If unlikely to bring new fans into the fold, sure to please old-time admirers of an essential rocker.
Solid, occasionally hagiographic life of the British musician who helped pub rock evolve into punk, New Wave, and beyond.
Nick Lowe (b. 1949), writes Mojo contributor and musician Birch, is “simply peerless,” a musician’s musician whose songs have been recorded by the likes of Elvis Costello, Tom Petty, Johnny Cash, and Rod Stewart. He is also an international man of mystery and renowned toper who, while now calmed down at age 70, would put the fear in Keith Richards for powers of consumption. The author recounts Lowe’s musical evolution from “beat group” to pub rock, the latter of which was a more energetic answer to America’s singer/songwriter wave of the early 1970s, born with the rise of bands like Kippington Lodge, which, though they “simply lacked teen appeal,” put Lowe at center stage as singer, songwriter, and bassist. An encounter with fellow musician Brinsley Schwarz sealed the deal. Their live debut was unimpressive, writes Birch, opening for Van Morrison; watching him onstage, Lowe recalls, “I had a mounting sense of dread that we’d made a terrible mistake.” They got better, launching a musical movement that fed directly into the punk ethos of a few years later. After Costello recorded his “(What’s So Funny About) Peace, Love, and Understanding,” Lowe came under increasing demand as a songwriter, boasting that he could write for anyone—the Clash, the Jam, Tin Pan Alley; he also began to produce while playing live with Dave Edmunds, Carlene Carter, Ry Cooder, and others. The question, asked and answered, as to why Lowe isn’t more famous is a little obvious; there are and have always been many journeymen musicians who provide rock-solid support without ever making the headlines. But though he tends to be a touch worshipful, Birch makes clear that Lowe’s contributions to pop music have been many and mighty—and certainly worthy of celebration with a biography.
If unlikely to bring new fans into the fold, sure to please old-time admirers of an essential rocker.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-306-92195-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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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