Graeme ThomsonReseñas

The quintessential book on Elvis has yet to be written, I guess. While "God's Comic" was one man's attempt to explain every song lyric - too much so, in fact - this book skims the songs in favor of a journey through Elvis' life with The Attractions, his various periods of musical exploration, and his personal demons (and angels).

You leave the book pretty much like you came in - assuming he was a boisterous, drunken lout in his early days, mellowed and matured as he got older, and pretty much blamed the industry for any slow sales or commercial failures. Yet, he always comes across as a likable bloke you'd love to have a pint with. Just stop at a pint...

George Harrison:Behind The Locked Door
by Graeme Thomson
2015
Overlook Omnibus
3.5 / 5.0

Known as the quiet Beatle, George Harrison's lifelong inner turmoil balancing his spiritual beliefs with the material needs and demands of his life, career, and fame drove him to become a very reclusive person.
From The Quarryman to the Beatles; his fascination with Eastern philosophy and religion to studying with Ravi Shankar; and his retirement to Friars Park, his estate in England; this is a solid biography of a very complex and interesting man.
Each of Harrisons solo albums and guest appearances are given detailed synopsis, although Thomson does say he believes Harrisons career was at its top when 'All Things Must Pass' was released, and everything since then has not compared.

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3247829.html

A readable artistic biography, taking us through Bush's career up to the time of publication using public sources and interviews with former colleagues (though not Bush herself as far as I can see). Bush is far from a one-shot wonder, but it's clear that her biggest (and quite extraordinary) success was at the very start of her career, with “Wuthering Heights”, “The Man With the Child in his Eyes” and The Kick Inside. It's extraordinary that those first songs were written when she was a teenager, “The Man With the Child in his Eyes” when she was 16.

After that, she was basically rich enough to do what she wanted, without too much pressure to succeed further (and clearly much more careful with her money than, say, Pete Townshend). And what she wanted was generally studio recording rather than the public stage - between 1979 and 2014 there were no Kate Bush live concerts, and few appearances. Few of her later songs are as successful as the early ones, but some are, and I get the sense that for the last forty years she has been more or less throwing artistic ideas at the wall and seeing what would stick.

I was also very interested to note that despite her eclectic performances and style, she is still very much a music industry insider - an outlier rather than a revolutionary. It was David Gilmour of Pink Floyd who spotted her when she was 16 (here's a 2002 bootleg video of her perfoming "Comfortably Numb" with Gilmour). As The Kick Inside and Lionheart came out she was providing backing vocals for Peter Gabriel (who is co-credited with her on the 1979 Kate Bush Christmas Special). The book includes chummy pictures with Midge Ure and Terry Gilliam. I don't want to exaggerate this, of course - she also cultivated the Trio Bulgarka for The Sensual World and The Red Shoes, well outside the British music industry's normal comfort zone.

Anyway, Thomson's books was an enlightening read even for a non-fan.

Full credit to the author for confirming that Kate really is worthy of her fans' adoration, and for explaining the long gaps between her later albums. One star off for his faint praise of some of her best efforts: Love and Anger "starts small and ends in a riot of clattering rhythm", Moments of Pleasure "covered the same ground (as other songs) but in much more awkward shoes", Joanni "struggled to engage", etc.

I share a birthday with Kate Bush (and Emily Bronte), so I randomly thought I would read up on my fellow Leos. Never having listened to any of Kate's music, bar the famous singles - Wuthering Heights, Babooshka - I must admit to sharing common pre (mis?) conceptions about her - high wavering voice, bizarre dancing, the Lord Lucan of music. I'm sure she is a wonderful person and artist - and I can completely understand her natural reserve and avoidance of the limelight - but this biography did not exactly win me over. Another annoying quality of Kate's - 'every man in the room falls in love with her!' - would seem to include the author and all the males interviewed for this biography. Gushing praise doesn't begin to describe Thomson's approach - he tries to be unbiased, pointing out unsuccessful albums and including one or two quotes from men who didn't get on with her ('unique among humankind'), but generally the whole book is a study in rose-tinted devotion. Easy to read, but keep a sickbag to hand.

What do you get when you cross Karen Carpenter with Bjork? That was my first impression of Kate, anyway! Coming from a comfortable middle-class background with two loving parents and interfering - sorry, protective - brothers, her life story is hardly thrilling. Her music is another matter. Her expressive voice, clever lyrics, idiosyncratic style of playing the piano, separate private and performing personalities, perfectionist work ethic - even her love of tea and bad habit (for a singer) of smoking cigarettes! - actually reminded me of Freddie Mercury, but then I can read him into anything and anyone! Freddie was more comfortable with fame and wanted 'to be loved by a roomful of strangers' when on stage, but I can imagine the pair of them having a lot in common and getting on well, had they ever met.

Anyway, reading around Thomson's defensive narrative - Kate stopped performing live so she 'could be true to her own impulses' and 'she is not a pop star, she just happened to make what we broadly describe as pop music the vehicle for her creativity' - my final interpretation of the iconic singer who was signed to EMI at 17 is of a gifted artist who found inspiration in her own imagination (and an eclectic interest in music) but struggled to balance her 'art' with her fame and has now become an urban legend, resurfacing every now and again with an album or a short tour (that chapter needs updating, Graeme - and you might want to rephrase 'dear old Rolf Harris' while you're there). Good to read a positive biography for once, but Kate's ordinary life and bonkers music - Thomson's teenage analysis of her songs doesn't help - are not for me, unfortunately.

Graeme Thomson's comprehensive biography of Kate Bush is, without the lady herself putting pen to paper, the closest thing we'll get to her definitive life story.

Thomson is obviously a fan, and while his prose can be a little florid at times, he knows his subject well, has researched extensively and gives objective reviews of all her creations, be they album, tour or video. For me, who's impression of Bush has been formed from the music press and the albums themselves, it was refreshing to learn that, according to all sources, she's very down to earth, not the kooky, away-with-the-fairies songstress of popular myth.

Everyone who's ever worked with her has nothing but praise for her, both as a writer, singer, person and artist. That says a lot about the woman herself.

Thomson writes of her childhood in a fairly idyllic upper middle class family, through unremarkable school years to the precocious singer-songwriter, signed to EMI and then given two years to "develop" as an artist. Who these days would be given such laissez-faire? It was a sign of EMI's faith in her talent that they gave her such latitude.

He traces her artistic development exhaustively. The first part of the book is basically and album per chapter. There's one on the Tour of Life (up until this year her only foray into live performance) and it's now certain that Thomson will have to update this book again, given his assertion several times that Bush would never play live again. How wrong he was!

The only flaw in the book is the lack of information on her "wilderness years", the time she spent away from the spotlight between 1994 and 2005 being a mother. But that only shows how well she protects her private life. It was two years before it was revealed she'd given birth!

All in all a great read, extremely well researched and written and a must for any Kate Bush fan.

This is one of several music biographies I’ve read by an author who’s a fan of the artist but has little or no conception of how to write quality prose. As a result, what I expected to be a great read transpired to be good in parts, yet disappointing on the whole.

To me, a biography, be it about a musician or a king of England, should follow events in chronological order. This book, however, flits back and forth through the years many times, leading to certain episodes and quotes being repeated.

The author also tends to state his opinions as facts. A good biographer should try to be non-biased. It’s fine to mention personal tastes, but to state things like, “Blow Away” is the weakest track on the “Never Forever” album, or “Violin” isn’t a great track, are his opinions stated as facts. Personally, I think “Violin” is not only a great track, but it’s one of my favourite Kate Bush songs.

Anyway, despite the above-mentioned gripes, certain aspects of Kate’s life related in this volume were of interest. The time before she was famous, how she wrote her first songs, the road to fame and how she coped – or didn’t cope – with it, and the way she developed as an artist over the years all make for good reading.

I didn't read this cover to cover, but just dipped into it as events drew my interest - it's a pretty hefty volume. Thomson referred to Pattie Boyd's autobiography often (a book I disliked because of her shameless name-dropping) and of course, much is already well-known, especially to my generation (as a teen, my friend pointed to a blurb in a minor music magazine saying this band with the odd name was worth watching). One surprise was that Harrison's young son Dhani, was shocked to learn his father had been in The Beatles. It explained why the kids at school taunted him by following him singing Yellow Submarine. That he had kept this from his son is an indication of his need for privacy, to be an individual, not a piece of a famous group where he was never content, never accepting stardom. This is an honest, frank account of Harrison's life, the odd man out of the Beatles, unhappy with life, constantly searching for solutions. Thomson acknowledges his talent but without gushing hero-worship.

I picked up this book thinking, George Harrison, this should be interesting. It really wasn't much to me. And to top it off I had not even realized I had read his biography several years back and had forgotten I had. So much for impressions. Graeme Thomson goes into a fairly exhaustive review of primarily Harrison's escapades as an emerging rock superstar primarily from his part as a Beatle. In respects he had some success on his own but not to the magnitude of Lennon or McCartney.

The trials and tribulations of his struggles on the recording and performing stage is primarily the focus of the book. That is what I found generally boring about the book. One thing for sure is despite his perceived enlightenment in his religious endeavors, this was one tortured man, and probably soul. Harrison seemed quite the contradiction in his life. One who sought out and practiced the solace and peace associated with the Indian religious practices. Yet by contrast most of his life continually centered in his drinking and drugging. Back and forth he went. And ultimately led to his early demise. His commendable striving to save and help those in peril during the struggles of Bangladesh are offset by his petty and constant struggles and bitterness towards his fellow artists. All of this made for not a pleasant read.

This is an extremely well written biography of the artistic genius that is Kate Bush (this is the updated 2012 version). Like all the best biographies, it is critically sympathetic, clearly distinguishing Kate in a broadly positive way from many other artists in her refusal to engage with the trappings of celebrity and fierce protectiveness of her and her family's privacy, while still pointing out cases where he considers she has carried it to excess, to the detriment of her career (though not probably to the detriment of her personal well-being). He is also clear where he thinks parts of her musical oeuvre are sub-standard, though I don't necessarily agree with his choices - he is very down on The Red Shoes album, which I really like, whereas I still cannot really (or not yet, perhaps?) get into most of Aerial and 50 Words for Snow. And I am somewhat dubious about the Director's Cut album of reworked songs (to which I am listening while writing this review). Of course, the advent of these recent albums and this year's tour increases the likelihood of further music from her; and even tracks which I personally don't really care for, I can still appreciate as examples of her seemingly limitless creative endeavour. An excellent read.