Book Review

Instant Ono!

Ian Alterman — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 21:08:24 +0000

Instant Ono! Ian Alterman June 9, 2025 - 17:08

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[N.B. Ninety-five percent of this review is sourced directly from the book. The other 5% is sourced from two or three other authoritative books about the Beatles, which were necessary for one or two explications in the review.]

I cannot think of any woman in any profession -- from the arts to sciences, from politics to religion, and beyond -- more vilified, dismissed, denigrated, demeaned, and even outright hated than Yoko Ono. Sadly, all of this is the result of a toxic brew of ignorance (general, musical, historical, artistic) and racism. It is also borne of myths (and sometimes outright lies) that still remain remarkably broad-based despite an overwhelming body of facts and evidence to the contrary -- even when that evidence is provided by those to whom the myths and/or lies are ascribed. I have heard everything from "she broke up the Beatles" (a tick-like persistent myth) to "she can't sing worth a damn," to "she had no influence or particular fame in the art world" to "she was only ever famous because she married John." All of this, coming mostly from people who have no particularly deep knowledge of either music (beyond pop/rock) or art (at all), particularly vis-à-vis history, and even less knowledge of Yoko and her own life story.

Certainly, people have a right to like and listen to what they want, and to most Western (read American) ears, dissonance of any sort can be difficult, if not off-putting. So what has often been called Yoko's "caterwauling" vocals can be jarring to the Western ear, particularly when you are not a musician trained in theory and history and/or have little or no background in either -- particularly the various avant-garde music movements, primarily of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. For example, pick 50 random people on the street and I would bet a dollar to a dime that 49 of them have never heard of either 12-tone music or Arnold Schoenberg. Or John Cage. Or Edgar Varese. And names like Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, and Arvo Part would simply make them laugh.

That said, some of the modern composers who were aware of Yoko's vocalizations (even prior to her meeting John), recognized them as more than just "caterwauling" or "screaming," and understood them in the context of modern and avant-garde music include John Cage (with whom she worked several times), Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Arvo Part, and Brian Eno. Even Igor Stravinsky and Krzysztof Penderecki were aware of and appreciated the chance she was taking in bringing aleatoric (chance) elements to her vocalizing. And John came to understand this fairly early on as well (though it took the other Beatles much longer).

By the time she was recording albums with John (and then solo) some of the popular music artists who saw her as an inspiration, influence and/or a pioneer -- many of whom collaborated with her and/or covered songs from her albums -- include Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth (both of whom recognized the importance of what she was doing long before any other "pop/rock" music artists), Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Frank Zappa, Lady Gaga, RZA and Wu-Tang Clan, Kate Pierson and the B-52s (the background vocals in "Rock Lobster" are essentially what Yoko had been doing for years), David Byrne and Talking Heads, Lene Lovich, Ringo Starr, David Bowie, Elton John, Madonna, Roberta Flack, Harry Nilsson, Elvis Costello, Rosanna Cash, Cyndi Lauper, Joey Ramone, Lou Reed, The Melvins, Mike D and the Beastie Boys, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, Courtney Love, Redd Kross, Eric Clapton, Jim Keltner, Klaus Voorman, Paul Simon, Peaches, Michael Stipe, Rufus and Martha Wainwright, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, Savages, Boy George, Pussy Riot, Siouxsie Sioux, Marianne Faithful, Questlove, Death Cab for Cutie, Flaming Lips, US Girls, Sudan Archives, Japanese Breakfast, and Yo La Tengo. And that is not even an exhaustive list.

Even Paul McCartney -- after "getting over himself" (post-Beatles) and his concerns about having Yoko in the studio, and actually listening to and learning about what Yoko had been doing, by that time for decades -- came around. In a 2013 interview in Rolling Stone -- when asked about Yoko vis-à-vis both her music and her art -- his simple two-word answer was "She's badass!" McCartney, who had been a fan of modern composers (particularly John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen) since 1967, finally realized that what Yoko had been doing vocally was beyond even the Beatles' knowledge and understanding of music theory, music history, and the avant-garde movements she was either contributing to or helping to pioneer.

The average person has even less knowledge or understanding of the many avant-garde art movements, primarily of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, ranging from non-art to interactive art, from Dada to Primitivism, and from Imagism and Minimal Art to Fluxus and beyond.

Some of the artists who recognized the importance of Yoko's work -- and, again, some of whom considered her a pioneer in some of those avant-garde art movements, and many of whom either collaborated with her or participated in shared exhibitions -- include Victor Vaserely, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Louise Nevelson, Keith Haring, Frank Stella, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Robert Mapplethorpe, Kenny Scharf, Ai Weiwei, Guerilla Girls, and Laura Bates. This, too, is far from an exhaustive list. It should also be noted that Yoko is listed among the 100 most important modern artists by Contemporary Art Magazine, in a grouping that includes Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, Nam June Paik, Richard Serra, Marcel Duchamp, David Hockney, Paul Klee, Joan Miro, Max Ernst, Alexander Calder, Damien Hirst, Cy Twombly, Claes Oldenburg, Louise Bourgeois, and Cindy Sherman.

The biography is written by friend and "insider" David Sheff, who was literally "in the room" beginning in September 1980 (just prior to John's assassination), and in, out, and/or around for almost the entirety of Yoko's life after John was killed. So he is perfectly positioned to write this book: he has no interest in the salaciousness, sensationalism, myth-making, or gossip of other books about John and/or The Beatles, particularly vis-à-vis Yoko. Rather, this is a beautiful, well-written, fair-minded, yet not fawning* portrait of a woman who has seen her share of heartache, accomplished extraordinary things in both music and art, adding to the lexicons of both, and yet has been vilified continuously for over 60 years. *(E.g., he takes her greatly to task for her reliance on divination, astrology, numerology, tarot, and other "occult" obsessions).

The book is separated into three parts. The first tells of Yoko's childhood and early life, up to the time she met John. It relates how she survived the bombing of Tokyo as a very young child; of having emotionally (and sometimes physically) distant parents; of having to not only engage in primary and continual self-care (as opposed to parental care), but also care of her younger brother, and many other (often depressing) aspects that made Yoko the quiet, mostly introverted, and seemingly inscrutable person she became. It was in her late single and early double digits that she first started (unwittingly) forming the philosophy that would guide her for the rest of her life: "imagine" -- a word and concept she used continuously throughout her life and art, long before she met John and he co-opted the word for the song. [N.B. John finally admitted that the song was not simply co-written by Yoko, but was inspired by her ideas, and for which Yoko was finally given official co-writing credit.] The explanation of her use of "imagine" as a broad-based life-long philosophy is not just a high point of the book, but arguably the single most important thing we learn about her art, music, and approach to life.

The second part takes us from her first meeting John in 1966 to his assassination in 1980. Not only does Sheff finally and absolutely debunk the myth of her "breaking up The Beatles," placing the blame for that primarily on John (for good and proven reasons), but also on the "bigger picture" of what was happening at the time among the Beatles -- musically, legally and otherwise.

As an aside, regarding the break-up of the band, Sheff "ups the ante" and makes a remarkably cogent case for Yoko having saved the Beatles -- and that, without her, we might not have had the White Album, Yellow Submarine, Let It Be, or Abbey Road. This is because John first began seriously considering quitting the group after the release of Magical Mystery Tour. This was when tensions in the band began to grow exponentially, and John was becoming increasingly morose in the studio during the writing and recording of the White Album (a fact confirmed by George Martin) -- an album that was less a collaboration of four musicians (though some songs were) than the Beatles serving as studio musicians for each others' songs. We learn that the only reason John was willing to remain in the band was that he had Yoko with him at all times, and that her love and calming presence (for him) overrode his greatly increasing unhappiness, dissatisfaction and frustration with the band and the growing tensions among them (those not related to Yoko's presence). In this regard, Sheff suggests, had she not been there (and rarely mentioned is that the first time she was present in the studio was not for the Let It Be sessions, but the "Fool on the Hill" session, almost two years before), it is entirely possible that John would have quit the Beatles in early 1968 -- leaving us without the group's last four albums.

So, Yoko not only did not cause the break-up of the band (and again, the facts show that the primary cause was John, even if Yoko was a quasi-catalyst), but may well have prevented it from breaking up for an additional two years by "preventing" John from leaving earlier.

Importantly, perhaps even critically, Sheff also provides an in-depth context of the growing relationship between John and Yoko that has been sorely missing from any published work about John. It is contradictorily simple and complex, with both enormous love and serious tensions, but with both of them always "erring" on the side of love, acceptance, and progression.

The third part is Yoko's life after John's death -- and is so much more interesting, informative, and eye-opening than I am guessing anyone could possibly…imagine. While focusing primarily on her art and music -- as well as her relationship with Sean, and her understandable ongoing heartbreak over John's death -- it also tells of death threats, thefts, betrayals by people close to her, and the hiring of bodyguards, among many other (sadly) necessary aspects of her post-John life.

But it is her growing contributions to music and art during this period -- and the growing realization by a much greater number of people (particularly those in the arts, but also the public at large) -- that continues to be the main point: she never stopped creating, never stopped experimenting, never stopped adding to the lexicons of both music and art. She was relentless in the face of sexism, racism, and any other "isms" that attempted to get in her way. In this regard, Paul McCartney was more correct than even he knows when he said: "She's badass!"

It's a damn shame that the people who really should read this book -- the Yoko-haters, those who still believe she "broke up the Beatles" (a myth that has been debunked countless times by everyone including the Beatles themselves, but simply refuses to die), those who believe that her vocals were nothing more than dissonant caterwauling, those who claim she made no contributions to the art world and only became famous because she was married to a Beatle, etc. -- are the very people who are not going to read it. And even if they did, it probably would not change very many minds -- so ingrained is their hatred, ignorance and/or racism -- nor would many (most?) understand the significant degree to which she contributed to both the art and music worlds -- in the latter case, both rock/pop and avant-garde -- and that she had been doing so for more than a decade before she met John Lennon.

David Sheff has written an informative, substantive, readable, and important biography of one of the 20th century's most wrongly maligned but most important and talented women -- a woman who never stopped creating and pushing artistic boundaries, and expressing love, peace, and acceptance even in the face of nearly continuous vilification and vitriol. A woman who combined art and activism, and in doing so progressed both into new and important places, and who refused to give in to the negativity that often surrounded her. Sheff has given us the Yoko we never knew -- the true, real, "exposed" woman of love, peace, and art -- but the Yoko we needed to know. And in doing so, he has done an enormous service; one that goes well beyond the printed words on the pages, sometimes even getting right to the soul of this sad but magnificent woman.

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Immediate Rays

Gary Lucas — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 17:06:21 +0000

Immediate Rays Gary Lucas December 9, 2024 - 12:06

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Shredded Cover By My Dog Rosita

Just finishing up Simon Spence's fascinating account of my favorite label back in my anglophile days, IMMEDIATE RECORDS. Entitled (what else?): Immediate: The Rise and Fall of the UK's First Independent Record Label: FUCK THEM ALL (Backstage Books). This is a recently updated version of Simon's previous coffee-table-size book about Immediate Records, first published in 2008. And it is perhaps the best book ever about that insane moment in the mid to late '60s when it looked like young, gifted, and hip revolutionaries were taking over EVERYTHING (but especially the Music Biz)—and none so young, hip, or revolutionary in outlook than Rolling Stones manager/producer Andrew Loog Oldham.

With his partner Tony Calder, Andrew re-drew the map of what an indie record label could look like and get away with—with glorious signings of the caliber of the Small Faces, The Nice, Humble Pie, Fleetwood Mac, Christa Päffgen aka Nico, John Mayall, Rod Stewart and other luminaries; plus house producers and songwriters including Jimmy Page and Mick Jagger.

Other artists associated with Immediate, such as Duncan Browne, Chris Farlowe, and P.P. Arnold, are not as well known—but they turned in quality music, especially Duncan Browne, whose debut album was a lush, sensitive Pre-Raphaelite delight.

And then there was their ground-breaking British Blues Archive series.

This really was a full-spectrum, full-service label—"Happy To Be A Part of the Industry of Human Happiness," as one of their full-page ads (and sampler albums) stated.

It's a wild tale and definitely an addendum to Andrew's three books of autobiography and musings: Stoned, 2 Stoned, and Stone Free, which are also highly recommended.

"Oldham, without doubt, was the most flash personality that British pop has ever had, the most anarchic and obsessive and imaginative hustler of all. He loathed slowness and drabness, age and caution and incompetence, mediocrity of all kinds, and he could not stand to work his way up steadily like anyone else. Instead, he barnstormed, he came on quite outrageous. I think his talent and impact have been very, very underestimated."—Nik Cohn, Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock

Below is one of Humble Pie's best tracks, featuring Peter Frampton on vocals—which never did see an official release in the US— one of the reasons the label eventually collapsed (basically, non-cooperation from my former employers at Black Rock).

I don't want to spoil the thrills and chills herein too much, so please check out IMMEDIATE immediately.

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What Is Life Without George Harrison

Gary Lucas — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 16:17:03 +0000

What Is Life Without George Harrison Gary Lucas October 30, 2024 - 12:17

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The Beatles

Photo by Franco Vogt

In 1985, I was at a party here in NYC held at a Soho loft by The Smiths' then-manager. I was introduced to Smiths guitarist supremo Johnny Marr and his lovely wife, and I told him how fabulous I thought he was at the Beacon Theatre uptown with his band recently (in my book, The Last Great Rock Concert). I mentioned I had played in the final edition of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band. His eyes lit up, and he said: "You're a real Dark Horse on guitar!" ZING went the strings…

I obviously was gratified by his recognition of my playing. But it was only later that I worked out what he was driving at. This was a compliment/comparison to George Harrison and his singular slide guitar playing. My cup runneth over. George Harrison reinvented the whole notion of what a guitar and a glass or metal bottleneck slide could do. Work fucking wonders, basically—as the action of sliding a finger oscillated bottleneck up and down a taut string and fretting/articulating the desired note precisely can produce a multitude of voices almost human in their expressive power. Weeping and wailing and whooping in joyous ecstasy. That's what George did on his guitar lines and carefully constructed solos. Eschewing standard issue bottleneck blues guitar cliches to create very precise melodic filigree in support of the song, dammit—instead of showboating gee-whiz slide pyrotechnics (ever-present nowadays in various beer and automobile commercials). Creating a living, breathing guitar-speak not unakin to human speech (his anthem "Something," recorded by everyone from Sinatra to James Brown, being the gold standard—and especially George's guitar solo within).

Now George might not have been the greatest slide player who ever lived (and certainly not me—that honor belongs, methinks, to Debashish Bhattacharya)—but he comes damn close in my book and also in Seth Rogovoy's superb new book about George's world-shaking and significant contributions to rock and pop and world music as we know it, entitled Within You Without You: Listening to George Harrison (Oxford University Press).

It is a cool book by an excellent writer, not surprisingly a direct descendant of the great R&B songwriter Jerry "Rags" Ragovoy ("Time Is On My Side," "Stay With Me," "Piece of My Heart," "Cry Baby," etc.).

In this book, George's mighty canon of music is examined up-close and sympathetically and pretty thoroughly, one stand-out song at a time. And there are A LOT OF THEM.

Let me count the ways, with and without The Beatles—"Don’t Bother Me," "Here Comes the Sun," "I Need You," "Isn't It a Pity," "What is Life," "Taxman," "Love You Too," "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," "Think For Yourself," "All Things Must Pass," "I Want to Tell You," "Blue Jay Way," "Long Long Long," my favorite "It's All Too Much" ("to your mother!"), and so on.

As Rogovoy points out in the first couple of pages, this book is not a Bio, nor a Hagiography, nor a breathless tell-all kind of gossipy book about George and Patty and Eric, no siree—instead, Rogovoy has given us an extremely well-written, adult, intelligent guide through the mighty corpus of George's own Harrisongs (George's publishing company), and Northern Songs (the Beatles publishing company headed up by Dick James of Dick James Music, wherein George was unfairly schmeckled/offered a mere pittance of a royalty for his solo song contributions as opposed to Paul and John's way more favorable and lucrative royalty splits).

With some cool, insightful speculation offered up along the way ("Did George really unconsciously plagiarize The Chiffons's "He's So Fine" for "My Sweet Lord"? I do know that when the "My Sweet Lord" single was released in November 1970, that notion, both pro and con, was almost instantly propagated over late-night pizza and cokes by some of my more musically astute buddies at Yale, who recognized the song's—to them—unmistakeable provenance. I could hear it also. George may have lost the lawsuit over this—initiated by Allen Klein, his then-manager, of all people!—but George is universally in the clear now both in the court of public opinion and in Seth's book, where it counts the most-est).

Within You Without You will send you back for some thrilling close listening to old Harrison favorites and songs possibly hitherto unknown to you (unless you are a stone George Harrison fanatic—of which there are numerous).

Either way, you can't lose because George was indisputably his own man—and arguably one of the most creative forces ever to blaze a trail in popular metaphysics/music. (Seth's account of George's Indian music sojourn via Ravi Shankar is particularly fascinating to this lover of all things Eastern and esoteric. A journey into sound that spawned all sorts of fantastic music in its wake—witness the birth of raga-rock, prime examples of which include The Byrds' "Eight Miles High" and "Why" and the Stones's "Paint It Black," although if you want to get shirty about it, The Kinks "See My Friends" and The Yardbirds "Heart Full of Soul" may well have been precursors to George's use of sitar on "Norwegian Wood." Hey, all that perfumed incense fragrance was in the air! For a thorough discussion of this particular subset/genre of music as it was then unfolding its paisley-ed way, check out Sandy Pearlman's "Patterns and Sounds: The Uses of Raga in Rock" in Crawdaddy Magazine #7 Dec. '66).

All in All (a good title for a George song), Within In You Without You is an essential document regarding the many-splendored musical world of George Harrison. Rogovoy comes at the work from many different angles and leaves you breathless at times with his insights and explorations of George's creative efflorescence—reverberations of which are felt to this day and will continue to echo "to the last syllable of recorded time."

George was that heavy a cat.

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Space-Age & Pop-Art Dreams

Robert Cochrane — Sun, 14 Jan 2024 23:13:23 +0000

Space-Age & Pop-Art Dreams Robert Cochrane January 14, 2024 - 18:13

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science fiction

Across My Dreams With Nets Of Wonder (Fisher King Publishing) - John Howard

For a man to whom narrative has played a salient part in his songs, it came as little surprise that English tunesmith John Howard seamlessly transferred his attention to creating a trilogy of engaging and evocative memoirs outlining his erratic but lifelong sojourn in music. Now his fertile imagination has delivered a febrile and fantastical novel, Across My Dreams With Nets Of Wonder, whose title has been lifted from Bob Lind's evergreen 1965 hit "Elusive Butterfly" whose subject matter is a delightful motif fluttering throughout a text of extraordinary articulation and finesse.

Part Alan Bennett meets Doctor Who, Back To The Future reimagined by Ealing Studios, here is a novel not short on ambition. Elements of science fiction seamlessly blend with a sense of magic realism. Still, in Howard's matter-of-fact vision, there's an everyday element to unusual and unexpected turns and twists within his assured and diligent prose. Science Faction is a term that more easily encapsulates his tale of extraordinary and unlikely events rendered acceptable to the reader via his understated handling of quirks, strangeness, and charm. There's also a neat blast of art history sneaking across within the chapters.

At the heart of the novel resides a delightful subtext. An affectionate cavalcade of postcards and polaroids a la '60s London in full swing with pop music as the beat in the heart. Cameos cascade. Marc Bolan and David Bowie in their early twenties as gouache young, ambitious things, Joe Meek and his largely forgotten crush and prodigy Heinz, the Beatles, and a litany of girl singers sparkle like light through the scratches on a once glitzy newsreel. You don't need to be a music aficionado to capture and enjoy the vibe, but if you are, it adds an extra frisson of pleasure.

Just as the disparate strands of Howard's ambitious themes seem to become engulfed by the breadth and depth of his grand design, they gradually resolve their existence as they become woven into the page-turning narrative -- no mean feat in itself.

Funny but imbued with a Proustian sense of sadness, this is a dynamic tour de force about time, ambition, and the true nature of what resides beneath our mannered, social surfaces most daily situations rely upon. It effortlessly crafts historic interactions into playful narratives. Einstein and Turing become a pair of space-age houseboys on a spaceship, and an A.I. Marilyn Monroe steals the show towards and at the end.

A dizzying accomplishment, this is a serious novel with a playfulness of heart. It is a page-turner that strikes a depth and poignancy either absent or avoided in most accessible fiction. This unique offering deserves the wider audience that a movie could provide, but for now, it deserves to be shown in the expansive private cinema of the mind.

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The Amplified Come As You Are

Steve Holtje — Sat, 16 Dec 2023 15:26:28 +0000

The Amplified Come As You Are Steve Holtje December 16, 2023 - 10:26

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Michael Azerrad: The Amplified Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana (HarperOne)

Is it okay to review a book in which I am thanked? And the author's been a friend for over four decades? Maybe if I reveal that stuff up front, like I just did…

Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana was originally published by Doubleday in 1993 -- the year before Nirvana leader Kurt Cobain died. Azerrad had interviewed the members of Nirvana for a 1992 Rolling Stone cover story, and Cobain had approved of it enough that later in '92, when he and wife Courtney Love wanted someone to write a Nirvana book, they approached Azerrad, who of course said yes. There was some time pressure -- the book, it was eventually decided, had to be released in conjunction with the release of Nirvana's next album -- but Azerrad was nonetheless able to interview loads of people involved in the lives of the Nirvana members (including a whopping twenty-five hours of interviews with Cobain alone) and delivered a tome which has appeared on multiple lists of the best books on rock topics. In an age when rock albums regularly get expanded in anniversary editions, why not do the same thing with a rock book?

There are two ways of documenting a band: in the moment, or in retrospect. The Amplified Come As You Are is the best of both worlds. Anyone who follows Michael Azerrad on social media can see that he is strongly committed to making sure that assertions, received wisdom, etc. be fact-checked against reality, complete with citations. It turns out he's just as hard on himself. This thirtieth-anniversary revamping of what was the very first book on Nirvana ends up being about twice as long as the original version, and a lot of that additional length comes from Azerrad correcting himself. Much of what he is correcting comes from Cobain confabulating for comic effect or to pre-emptively stave off potential criticism (often deploying a tactic which Azerrad calls "smokescreening by exaggeration"), and flat-out lying about everything from his taste in music to details of his love life to, inevitably, covering up his heroin use. Courtney Love is guilty of image-burnishing as well, but is less of a focus, and Azerrad deliberately avoids detailing the many anti-Courtney stories while acknowledging that they're out there. She comes off as a complex person, intelligent and driven but undiplomatic, alienating people with her blunt behavior.

Most painful are the frequent foreshadowings of Cobain's suicide. Azerrad -- who calls himself an idiot multiple times -- writes, in one of the new bits, "It's excruciating to come across all the references to suicide in this book. But things like that can be difficult to see when you're right in the thick of it." Azerrad spends a considerable amount of space taking advantage of hindsight, which leads to an acute analysis of Cobain's psyche, especially his feelings of inferiority, the ways in which his self-defeating behavior reflects his ambivalence and his difficult youth, the ways in which he tries to have it both ways regarding ambition and approval, and the frequent foreshadowing of his demise.

Azerrad especially reproaches himself for his handling of the heroin topic. His most self-critical passage might be this one: "When Krist said, 'I was afraid of what I might see,' he probably spoke for a lot of people around Kurt: avoid confrontation, just get on with things, and maybe the problem will just go away. That's denial. I did that, too -- I was dimly aware that Kurt was doing heroin more than he admitted; I just didn't want to dig into it. It would have jeopardized my book. And I feared the wrath of their management and legal team… It would have betrayed the trust Kurt had for me -- but was it really trust? Or was it faith -- faith that he could play me, or at least that I would look the other way? Was it my place as a journalist to rat him out? Did I even know how to deal with such information responsibly and constructively? I just kept writing my Nirvana biography and left out the more sensational 'Kurtney' stuff."

On the other hand, Azerrad did get a fair amount of heroin discussion into the book, and he sometimes called out Cobain, as in this passage: "'I can't stand people who don't confront anyone,' Kurt says, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he himself is a prime offender in this regard." He also included Cobain making horrible threats of violence against some journalists who had offended him, and though Cobain apparently had no problem with those quotes being included, Azerrad clearly realized that they did not display Cobain in a favorable light (he refers to the "undeniable creepiness of the answering machine tapes"). One of the things I got from reading this new edition is a new appreciation for how well-rounded a portrait (warts and all) Azerrad delivered; true, things were even worse than he realized, but he still included much more negative information than most rock biographies done with the cooperation of its subjects deliver. (But not "authorized"; that is generally understood to include the subjects' right to control the text, whereas Azerrad's contract specifically disallowed that.) Yet he had to struggle with some difficult decisions: he had been told that Cobaine cheated on the urine tests he had to submit in order to keep daughter Frances Bean after Children's Services had taken her away from the couple, but he left that out of the book because "I was just not going to pursue it and perhaps be responsible for them losing their child again, maybe for good." I have never, in my three-decades-plus time in music journalism, had to make a decision with even a hundredth of the possible impact of that.

It's not all angst, though. Azerrad has a sardonic sense of humor that often comes out in passages such as, "So the real villains weren't people who never touted punk ideals -- it was the opportunists, the poseurs who hitched themselves to the indie community but didn't emulate its values. The villains were also those who originally embraced those ideals and then betrayed them. Someone had to police these people." It's no wonder that he shows sympathy for Love, who has a somewhat similar (albeit more overstated) sense of humor -- though he also, at one point, remarks on a quote of hers, "Actually, it's not penitence if your only regret is that you got caught."

Azerrad occasionally talks about the nuts and bolts of songwriting/music-making, such as Kurt's use of polytonality (using chords outside the key of the song), without getting especially technical even while explaining it well. Another example is how Cobain picks words that sound good sung more than working on making the lyrics make sense. This focus on picking words with vowels that work well in particular musical contexts is something that Burt Bacharach goes into detail about in his autobiography (which I highly recommend) -- that Cobain, barely musically educated and having learned songwriting through a combination of paying attention to others’ songs and seeing what worked in his own trial-and-error self-education, figured out by himself.

Do I find some faults in the book? Yes. There is a story about using a guitar drop-tuning, in which the lower of the two E strings is tuned down a whole step to D: "For 'Blew,' Kurt tuned down to what's called a 'drop-D' tuning, but before recording the song, the band didn't realize they were already in that tuning and went down a whole step lower than they meant to, which explains the track's extraordinarily heavy sound." This doesn't quite make sense. First, it's unclear whether Kurt or "the band" (Kurt plus Krist) erred. More to the point, when listening to the recording, it's clear that both bass and guitar are tuned down even further than another whole step, C, as they are both playing low Bs, so both bass and guitar were tuned down. That cannot have been an accident. It also is revealing that the guitar part is all riffs, no chords -- Cobain perhaps didn't want to (or couldn't) deal with figuring out chords with one string tuned differently than usual. Instead, this story seems like Kurt making up an entertaining explanation instead of going with the more mundane reality of the situation -- a tactic that Azerrad calls out repeatedly in the "amplified" sections of the book.

There are also contradictory passages regarding the Vanity Fair/Hirschberg article: "Hirschberg couldn't confirm either statement because they weren't true: Kurt was on record -- in my Rolling Stone cover story, for instance -- as saying that he'd started doing heroin long before he even met Courtney." And again: "…various factual errors throughout the piece would seem to compromise Hirschberg's accuracy. For instance, she wrote that Danny Goldberg was a vice president at Polygram Records, when in fact he was a vice president of Atlantic." Three other errors are mentioned in the same paragraph. But later, in one of the new passages, Azerrad refers to Vanity Fair as "a major magazine with a diligent fact-checking department."

But obviously a 618-page book that only contains two inaccuracies has a pretty good batting average. Even Homer nods, as the saying goes.

Or three: Azerrad states that Lemonheads' It’s a Shame About Ray is merely "a decent album." I know that the following Lemonheads release contained the group's biggest hit, but It's a Shame About Ray is by far my favorite Lemonheads record to put on. De gustibus non est disputandum. I kid, I kid.

But enough of my frivolity. A final, post-Cobaine-suicide, chapter was added to a reprint of the original book; I had never read it until now. Anybody who can get through it without shedding tears is probably too dispassionate to have appreciated Nirvana's music. But the most stunning thing about the book in its present state is that it seems like it would be a good read even for someone who doesn't care about Nirvana, because as now presented, it is a fascinating examination of a band's rise and demise; life and death, personality flaws and mistakes and the ways in which someone in the public eye deals with them; the psychological journey of that band's leader, and for that matter of the other players; the intricacies of the music business at a crucial turning point; and the tricky issues a journalist must face in the moment and the later reflections on those issues. Even, I would say, the psychological journey of that journalist: Azerrad is unabashedly emotional at times, especially in the last few chapters.

Given the time of year, this book will make for an excellent stocking-stuffer -- if it's an XXL stocking.

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The Dry Mirth of Malice

Robert Cochrane — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 00:14:37 +0000

The Dry Mirth of Malice Robert Cochrane November 5, 2023 - 19:14

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Mistletoe Malice KATHLEEN FARRELL (Faber & Faber)

By the time of her death in 1999, the writer Kathleen Farrell hadn't published a novel since the 1962 appearance of The Limitations of Love; then came silence, though she continued to sporadically appear in various short story anthologies, sharing literary space with Salman Rushdie, Graham Swift, William Trevor, and Muriel Spark.

Farrell was, in many ways, a writer's writer. Her pared-down observations about human nature were much appreciated by a select few, but her works sold modestly and never made it into paperback. She remained valued by those who encountered her books, evidenced by the appreciative tone of the obituaries she garnered in celebration of a voice worthy of recall.

There remains unsparing darkness to her output; though never explicitly ruthless, her view of human nature was far from cozy; the reason why her tone may have jarred with a post-war audience seeking comfort instead of exposure. Her characters have been described as unsympathetic, which, indeed, they mostly are. It would have seemed a heresy to her to sweeten the truth she was trying to expose via her cryptic and steely observations. That would have utterly diminished the remit of her entire exercise.

Mistletoe Malice, her debut novel from 1951, contains all her future strategies. Dry in tone and challenging by nature, Farrell takes few prisoners. A woefully dysfunctional family gathers in a coastal cottage to celebrate Christmas under the watchful and controlling eye of their matriarch, Rachel, who is slavishly attended by her goose of a niece, Bess. As her brood assembles like a conference of unruly birds, tensions begin to creak, and ancient resentments raise their heads from long, disgruntled slumbers. It becomes the perfect setting for everything that Christmas shouldn't be but all too often is.

This novel seems better suited to present times than when it first appeared. Farrell's witty and unforgiving insights raise smiles of the knowing and uncomfortable kind. It is a perfect gift of discomfort dressed as a celebration. Endurance is maintained in the face of great expectations. All is deftly handled, and despite the characters being far from palatable, understanding, but not dislike, is the reader's ultimate reward.

Kathleen Farrell was friends with Ivy Compton-Burnett, Stevie Smith, and C.P. Snow. A survivor of a lost literary era, she played chess with Quentin Crisp and befriended Barry Humphries in his early days in London. For twenty years, she shared her life with the mercurial novelist Kay Dick, a relationship that physically ended in 1962 but which was only really concluded with Kathleen's death since they lived a stone's throw from each other in Hove.

Farrell remarked towards the end of her life that leaving her literary estate to anyone seemed futile since nobody would ever be interested in her work. She may have been pushed into the margins of memory by the angry young men of the Fifties and later by the cacophony of the swinging Sixties, but her relevance has rightfully resurfaced.

Here is a clear, fine intelligence, an observer of foibles, a voice from another time that so effortlessly transcends it.

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Steaming and Streaming: The Wondrous Rants of Laurie Stone

Brandon Judell — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 17:21:38 +0000

Steaming and Streaming: The Wondrous Rants of Laurie Stone Brandon Judell June 27, 2022 - 13:21

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Simone de Beauvoir notes in the opening of All Said and Done, the fourth volume of her autobiography: "[S]ometimes I wake up with a feeling of childish amazement -- why am I myself? What astonishes me, just as it sometimes astonishes a child when he becomes aware of his own identity, is the fact of finding myself here, and at this moment, deep into this life and not in any other. What stroke of chance has brought this about?"

And by what chance, after finishing de Beauvoir, are we lucky enough to be able to jump into Laurie Stone's own explorations of self through sex (with both strangers and known quantities), film, womanhood, feminism, Sex in the City, the joys of catering, dogs (both dead and alive), life with "the man I live with," plus the invigorating power of Nature:

"Alongside a roadside, I dug up a clump of wild rose, soaked the roots in a tub of water for several days, and planted it in the front yard. Most of the branches turned brown, but a few spindly ones retained their leaves, and after some time one of the tiny branches sprouted new leaves. It was thrilling."

Little deaths. Little births.

Streaming Now: Postcards from the Thing that Is Happening (dottir press) is an oft-laugh-out-loud collection of Ms. Stone's daily Facebook takes on the world’s carryings-on as prismed through a staunch feminist's eyes. One should also be aware that this, the latest of her memoirs, coincides somewhat with the emergence of COVID and the author's move from New York City to more rural environs with a gent quite brilliant in his own right.

If you are not excited by now, you might for some reason be unfamiliar with Ms. Stone's muscular prose. For decades, her take-no-prisoners judgments have brightened the pages of the Village Voice (1974-1999), The Nation, Evergreen Review, and numerous tomes such as Laughing in the Dark: A Decade of Subversive Comedy. Ms. Stone was even honored by The National Book Critics Circle. More acclaim should be forthcoming.

Ms. Stone began recording these daily thoughts while her sister was slowly passing away. These were in a way "postcards" to her sibling, a desire to show where she, Ms. Stone, had landed and how she got to where she was. Each section is labeled with a date, and a locale, and sometimes a mere word or phrase such as "Give Peas a Chance" or "Apartment."

I never read more than one entry a day, spacing them out over 60 days, so I could enjoy savoring this volume for as long as possible. . . and delight in it I did.

Of course, sometimes reading a nonfiction book by someone you know is a bit unsettling -- and I do know Ms. Stone, although distantly in recent years. Why? Because you can't respond as you would over a latte at Starbucks.

I found myself highlighting a sentence or two on nearly every page as I did with her other works, making comments or doodling stars in the margins. Places to return to. Then if she mentioned a composer (e.g. Scriabin), I'd listen to the same, trying to perceive that Stoned moment as she did herself.

Other times, when she had me laugh, for example with The Rabbi Joke that begins on page 92, I couldn't wait to phone someone and share.

Each section of Streaming often tops or at least equals the previous one, but wait until you get to page 142 where "Friend" begins, a remembrance about an impassioned friendship gone wrong, a dead dog, a story written about a dead dog, and so much more. You can't help but chortle through Laurie's tears. She has that type of talent. If this tale had been written as fiction, it would be making one of those annual collections of best short stories. Which reminds me that Audre Lorde once wrote: "When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak." And speak this author does on Facebook, relentlessly adding by the hour new reminiscences, cultural critiques, and ripostes to the day's political shenanigans.

Only a person as self-assured as Ms. Stone would be so brazenly verbose, so fearlessly uncensored. Yet often she lets us know that she can get hurt and she can hurt as when she quotes Joan Didion: "Writers are always selling somebody out."

Or after reading a friend's obit who was quoted as saying "feeling love had been the best of life," Ms. Stone recalls:

"Reading the obit made me happy. What a great way to look back on a life! Then I remembered I love hating. Or am I good at it. Who knows the difference?"

Last week, at an SRO reading in the Fulton Street McNally Jackson bookstore, a young woman praised the author as "brave" for being on the frontlines of the feminist fight for decades, not just with words but also in her daily actions. Ms. Stone, sitting in front of shelving hosting bios of Hitler and Stalin, and not far from Eleanor Roosevelt’s, tried to argue that she wasn’t brave at all. She lost that battle.

However, more memorable that night, at least to me, was the conversation my two godsons had after the event. The brothers had listened intently as Ms. Stone read a metaphorical, tongue-in-cheek tale of her supposedly having sex with Orthodox Jewish men who washed her female sexual residue off their penises while admitting they would never have children with a woman like her. "We [women of that era] thought it was so sexy!" What follows in the same paragraph is a detailed putdown of the doggy-style approach to lovemaking: "This was supposed to be the hottest of hot sex positions -- it said so in all of the movies and all the TV shows -- and we knew it was the worst, but hey, who were we to argue?"

The elder brother noted in awe, "I never heard about sex from a woman's perspective." The younger sibling nodded. Once again, Ms. Stone, who might not have sold as many books as she should have that night, had continued to transform lives.

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Life After Music, Music After Life

Robert Cochrane — Tue, 14 Jun 2022 13:43:30 +0000

Life After Music, Music After Life Robert Cochrane June 14, 2022 - 09:43

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In The Eyeline Of Furtherance

by JOHN HOWARD (Fisher King)

This latest memoir is English singer-songwriter John Howard's third appraisal of his tryst with life. Covering the last two decades of the century gone, it details the underside of a convoluted but event strewn sojourn in music.

By virtue of happenstance, personal charm and a fan's knowledge of pop songs, Howard enters the world of men in suits, set in their ways and driven by a need to have their own sense of self-importance constantly confirmed. An avenue through which he navigates with good grace, despite it being festooned with antiquated sharks, Dickensian in mode.

Once the "next big thing" signed to CBS Records in 1973 he becomes fifteen years later a licensing A&R man for budget labels, a brief stint at MCA and then Reader's Digest. His previous career being a time he barely mentions to his colleagues, if at all.

There pervades an air for the reader of sadness at a man of his obvious gifts being reduced to licensing the elderly recordings of stars on their descent from fame. It is a fascinating insight into the underside of the tapestry of ambition and success. Careers in decline, an audience aging with their icons in a sadly Proustian fashion. Howard however is in his element and simply goes with the flow. Compilations of budget priced records and compact discs that still clutter market stalls, charity shops and thrift stores, the bane of any vinyl junky in that need for a hit, the detritus of his efforts.

Here walk the ghosts of vinyl pasts. Lonnie Donnegan, Bert Weedon, Acker Bilk, with the occasional near modern blast of Madness & Culture Club, who now most definitely belong to the trade of nostalgia also. Along the way is a lost Dusty Springfield project, sadly curtailed by illness and the Grim Reaper, a previously unknown Doris Day platter from 1968, and vignettes from the likes of the indomitable Brenda Lee and the vastly underrated Elkie Brooks. People who maintain a following without a reliable recording deal. The potency of nostalgia.

There are other moments of more personal transcription. Howard's vivid portrayal of his bereavements through Aids, sensitively recreates an era of paranoia and loss. It is a timely reminder and testament to, a wave of grief that has thankfully been depleted of its savagery. Forgotten lives remembered like those lost in a war.

He writes with exasperated tenderness about his late father's difficult second marriage to a woman whose mental health problems, sadly undiagnosed, made her a controlling and vindictive presence. Alan Bennett meets Samuel Beckett. I met his father once and found him to a be a genial soul, but one ill-prepared for the level of coercive control to which he was daily, mostly secretly, subjected to.

His wife routinely censored his newspapers with scissors of any women he might have found attractive. In every dream home a heartache as Bryan Ferry so evocatively intoned. Howard briefly earned some brief-lived kudos from her by facilitating an after-show introduction to her hero Barry Manilow. An irony she refused to sanction by hanging a photograph of the occasion on their bedroom wall. It proves a saddening centre to the book, both frightening yet absurd. His father even pleads with his son not to let her know he watched television when he visited him, because she had to sanction everything he viewed.

As the book progresses the muse of Howard's rarely mentioned former pop career flits and flutters in mostly unrewarding ways. Songs recorded for children's records, a near chart hit he penned, covered by family entertainer Des O'Connor ( it reached No 76 in the UK charts) and a lost album consumed by the implosion of the record label that was days away from releasing it.

From these pages Howard emerges as an assured, charming soul with the heart of a fan. There's a delightful cameo encounter with Beach Boy Bruce Johnson, and the night when an unusual and unexpected attack of the jitters robbed him of a conversation with his idol Paul McCartney. This is a wonderful journey into a lost world of record companies, largely swept aside by the digital age. There are many insufferable dinosaurs, given the light of print and memory. One unsavory European is particulary vile, but his arrogance allows Howard a well-rewarded final say. A rare example of karma in full flow.

For the past twenty years John Howard has been consistently productive. A myriad of albums and songs have tumbled forth as he has gained the rightful respect of of his peers. Though he says he has no wish to annotate his 21st century revival, I fear that would be an oversight since his return to music with such vitality and aplomb happens rarely. Bill Fay and Sixto Rodriguez being two notable exceptions. This book is in some ways his years in the wilderness, but is a funny and rewardingly touching read.

It is vital and imperative that he transcribes his return to the land of promise he always had a divine right to inhabit, the best revenge being able to live and wear it well.

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A Great Littleness

Robert Cochrane — Fri, 10 Jun 2022 21:01:21 +0000

A Great Littleness Robert Cochrane June 10, 2022 - 17:01

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poetry

Maud Martha

GWENDOLYN BROOKS (Faber & Faber)

First published in 1953 Maud Martha is the sole novel by Pulitzer Prize winning African American Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Brooks 1917-2000. It should seem a quaint period piece about race, sadly it stands as beautifully eloquent and relevant as it did on its first appearance. The conversations it provokes anew, as pertinent in a different century, a sure indication that change occurs slowly, and usually takes backward steps.

Shaped via collection of painterly, personal episodes, thirty-four to be precise. Though often erroneously described as non-linear in construction, more on account of its brilliantly unorthodox sentences, than any absence of actual plot, this is a "coming of age" affair. Truly a poet's flexible collision with prose, an exercise in rendering the mundane profound, capturing great insights from small thoughts and events.

The issues tackled remain thorny. Seen through the eyes of a young black girl in Chicago, the reader is touched by her many realisations about her racial identity. The casual acceptance of her race of the 'n' word so as not to appear techy, the elevation of her pale skinned sister over her darker complexion, and the fact Maud Martha is grateful that her honey colored husband has chosen a wife less pretty and as dark as she.

Brooks writes with a deceptively poetic dreaminess, but one that entails no lack of bite. Her short sections possess a visceral edge honed by astute observations on the meaninglessness, meaningful aspects most lives encapsulate. Her patronage from ignorant white employer, so engrained its perpetrator is oblivious of her crime. Still shockingly pertinent.

The novel ends with the close of World War 2, in a tone of hopeful resolution.

"But the sun was shining, and some of the people in the world had been left alive, and it was doubtful whether the ridiculousness of man would ever completely succeed in destroying the world -- or, in fact, the basic equanimity of the least and commonest flower, for would its kind not come up again in the spring? come up, if necessary, among, between or out of -- beastly inconvenient! -- the smashed corpses lying in strict composure, in that hush infallible and sincere."

The flower in question the humble dandelion, the same bloom whose beauty she praises so eloquently at the novel's inception. As humanity continues to destroy its habitat, and those left defenseless, Gwendolyn Brooks' masterful little parable about race, has tendrils that caress the nature of the entire human condition.

A multi-faceted gem, deft, wise and beautiful.

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Memories From a Faded Era

Dusty Wright — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 14:23:41 +0000

Memories From a Faded Era Dusty Wright September 17, 2007 - 10:23

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Dandelion: Memoir of a Free Spirit

By Catherine James

(St. Martin's Press)

Catherine James has lived eight lives in 57 short years and her autobiography devastates with emotional sabotages that seem so outrageous that you swear you must be reading fiction.

I read the advance copy in one sitting, blown away by the poignancy and ease with which Miss James shares her years of perilous plight. The abuse she suffers at the hands of her Hollywood femme fatale mother Diana reads like Mommy Dearest meets Piper Laurie's character in the movie adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie.

Chapter after chapter she is left pummeled by another emotional battering from someone close to her. Even when she's able to finally run away from tortuous reality, which is one of her early blessings, she encounters emotional hardships that rival any I've read or seen in film. Only her grandmother Mimi -- one of the few normal eccentrics she encounters -- is courageous enough to try to shield her beloved granddaughter from harm's way, although she ultimately loses her. To say that she was trapped in a house ruled by a witch would be a gross understatement of the human condition.

Her mother continually tortures her both physically and emotionally, whether it's tying her to chair or locking her in closet to keep four-year-old Catherine in line so that Mom might socialize on the town without worry. Or not feeding her and making her swill hot sauce or dishwashing soap for punishment. Poor young Catherine is not out of harm's way until she is finally able to run away from her forever. And not until the very end of the memoir is there any contrition from Mom, as though that would suffice the years, though Ms. James emotionally detached herself from her shamelessly narcissistic and destructive mother years earlier. She continually denies her daughter's safety in all areas of parenthood. You'd be hard pressed to find such abuses in today's family courts.

Thankfully she is befriended by many wonderful and colorful characters along the way who help shine a brilliant light on her budding spirit, including such very famous folks as Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, and Roger Daltrey, to name but a few. From the musically charged '60s of Los Angeles to Andy Warhol's Factory in New York to the swinging parties of London and back to the woodsy solitude of Connecticut, mature beyond years Ms. James crisscrosses America seeking solace in a tranquil corner. Her unlucky-in-love character remains optimistic even when her life seems to be spiraling out of control.

Time and time again you are certain the fates will finally cast a favorable light on such a courageous soul. But it is not to be. Even as a pregnant teenager, she is able to rise above her condition and find the silver lining in a seemingly desperate situation. When Denny Laine, her son Damian's father, once of The Moody Blues, Ginger Baker's Airforce, and Paul McCartney's Wings, swoops her up, you think she's turned the corner. But the physically abusive rocker only adds more heartache and pain to the young bruised beauty's tale.

Her supremely dysfunctional family will remain with you long after you've finished this book. And her triumphant spirit will make most readers take stock at how petty most of life's seemingly unfair inequities might actually be quite trivial in comparison. Dandelion deserves to be picked from your local bookstore shelf immediately.

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