Review: The Quality of Madness: A Life of Marcelo Bielsa

The Quality of Madness: A Life of Marcelo Bielsa by Tim Rich
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A serviceable biography of Marcelo Bielsa. Bielsa is notoriously reluctant to give interviews so there are few insights into the man, the book largely restricted to a chronology of his career and comments from those who worked with him, most of which seem to come from previously published interviews and/or press conferences. Ending, as it does, mid way through the most recent, Covid-19 interrupted, season the book misses perhaps Bielsa’s greatest achievement to date, taking Leeds United back to the English Premier League after 16 years in the wilderness. I suspect a revised edition soon.

View all my reviews

Review: Roger Daltrey: Thanks a lot Mr Kibblewhite: My Story

Roger Daltrey: Thanks a lot Mr Kibblewhite: My Story by Roger Daltrey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Roger Daltrey’s story read by Roger Daltrey. Perhaps not as enthralling as Pete Townsend’s WHO I AM, Daltrey seemingly a more contented and less conflicted individual, it is nonetheless a hugely entertaining autobiography from one of the great singers, and survivors, in rock history. More humour than In Townsend’s book too and even more so having Rog read it himself - on a couple of occasions he starts to laugh as he reads particular passages, as it comes back, and has to have another go...

View all my reviews

Review: Where’s My Guitar?: An Inside Story of British Rock and Roll

Where’s My Guitar?: An Inside Story of British Rock and Roll by Bernie Marsden
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Bernie Marsden is a guitarist’s guitarist, talented and unassuming, a bluesy player with a distinctive yet adaptable style yet none of the questionable attitude of more recognised ‘rock stars’. WHERE’S MY GUITAR is Bernie’s autobiography, updated to 2019, and details his remarkable career playing alongside ex-Deep Purple stars, Jon Lord, Ian Paice and David Coverdale in Paice Ashton Lord and Whitesnake, Cozy Powell, Jack Bruce, Gary Moore and many others. What the vast majority of these relationships share is the respect in which Bernie is held. Even his falling out with Coverdale, with whom he co-wrote the songs which have largely allowed him to pick and choose his projects, was due to other’s mismanagement and has been mended, DC writing the foreword to this edition. Bernie even managed to win over the notoriously difficult Ginger Baker although it is an experience he didn’t relish repeating.

There are surprising diversions such as his work in the theatre, his role as musical director for the band formed by professional tennis greats such as Pat Cash, John McEnroe and Vitus Gerulaitus, and the related ‘almost’ gig with Cliff Richard, a particularly amusing section. Marsden comes across as a thoroughly likeable man and the book reads like listening to a old friend. But, like one of his Whitesnake numbers says, he ‘loves the blues’ and it is Bernie’s interactions with blues singers, famous and not so famous, which really ‘tell his story’....

View all my reviews

Review: Uncommon People: The Rise and Fall of the Rock Stars 1955-1994

Uncommon People: The Rise and Fall of the Rock Stars 1955-1994 by David Hepworth
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

More a collection of articles than a cohesive narrative, Uncommon People is well-written and entertaining but lacks the singular focus of his previous book 1971 - Never A Dull Moment.

In truth, the book could have cut off at the end of the '70s, there being many, many more 'Rock Star' stories from rock & roll's first quarter century than thereafter and Hepworth's approach of one essay per year means that interest tails off towards the end. That said, his piece on Prince, which really hangs on the allegations against Michael Jackson, makes interesting reading in light of the recent Jackson documentary, and his piece on Kurt Cobain is one of the best examinations of the inability to deal with fame that I have ever read.

View all my reviews

Review: Going on the Turn

Going Round the Bend by Danny Baker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have a friend to whom nothing ordinary has ever happened. His life seems to be full of spur of the moment, sometimes ill-advised, decisions that lead to situations which, at least as he tells them, reduce the listener to tears of laughter. His gift is that he tells these stories in great detail and, despite meandering from one situation to the next, seemingly unconnected, he eventually gets back to the original point and always with a killer punchline. Danny Baker shares this gift.

‘Going on the Turn’ is the third volume of Danny Baker’s autobiography and essentially takes his story from the mid-nineties until late 2012, with many flashbacks. Like in the previous volumes, Baker discusses the absurd and coincidental as his stories crash into each other as it hurtles along at a frantic, and extremely entertaining, pace. The book contains some of his funniest tales - throwing his records in a skip; meeting David Bowie; NOT meeting David Bowie; NOT smoking cannabis - and also the harrowing, honest description of his cancer treatment in 2012. But even the latter is full of wit and humour as is the chapter about his father’s death.

If you like Danny Baker, and I do, then the only thing better than reading his latest memoir is to listen to him read it in the audiobook version. And then go straight to his vitriolic, chaotic and triumphant final show for BBC Radio London following his sacking by homogenising pen-pushers (It’s still on youtube).

View all my reviews

Review: Stone Free: Jimi Hendrix in London, September 1966–June 1967

Stone Free: Jimi Hendrix in London, September 1966–June 1967 by Jas Obrecht
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As the subtitle suggests, "Stone Free:Jimi Hendrix in London, September 1966–June 1967" concentrates on a very specific period in Hendrix's life, from his 'discovery' in New York by ex-Animal, Chas Chandler, until his triumphant appearance at Monterey Pop in June 1967. The nine months between these events, when Jimi left his native USA to come to London, form the Experience, record his first music under his own name before returning to America on his way to global superstardom, are covered in great detail by Jas Obrecht, former editor of Guitar Player magazine. The book takes us on a month-by-month chronological journey as the unknown Hendrix takes 'Swinging London' by storm. The author is thorough if a little dry. He covers the Jimi Hendrix Experience's first gigs, where the guitarist's technique astounded contemporaries such as Eric Clapton and Pete Townsend, the mismatched package tours, with the likes of Englebert Humperdink and the Walker Brothers, which took him around the UK and into Europe. Obrecht lists the recording sessions, locations and numbers recorded, which produced Hendrix's first singles and his debut "Are You Experienced?" album. We also learn where Hendrix lived during the period.

The writing is a little 'matter of fact' but never tedious. The book does appear to be aimed at the 'Guitar Player' crowd rather than a general audience although, strangely given the revolutionary guitar sounds on that first album, Obrecht seems a little unsure how much 'technical' detail to include. There is a detailed analysis of whether the left-handed Hendrix used a right-handed Fender Telecaster on 'Purple Haze' ("the second overdub, at 1:08, is a repeat of the previous motif...") which would certainly appeal to a guitar player but the author only very occasionally revisits HOW Hendrix was playing. Elsewhere, the author touches on potential financial mismanagement by the group's handlers. He also mentions drug-taking. But, by limiting himself strictly to the period in the title, many things are never followed to a natural conclusion.

I enjoyed the book but suspect the readership is going to be fairly limited. It will not attract those new to Jimi Hendrix's music and will not entirely satisfy those familiar with his work. As a fan and a guitarist, I would love an extended examination of the recordings.

Thanks to NetGalley and University of North Carolina Press for the advance review copy.

View all my reviews

Review: Trampled Under Foot: The Power and Excess of Led Zeppelin

Trampled Under Foot: The Power and Excess of Led Zeppelin by Barney Hoskyns
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"The paranoia and the suspicion and all that stuff is part and parcel of who he is, and unfortunately it manifests itself in some weird ways."

I don't like Jimmy Page although I do like a lot of his music. I don't like that Page appears to be unable to share credit (unless legally enforced in doing so) - whether in stealing from Willie Dixon and other blues greats or taking full credit for every note, every sound on Led Zeppelin albums to the extent of changing engineers in case any of them had the temerity to claim they did anything other than position the faders exactly where Jimmy told them to. I don't like that he resurfaces every few years to repackage and resell the same 8 or so albums. 2018 being Zep's 50th, we can expect to go through the cycle again.

I don't like John Bonham. He was a good drummer, but he didn't invent drums. He was a thug.

I do like Robert Plant. He has had a musical life after Zeppelin and some of it has been good.

I do like John Paul Jones, a seriously under-estimated musician. He also seems like a nice man.

I do like Barney Hoskyns but I would have liked some commentary from him, an opinion. Trampled Underfoot is essentially a chronological arranging of various interviews and, while they tell a fascinating story, I expected at least some counterpoint to the likes of Mick Wall's "You are Jimmy Page and you are justified in robbing everyone blind because you are a genius and they would never have been as good as you anyway..." (see When Giants Walked the Earth) or the salacious Hammer of the Gods.

There is a fascinating story here but I think Hoskyns could have told it better.

View all my reviews

Review: We Are The Clash: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Last Stand of a Band That Mattered

We Are The Clash: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Last Stand of a Band That Mattered by Mark Andersen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

We Are The Clash: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Last Stand of a Band That Mattered
by Mark Andersen, Ralph Heibutzki

An admirable attempt to put the last few years of The Clash into a political and social context, ‘We Are The Clash Reagan, Thatcher, and the Last Stand of a Band That Mattered’ is the story of the band’s final days set against the turmoil of Thatcher’s Britain - the miners’ strike, the Falklands War - and Reagan’s America - the Cold War threat of ‘limited nuclear war in Europe’, Iran-Contra - times that should have been made for a band as politically outspoken as The Clash.

The authors have written a well-researched and very readable history of a period in The Clash’s history which has largely been ignored by the vast majority of music journalism. The band had splintered: drummer, Topper Headon had already gone, struggling with heroin addiction and, in a move which would have been unthinkable a couple of years earlier, in 1982 Joe Strummer had sacked founder member and lead-guitarist, Mick Jones. In most retrospectives, including the band’s own, The Clash ended here but, as the authors rightly point out and evidenced by bootleg recordings of the time, musically, The Clash were in pretty good shape.

Andersen and Heibutzki also offer a succinct history of, and commentary on, the contemporaneous events of the early 1980s. In the UK, Margaret Thatcher’s war on the mining industry tore communities apart and caused bitterness and resentment that still resonate today. In the USA, Ronald Reagan was conducting a more covert war against ‘the threat of communism’ and breaking all manner of laws in doing so. The arms race with USSR came as close as it ever did to ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ when, on September 26, 1983, only the gutsy stubbornness of Stansilav Petrov, a Soviet ‘early warning system’ monitor, in not reporting what turned out to be a malfunction as an actual attack, prevented the start of WWIII.

The failure of the book is that, despite valiant attempts to connect the band to the times around them, there was actually little connection. Little connection, not because of any failure on the authors’ part but rather because The Clash, and Joe Strummer in particular, were in such a state of disarray that, other than a few low-key gigs in support of the striking miners in the UK, they failed to make any meaningful impact.

'The gap between Strummer’s aims and his ability to live them yawned even wider.’

‘“Where was The Clash? They were AWOL, missing in action, nowhere to be seen”’ - Billy Bragg

The book is littered with awkward transitions between what was happening with The Clash and what was happening in the world because the truth is that The Clash failed to turn up.

‘Three days before Reagan chose to wager his regime on this desperate ploy (selling arms to Iran), The Clash played the Rockscene in Guehenno, in a remote region of France.’

The authors neatly sum up the significance of The Clash at the time in this one sentence. Not only was the venue remote, the band remote from shady and probably illegal political machinations but on that particular date - July 13, 1985 - “seemingly every major rock act on earth played the Live Aid concert for African famine relief..” All of these events were calling for The Clash and The Clash didn’t show up.

The authors make a good case that the major cause of the end of The Clash was not the sacking of Mick Jones but the return of manager Bernie Rhodes. Rhodes, who had been instrumental in pulling the band together with Jones, prior to Strummer’s recruitment, before being ousted, saw an opportunity to take the reins and steer The Clash in the direction in which he wanted to go. The band toured as directed by Rhodes and, more significantly, the album which put the final nail in the band’s coffin, ‘Cut The Crap’, was Rhodes’ vision, a melding of punk and ‘80s electronic pop.

The authors offer a hearty defence of the album, on which few of The Clash save Strummer make any real contribution - guitar parts are heavily processed and lost in the mix, the drums are largely programmed and played in a drum machine - but their arguments are weak. Early demos of many of the tracks on ‘Cut The Crap’ suggest a much better album was in there but the final result is weak. As the book points out, Joe Strummer was lost at this point, occasionally literally, and The Clash did not really exist. A busking tour was a final stand and, had the album been successful, could have led to a resurgence but Joe Strummer essentially walked away and, thankfully, Bernie Rhodes plans to keep the band going without him came to nothing.

The book should be a must-read for Clash fans. It is well-written and is largely successful in placing The Clash in context with the times. That the band failed to engage with the world around them is not the fault of the authors but perhaps serves to mark not just the end of The Clash but the beginning of the end of any real political influence of rock and pop groups as a whole.

We Are The Clash: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Last Stand of a Band That Mattered
by Mark Andersen, Ralph Heibutzki is published by Akashic Books on July 3, 2018.

View all my reviews

Review: Hotel California

Hotel California by Barney Hoskyns
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"It's not easy when you take someone who's basically right out of puberty and who becomes a millionaire responsible to no one."

Barney Hoskyns's 'Hotel California' is the story of the late '60s rise of country rock and its descent into late '70s AOR; idealism into hedonism; dope smoking, laid back hippies into cokehead, egotistical control freaks. Of course, there are those who were already halfway there even at the Laurel Canyon scene beginnings - Stephen Stills comes off particularly badly - and it would be difficult to make it in music without a strong ego, but Hoskyns's story is largely a tale of innocence and experience.

This is not a primer for California music; the book is almost novelistic and has a huge cast of characters and presupposes the reader's familiarity with many of them, not just the Crosby's, Stills', Nash's and Young's but also the Warren Zevon's and Lowell George's. Hoskyns takes these characters and weaves their individual threads into a complete tapestry of the times, albeit one which becomes badly torn and frayed at the end. He takes us from the idealistic Laurel Canyon community, the singer-songwriters at the Troubadour, an extended family who wrote together and played on each others albums, at time when record companies supported 'artists', to back-stabbing, suspicious superstars who tried to outdo and undermine each other at every turn. And, along the way, the casualties like Gram Parsons and Judee Sill.

I enjoyed the book, and revisiting the music, immensely and would recommend it to anyone with more than a passing interest in the period. It is much more than the subtitle, "The True-life Adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Browne, Ronstadt, Geffen, the Eagles, and Their Many Friends", would suggest and I look forward to picking up Hoskyns's "Small Town" which I hope expands on The Band's story in the same way.

View all my reviews

Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink by Elvis Costello
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Despite having listened to Elvis Costello’s music since 1977, following his career from his early angry, spiky New Wave recordings with The Attractions, through the country songs of ‘Almost Blue’ and later collaborations with the Brodsky Quartet and Paul McCartney, knowing he is married to Diana Krall, when I think of Costello it is still the skinny, snarling young man spitting cynical lyrics from behind a Fender Jazzmaster that I picture. Only when you list the artists that Costello has written, recorded and performed with - Attractions, Imposters, Nick Lowe, Specials, Daryl Hall, Diana Krall, Ray Brown, Chet Baker, Solomon Burke, Aretha Franklin, Ann Sofie Mutter, Brodsky Quartet, Bob Dylan, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Burt Bacharach ,Bill Frizzell, Allen Toussaint, George Jones, James Burton, Jerry Scheff, T-Bone Burnett, Paul McCartney, Jerry Lee Lewis, Robert Wyatt, London Symphony Orchestra, The Roots - do you appreciate the breadth of his music and the impact he has had on the musical landscape of the last 40 years.

In ‘Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink’, written without ghostwriters and narrated in the audiobook version by the author himself, Elvis Costello tells of this perhaps unlikely journey and his experiences along the way. It is not a traditional chronological autobiography - “I was born in Paddington in 1954….” - rather a series of themed chapters dealing with particular aspects of his love of music. Costello is candid about his personal life but these stories are told in context and always framed by the music. The music is the most important character in this book. We learn about his grandfather, a White Star Line trumpet player, and his father, the big-band singer, Ross McManus, through Costello’s reflections on the life of a musician on the road. His chapters on, for instance, Allen Toussaint and Burt Bacharach concentrate on these collaborations across several years.

Costello, as anyone who has listened to his lyrics will know, is a natural storyteller and his stories here are frank and honest, as when he talks of his drinking and his marriage failures, but also comical like the unlikely sounding story of how he and Solomon Burke stood in a corridor outside Aretha Franklin’s dressing room hoping to speak with her only to have the Queen of Soul fling the door open and snap their picture with a disposable camera, or he and Bob Dylan accidentally locking themselves out of a concert hall and having to make their way back through queuing fans.

This is a big book but it rattles along. It is almost liking sitting with Costello as he relates a series of “Did I ever tell you about the time…” stories, illustrating points by quoting song lyrics, both illuminating their meaning and sending you back to the recordings. I began this book as an Elvis Costello fan, albeit intermittently over the last 10 or 15 years. I finished it with an increased admiration for, and appreciation of, one of the most singular talents of the last 40.
____

Link to Costello speaking about the book on November 3, 2015 as part of the 26th annual Chicago Humanities Festival - https://youtu.be/_wVjxAN8j-8

View all my reviews