A fascinating addition to the growing shelf of Springsteen studies, probably best read in doses.
A career-spanning collection of interviews with The Boss.
There is little doubt that Bruce Springsteen is among the most influential and important rockers of all time. The many books about him are only a small measure of his cultural impact. However, while critical and popular opinions about Springsteen’s work may change with time, there will always be The Boss’ own words about his career. Phillips and Masur (Lincoln's Hundred Days: The Emancipation Proclamation and the War for the Union, 2012, etc.), noted Springsteen scholars in their own right, have collected this definitive volume of interviews, even transcribing rare TV and radio broadcasts. The book charts Springsteen’s evolution from a withdrawn New Jersey teen playing the local bar circuit to an international rock star. From Springsteen’s earliest interview in 1973 with the Asbury Park Evening Press, which described his demeanor as “characteristically sullen,” to discussions with major media outlets like Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and 60 Minutes, Springsteen has, above all else, maintained a consistent philosophy of music first, never allowing triviality or ego to take over. He has proved this ethos time and again during his marathon live shows, always remaining honest to the audience, never conforming “to the formula of always giving the audience what it wants.” There is much to glean from Springsteen’s insights as he talks about his unpleasant upbringing in New Jersey or how, upon seeing Elvis’ infamous waist-up performance on Ed Sullivan in his early teens, he decided to dedicate himself to music. While the collection very clearly navigates a narrative of Springsteen’s life, it is a narrative already well-known by many and one that Springsteen is content to perpetuate throughout these interviews. As Springsteen admitted to Mojo in 2006, “Trust the art, be suspicious of the artist. He’s generally untrustworthy.” There is the music, after all.
A fascinating addition to the growing shelf of Springsteen studies, probably best read in doses.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-62040-072-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2013
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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