Following several attempts at a reunion, the band died with Van Zant and three other band members in a plane crash in 1977,...
One for the fans as Odom, security manager for Lynyrd Skynyrd and longtime buddy of lead man Ronnie Van Zant, chronicles the boozy ascent and abrupt crash of the hugely popular band.
They certainly burned bright for a few years, with a “hellfire boogie played at a quickfire pace.” In this admiring biography, Odom follows the band through its early manifestations as the Noble Five and the One Percent, playing gigs off the back of a flatbed truck at church socials while adding and subtracting members. This was a bunch of gents who liked fishing, fighting, girls, and singing: rednecks and proud of it. But, Odom says, they—and Van Zant in particular—were perfectionists, rehearsing and noodling with their songs until they ultimately attracted the attention of Al Kooper, who further helped shape their sound. Sketches are afforded of each of the band members and a good number of their entourage, but it’s Van Zant who commands Odom’s affection. A talented songwriter who made the most of his limited vocal skills, Van Zant was a Jekyll-and-Hyde drinker, unpredictably violent when drunk (and drunk most of the time, as were most of the band members). Yet, despite all the drinking before the shows, the band had enormous stage presence, and their neatly choreographed performances crackled with energy. Odom bravely tries to make a case for their distinctiveness within Southern rock (including the Allman Brothers, ZZ Top, Marshall Tucker), but it was their knack for “quotation music”—carefully measured appropriations of Hendrix, Clapton, Jethro Tull, and others the band respected—that steams off the page here, second only to their gift for hellraising.
Following several attempts at a reunion, the band died with Van Zant and three other band members in a plane crash in 1977, an accident handled with tact here and easily the most disturbing and electrifying part of this tribute to Lynyrd Skynyrd. (Photographs)Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2002
ISBN: 0-7679-1026-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2002
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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