Tag: books

Book Review: Who I Am, by Pete Townshend

Townshend foresaw a day when music would be delivered digitally long before it happened.

I was a fairly big fan of the band The Who. I never bought any of their singles – I wasn’t much into 45s – and the first album I picked up wasn’t until Tommy (1969), but I purchased every studio album since, the earlier The Who Sell Out, as well as Live at Leeds and a couple compilations.

The lead guitarist of The Who, Pete Townshend, has written an extraordinary book, Who I Am. Part of the great strength of the book is based on Townsend’s fortunate habit of keeping journals.

The first part has amazing detail about his parents and grandparents even before he was born. I’m jealous; I wish I had such information about my recent ancestors. Then he talks about the development of the band. I’ve read a number of rock biographies, some of them quite good. It’s different, though, when one hears the story from the point of view of one of the participants, especially one who writes so well and so thoroughly.

The development of the rock opera Tommy is fully explained. It utilizes, as a jumping-off point, some of the actual abuse Pete experienced while in a grandparent’s care. He added the pinball motif fairly late in the game, in order to get a better review.

Teenage Wasteland

He explores the stresses on the now successful band, after Woodstock, Live at Leeds, and the Who’s Next album. In some ways, the pressure was just as great as when the band struggled to find an identity. The smashed guitars were an artistic expression, not just random mayhem.

Somewhere in this period, particularly after Who drummer Keith Moon died, I was hoping that Pete would stop with the sex and drugs, and stick to the rock and roll. His (now ex-)wife Karen must have been a saint. He could not quit the booze until 1994, though he had tried as early as 1981.

Townshend summarizes, right before his successful abstinence: “Although my marriage was failing, I had a beautiful son as well as two beautiful daughters who were doing well at university, I had fallen in love, and the girl I had found was slowly falling in love with me too. And I was rich. So what was messing me up?

“It would be easy to point to alcohol, but the problem wasn’t the booze; it was the fact that it longer worked as a medicine to fix the dire consequences of my self-obsession, overwork, selfishness, and manic-depression.”

I enjoyed watching his interaction with a variety of musicians, from the evolving relationship with Who singer Roger Daltry to folks such as Joan Baez, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Stevie Wonder, and Paul Simon.

A great read, which he started way back in 1996, and once Pete got his head on straight, I wanted to read more. The false accusation that he was dealing with child pornography wounded him greatly. He foresaw a day when the music would be delivered digitally long before it happened. An interesting feature, mostly in the latter half of the text, are footnotes to The Who website, probably in part a function of having to reduce the manuscript from 1000 pages to 500.

Highly recommended.

Links

Rolling Stone book review.

Pete Townshend receives 2013 Les Paul Award.

Lefty Brown reviews Quadrophenia.

 

E is for Encyclopedia

I still have a soft spot for those nearly uniform books that went from A clear down through Z.

When I was around six years old, my parents got me the Golden Book Encyclopedia, a series of books for kids. Well, it was for my sisters and me. But I was the one who practically wore off the covers.

Three or four years later, Mom and Dad purchased the Encyclopedia Americana, ostensibly for the family, but I was clearly the greatest user by far. I may have read the whole thing, over time. Because the books became instantly dated, Americana sold these Annuals that would update the main books. My parents bought these as well, and I DID read the volumes practically cover to cover.

When I was living on my own, local supermarkets would often sell encyclopedias, one book a week. The first volume would be 99 cents, or maybe just a penny; subsequent books were three or four dollars each. I know I started buying these because I ended up with a lot of A volumes; I knew more about aardwolves and Aachen than anyone should.

During my brief time in New York City, I was a telemarketer for about three months. I called people who had the World Book Encyclopedia already and ask them if they wanted to buy the Annual. I was rather good at selling these, as I recall.

Of course, now, most encyclopedias are available online, which makes them easier to keep up-to-date. Still, I still have a soft spot for those nearly uniform books that went from A clear down through Z.

That reminds me: I learned to spell the word encyclopedia from Jiminy Cricket on the Mickey Mouse Club.

ABC Wednesday – Round 12

Book Review: THE ME GENERATION…BY ME (Growing Up In The ’60s)

Ken Levine’s early life had a lot to do with growing up Jewish, not particularly coordinated or popular – perhaps one could say nerdy – in Southern California.

 

Ken Levine is a blogger I’ve been following for about five years, and whose observations about the entertainment industry I enjoy a lot. He is “an Emmy winning writer/director/producer/major league baseball announcer.” So I was interested in a book by a guy who both wrote shows I’ve watched, such as MASH, Cheers, and Frasier AND has done play-by-play for Seattle Mariners and other baseball teams.

I put his new book on my Amazon wish list and received it for Christmas. The premise of the book he dedicated a blog post to is that:

“They say if you can remember the’60s you didn’t live through them. But that’s not true. 99.9999% of the largest generation the world has ever known grew up in the ’60s and were not so drugged out that the decade became a mere purple haze. 99.999999% of them didn’t attend Woodstock, move to Haight-Ashbury, protest the war by burning their bras or banks, or form a band that played Woodstock. Most of us went to school, had summer jobs, wrestled with adolescence, and enjoyed being catered to by the media and Madison Avenue because of our sheer size.

“And the world changed dramatically while all of this was going on. But in the background.”

Levine’s early life had a lot to do with growing up Jewish, not particularly coordinated or popular – perhaps one could say nerdy – in Southern California. He didn’t have a rebellion against his parents, though.

Like many boys of his vintage, he was competing with the Beatles for the attention of girls. He writes a lot about his success, or more correctly, lack of same in the area of romance. Levine knew actress Ann Jillian and had an unrequited crush on her.

Levine had some interest in politics; he actually watched political conventions. World and national events both surprised and impacted him, from the assassinations of JFK, MLK, Jr., and RFK, to the 1965 riots in the Watts section of Los Angeles.

What I really liked was how music was a marker for much of that decade for him, as it was for me. He managed to be invited to the first episode of Shindig, an ABC-TV music show, but somehow didn’t quite make it.

I was distracted by some chronological errors. The musical Hair was popular in 1968, but Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In by the Fifth Dimension wasn’t a hit until 1969. George Wallace was a serious contender for President in 1968, not 1964.

Still, it’s enjoyable enough, although if coarse language bothers you, this book will annoy you. Non-essential; I suspect that his next volume when his writing career begins in earnest, will be more to my liking.

B is for Books

I was tired of looking at an increasingly large pile of unread books.

When I was at my previous church, a book club was formed, and I joined. Most of the members of the group were women, an average of two decades older than I. Each month, we’d pick a topic, and we’d all read different books around that topic; it might be about crafts or poetry or popular culture. With that structure, I always read ten to twelve books a year, and usually lot more; reading begat more reading.

The group lasted about nine years, and I felt that I learned more about these people from hearing them speak about the books they chose to read than from any other encounters I had with them.

After that period, I would start many books. Without the stimulus of mutual responsibility to the group, though, I often failed to finish.

I’m fascinated that I’ve managed to read more books in the final three months of last year than in the previous three years, and I’m not sure why. I do know that I was tired of looking at an increasingly large pile of unread books, for I would continue to purchase them at book sales and at book signings.

Completed in the last quarter of 2012:
Governor Martin H. Glynn: Forgotten Hero
11/22/63 by Stephen King
Wicked
Vince Guaraldi at the Piano
A Reporter’s Life by Walter Cronkite
Using Content-Area Graphic Texts for Learning
After All by Mary Tyler Moore
Plus Ken Levine’s book about the 1960s that I haven’t written about yet.

They are, incidentally, physical books, not on a device such as an Amazon Nook. And my wife HAS a Nook. I like the book. I spend at least seven hours every weekday on a computer for work. I blog on a computer at home. The idea of using another device to read books is unappealing, at this juncture. Perhaps, it’s, as Dustbury notes, that e-books don’t feel like one is buying anything. Or, more broadly, maybe it’s because, as Arthur described so well, I am a digital immigrant.

ABC Wednesday – Round 12

Book Review: After All by Mary Tyler Moore

Mary Tyler Moore’s her second marriage, to television producer Grant Tinker, seemed to epitomize the emotional distance both of them operated on when things were less than optimal.

 

As a television personality, there is probably no one I enjoyed more than Mary Tyler Moore. She appears on my Top Five favorite TV shows of all time, The Dick Van Dyke Show; her eponymous show is on my Top 20 list.

Looking forward to reading her autobiography, I was mystified by the fact that, for much of her professional life, she was a bundle of insecurities. Her success on her own show and Van Dyke’s she attributed to the talented performers, writers, and producers around her. Her failures, on other shows and on stage, are her fault. Such insecurity is odd, and not particularly appealing.

There is a certain arm’s length in her retelling of her growing up with a distant father and alcoholic mother, told in short chapters. A neighbor briefly molests her when she was six, and her mother refused to believe her; it’s told, as much of the book is, in this matter-of-fact manner. Later, the deaths of her younger sister and her son are likewise relayed.

Interestingly, her second marriage, to television producer Grant Tinker, who ran her production company, MTM, seemed to epitomize the emotional distance both of them operated on when things were less than optimal, though they appeared fine when things went well.

The book became so frustrating that, halfway through reading it, I actually blogged about it. Chris Honeywell nailed it: tanha, “a Buddhist idea which seems to correspond to ‘cravings, lusts, and focusing on self without introspection.'”

Then I started having second thoughts. I spoke to a friend of mine who has gone through therapy. The therapist has said to my friend, “Why aren’t you screaming” about the painful events being shared? Maybe when one has experienced enough emotional venting, one may come off as cavalier about the tough issues.

The most interesting chapter, and, at 12 pages, one of the longest, is when Mary finally gets sober. She went to the Betty Ford Clinic and was incensed by the tough treatment. “Then leave,” one nurse said.

After All, by the end, was a rather honest book. Not always pleasant, not what we might have expected from “our Mair,” but thorough.
***
Mary Tyler Moore nearly skipped the audition for “The Dick Van Dyke Show”.

Dick Van Dyke: “I’d go to work with terrible hangovers. Which if you’re dancing is hard.”

52 minutes of Carl Reiner talking about writing. He created The Dick Van Dyke Show.

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