Initially thrilling but finally artless, with little for the casual fan.
The cute Beatle may not have been quite so cuddly.
Sandford (Keith Richards, 2004, etc.) rejects the idea that among the Beatles, John Lennon was the caustic poet of depth and insight while Paul, though he may have had a knack for good tunes, was more interested in commerce than art. Sandford’s by-the-numbers bio comes up with plenty of evidence to support the idea that McCartney was much more of an innovator than generally credited: He basically invented the concept album, he was an early acolyte of John Cage and he pioneered the use of found sound, tape loops and other avant-garde standards. This insight alone, however, isn’t sufficient to justify yet another McCartney book. Starting off, rather oddly, with the musician’s 1980 bust for pot in Japan, Sandford then hops back to Liverpool in the 1930s, where Jim McCartney was a local hit as the head of a rollicking dancehall band. Jim’s son Paul quickly caught the bug, and Sandford dutifully follows the flowering of the teenager’s musical partnership with John, from the Cavern in Liverpool to the Hamburg dives, and to the whirlwind of hit singles and psychotic fans that followed. It’s all well-trammeled ground, and the author at times seems more interested in detailing Paul’s prodigious drug use and legendarily lengthy list of bedmates. Once the Beatles fall apart, Sandford maroons readers in the wasteland of pointless solo albums. Ticking off how many millions were earned with each tour, glossing over the mediocrity of McCartney’s more recent output, he builds little foundation for his conclusion that “we don’t want less of him. We want more.”
Initially thrilling but finally artless, with little for the casual fan.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-7867-1614-2
Page Count: 432
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
