Where memoirs from bigger stars often fail to deliver, this illuminating autobiography exceeds expectations.
A surprisingly rich memoir from a two-time Grammy winner and acclaimed backup singer.
Amid a glut of rock memoirs, it seems that anyone who ever had a hit has written a book, and Coolidge wouldn’t seem to have the richest story to tell, as she is best known for a tepid 1970s remake of “Higher and Higher” and as the lower-profile spouse in her tempestuous marriage to Kris Kristofferson during that time. However, in a manner that rarely seems gossipy and never salacious, the author presents her perspective on the sea changes that rock underwent in the early 1970s, an era in which she played a key role in the careers and lives of Leon Russell, Joe Cocker, Eric Clapton, and Crosby, Stills and Nash. “If you look back at this period in my life, it might seem like I was sleeping with every guy in town,” writes Coolidge. “I wasn’t. Leon and I were together for close to a year, same with Graham.” She details the seismic shifts that took place as Russell joined forces with Delaney and Bonnie, then stole their band for the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour that almost ruined Cocker, and Eric Clapton forsook the supergroup status of Cream and Blind Faith to fall under the Southern sway of Delaney Bramlett. The drummer through much of this period was Jim Gordon, whose demons would lead him to beat his girlfriend, Coolidge, unconscious and later murder his mother. The author also recounts how routinely Delaney battered Bonnie as well as Ike Turner’s mistreatment of Tina. She saw marijuana give way to cocaine and heroin as British rock stars in particular developed a sense of entitlement. “I wanted to say, What is wrong with you people? What did your mother teach you?” writes Coolidge, who comes across as not all that deep but uncommonly decent. The instant attraction with Kristofferson and volatile estrangement receives a full airing, as well.
Where memoirs from bigger stars often fail to deliver, this illuminating autobiography exceeds expectations.Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-237204-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
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
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
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