated by his death. I only got to see him in concert once, his last concert ever, at the Fox Theater in Atlanta the week before he died.  A few months before his death, Prince decided it was time to write his autobiography and hired Dan Piepenbring to co-write it.  With the support of the Prince estate, Piepenbring organized what they had accomplished so far, along with notes and other Prince documents to put together the posthumous The Beautiful Ones.  The book is a fantastic collection of Prince's words, from interviews and notes, including lots of pages, literally in his own handwriting.  Prince was always known for being secretive, mysterious, and inscrutable. In The Beautiful Ones,  he opens up about his life and his music more than he ever had before. Readers are immersed in Prince's world like never before.  It's a must for any Prince fans, but even people who aren't fans may be interested in getting a glimpse of one of the most highly regarded musical geniuses of the last last hundred years.

    If you know Prince, you know that he was a songwriting and producing machine, writing thousands of songs in his lifetime. He was responsible for an entire sub-genre of funk, the Minneapolis sound. He created groups and performers and shared songs with and/or produced dozens of other acts. There may be hundreds of musicians who owe their entire careers to him. The first group he created was The Time. He put the band together, wrote almost all of their songs in the beginning, played on their albums, and included them in his tours and movies.  The lead singer of The Time was/is Morris Day, a teenage friend of Prince's who became his collaborator and, in many ways, his rival.  Day's autobiography, On Time: A Princely Life in Funk, is a fast and fun read. He is open and honest about his relationship with Prince, and he details examples of how Prince's controlling perfectionism both built his career and also stifled it to a degree. He's open about the ups and downs of their personal relationship, and his personal life. The two had just begun rebuilding their relationship months before Prince's death.

    David Bowie's death impacted me as hard as Prince's. Like with Prince, I had been a long-time fan and admirer, and I saw Bowie in concert only once as well.  Dylan Jones' David Bowie: the Oral History uses interviews with dozens of friends and associates of Bowie to tell the story of his life. It is extremely thorough. Like Prince, Bowie was purposefully enigmatic and chameleon-like. In this book, we learn a lot about Bowie, his life, his personality, and his career.

     On Time, The Beautiful Ones, and David Bowie are all successful because they are so honest and revealing. Elton John's autobiography Me is just as open, honest, and revealing. Elton pulls no punches and writes honestly about his memories (or the stories that he doesn't remember personally and had to be told). Whereas Price and Bowie were always quite reluctant to reveal much about their personal lives to the world, Elton John has always been one to say what's own his mind, leading to some pretty famous media and personal feuds over the years. He doesn't hold back in his book either.  In that regard, the book is very much like the movie biopic Rocketman,  which showed Elton warts and all. That's the reason that I personally much prefer Rocketman to the more popular Bohemian Rhapsody, which was intentionally whitewashed by the surviving members of Queen - to the point that I found it to be dishonest and boring. (By the way, Elton narrates the audiobook, and I highly recommend listening to this one.)

    That leads me to Face It, by Debbie Harry, the lead singer of the group Blondie. I also listened to the audio version of this book, narrated by Debbie herself.  I'm a Blondie fan, and, sadly, I was very disappointed by the book. Why? Because, she was not at all open, honest, and revealing.  Not only does she point out many times that she doesn't remember everything, thanks to drugs, but she merely scratches the surface of her live. Everything is very superficial.  For example, Blondie fans know that she had a long time relationship with Chris Stein of the band. In her book their breakup barely rates a sentence; it was like "By the way, Chris moved out that week" or something. I had learned nothing about her after reading the book.

Musical Notes: Rock Star Autobiographies

By Jeff Burns

I am a child of the 1970s and 1980s, so like most people, my musical tastes are somewhat stuck in that era.  80s British New Wave is my favorite, but my taste covers the period. For me, the fall of 2015 was a great time as publishers released four autobiographies from four of my favorite artists, all trendsetters and survivors of decades in the music industry.   Why did they all have to come out at once? It’s an embarrassment of riches. They’re all on my reading list; maybe they should have a place on yours too.

 

Elvis Costello, born Declan McManus, was the son of a crooner and followed his father into the music world, just following his own punk/rock path.  However, musical boundaries don’t exist for Elvis, and he has been influenced by and collaborated with artists from every genre, from George Jones and Loretta Lynn to Aretha Franklin and The Clash. He’s known for his complex and meaningful songwriting.  Turns out, he proves in Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink that he can write prose as well. I was lucky enough to attend a book talk/performance in Atlanta, and the stories he told were great.

Tom Jones’ autobiography, Over the Top and Back, relates the story  of his Welsh upbringing and his unlikely rise to international superstar and sex symbol.  In his career spanning more than six decades, he has also crossed boundaries, performing in rock, blues, country, and gospel among others.  At 75 years old, he’s still a phenomenal artist.

Chrissie Hynde is one of the leading ladies of rock and roll.  She is the quintessential rock chick. Whether as a solo artist or as the front woman of The Pretenders, she’s rocked for forty years.  Reckless: My Life as a Pretender covers that career, in which a girl from Akron Ohio became a major player in the London rock scene.

If Chrissie Hynde is the illustration of the word “rock” in the dictionary, Grace Jones’ word would be “wild.”  Model, actress, disco queen, rocker, pop star, Grace Jones doesn’t follow anybody’s rules, even her own, since the title of her autobiography is I’ll Never Write My Memoirs.  She is definitely an iconoclast, and her book promises to be a wild read.