Damon Albarn: Blur, The Gorillaz & Other Fables

Never entirely sure how two people write a book (who holds the pen? And whoever it was should really have checked more often for spelling mistakes) but this, unauthorised, biography charting the rise, stall, rise again and subsequent arrival in the grown up musical big leagues of Britpop poster boy Damon Albarn manages to rattle along at a very readable pace and isn’t afraid to call a duff album a duff album. It’s all here from the stage school years, the Britpop bust ups with Suede and the Gallagher louts the magnificent re-invention via the Gorillaz, the thoughtful dalliances with World Music, the idiotically monikered The Good The Bad & The Queen and the hugely over-ambitious but, remarkably, largely successful Monkey opera. Anyone hoping for acres of prurient dirt from the Justine Frischman/ Brett Anderson days will be sadly disappointed – Alex James Bit Of A Blur deals with the bands more hedonistic aspects rather more successfully – but this enjoyable study paints Albarn as a very driven, hugely ambitious man, a genuine music lover with a good deal more talent than most of his peers and an open minded approach to his craft that should ensure he’s around for the long haul.
Drew Bass

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Ronnie Wood

‘I’m damn lucky to still be here and I know it’ would be an apt subtitle for this likeable memoir by the, erm, hard-to-dislike former Faces and long-time Stones guitarist. Since his first serious engagement with the London music scene in the mid ‘60s, through his long (and increasingly problematic) association with Jeff Beck, and on to his two most celebrated roles in the Faces and, latterly, the Stones, Wood has regularly suffered from bad decision-making (both his own and others’) with sometimes devastating financial, family or health implications, only to somehow emerge with his talent and trademark sense of humour intact on every occasion. What’s more, with the exception of a few previous managers, he bears remarkably few grudges. As this might imply, Ronnie is hardly overburdened by genuine revelation – though the depths to which he sank during his late ‘70s freebasing phase are surprising – but the resonant portraits that emerge of, in particular, Rod, Keef and Charlie provide ample compensation. The sense of a ‘trailing off’ that hampers so many rock veterans’ memoirs is also absent since Ronnie’s thriving second career as a portrait artist now rivals his day job in terms of both acclaim and financial reward.
David Davies

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Joe Strummer Redemption Song: The Definitive Biography
Chris Salewicz (HarperCollins)

“He was a tough little bugger with a quiet strength,” observes school-friend Andy Ward early into this vast chronicle of the former Clash-man’s life, work and eventful times. The description would have served as a handy foreword, so often does the theme of creative and/or personal rebirth after traumatic phases occur in journalist and author Chris Salewicz’s characteristically skilful account. Arguably the most important such period involves the rapid descent of Strummer’s brother, David, who became a follower of the National Front amidst worsening bouts of depression that culminated in his suicide. Salewicz is particularly good at establishing the background of this episode and its huge impact on Strummer (not least The Clash’s subsequent involvement in anti-fascism initiatives like Rock Against Racism) at a time when he was beginning to discover the transformative potential of rock‘n’roll via the likes of Dr Feelgood and Bruce Springsteen. Perhaps inevitably given the exhaustive nature of the coverage following Strummer’s premature death in 2002, the story from first major outfit the 101’ers to The Clash and beyond generates fewer revelations, but is never less than well-told. Drawing on numerous interviews, the 672-page Redemption Song stands a very good chance of living up to its ‘definitive’ sub-title...
David Davies

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Slash

‘A cautionary tale’ is a hackneyed critical cliché of the first order but, frankly, it’s the most suitable description you could hope to find for this compelling memoir by the former Guns n’ Roses lead guitarist and latterday member of Velvet Revolver. Written with Anthony Bozza (author of the fantastic Eminem biog Whatever You Say I Am), the book takes us from Slash’s ever-changing but essentially happy childhood as Saul Hudson, through a more dissolute teenagerdom ultimately given focus by a growing obsession with the guitar, to his lengthy apprenticeship in various LA bands and, ultimately, worldwide success as a member of Guns n’ Roses and Velvet Revolver. Inevitably, it is the protracted formation and messy dissolution of the most celebrated Gn’R line-up that will be of greatest interest to fans, and it’s unlikely that they will walk away disappointed as Slash is more than forthcoming with the gritty details – not least those regarding his own struggles with substance abuse (“I had no remorse whatsoever about my overdose,” he notes memorably after a Gn’R-era crack-fest, “but I was pissed off at myself for having died”). Now cleaned-up and clearly still in love with music-making, Slash has channelled his hugely varied life experiences into a first-rate read that you will struggle to put down.
David Davies

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Rid Of Me: A Story

We’ve said it before and we’ll damn well say it again, Continuum’s 33 1/3 series of books – wherein a writer is given the freedom to wax lyrical about their favourite album – are not only delightful little collectors items but have also spawned some truly wonderful essays, ranging from techie minded nuts and bolts recording break-downs to marvellous flights of fancy like this little beauty by Kate Schatz. The third writer to take the fiction route for their chosen album (Music From Big Pink by John Niven and Meat is Murder by Joe Pernice being the other two) telling the highly charged erotic tale (what else could it be based on Harvey’s equally highly charged and erotic album?) of Kathleen and Mary and their desperate efforts to escape their respective pasts via a kidnapping, a house in the middle of a dark, deeply disturbing, forest and some sapphic shenanigans. Each chapter, both named after and relating to, the album’s tracks, moves the story along apace and successfully evokes the albums unsettling lyrics and themes. Writing about music has been in the doldrums for too long, let's have a lot more like this please.
Ruby Palmer

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Muse: Inside The Muscle Museum

If there has been a more preposterously overwrought band than Muse since the heady days of Queen then this reviewer has failed to hear their yodelled clarion call. Don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of time for squalling bombast with prog-rock tendencies which sounds like it was written by Mozart’s great, great, great grandson, Muse do this bug eyed nonsense magnificently, and if, like the Sterophonic’s Kelly Jones, you fail to see the worth in wildly camp, conspiracy obsessed oper-rackits it’s your loss (it’s a damn sight more entertaining than Jones and pals leaden retro plodding). Whether or not their story is sufficiently advanced to warrant a books worth of blarney is open to question but Ben Myers does a perfectly fine job of crossing all the relevant t’s and dotting all the important i’s and he doesn’t fight shy of salacious reportage, or pointing out just how cynical the bands marketing has been on occasion, or indeed how disposable anyone outside of the core trio has proved to be, but getting a little grubby is a by product of paddling in the murky waters of the music business and Myers clearly has a fondness for his subject matter which comes across nicely.
Drew Bass

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Book of Longing

By turns haunting, darkly humorous and playful, Book of Longing marks Leonard Cohen’s long overdue return to the printed page. Written over the course of more than twenty years in various locations, not least during his extended retreat at a Zen Buddhist monastery in California, the book collates ruminations on ageing and memory, simple life sketches and Cohen’s own drawings into an oddly moving whole. While hardly free of melancholy (‘The Darkness Enters’ is particularly affecting), Book of Longing effectively continues the work of his last studio album, Dear Heather, in correcting a long-running and frankly ridiculous misconception of Cohen as the unsmiling prince of misery. A bone-dry wit has always been integral to his work, and it’s in plentiful supply here, whether it be applied to the deficiencies of his mountain-top retreat in ‘The Lovesick Monk’ (“It’s dismal here/The only thing I don’t need is a comb”) or myths about his own past in ‘Titles’ (“My reputation as a Ladies’ Man was a joke/It caused me to laugh bitterly through the ten thousand nights I spent alone”). Dense with acute observations and vivid flashes of imagery, Book of Longing is a wry, wise addition to a formidable body of work.
David Davies

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Trout Mask Replica

Number 44 in the excellent 33 1/3 series of books by continuum, wherein writers wax lyrical about their favourite album, in this case the magnificently deranged Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, truly one of the few albums one can say came from out of nowhere and, other than encouraging bug-eyed experi-mentalism in all manner of bands since, left little traceable mark on what followed. Courier expertly ties together all of the disparate threads that helped spawn this notoriously difficult album, from Howlin’ Wolf to Ornette Coleman via gospel, do-wop and some of the most demented lyrics ever committed to page (or not in some cases). It’s hard to imagine anyone but a Magic Band fan picking this up but even if you have yet to fathom the delights of Beefheart you will still find much to enjoy here, not least the discovery that the good Captian was in fact a despotic, less than benign dictator (and something of a musical dunce), who hi-jacked the Magic Band and bullied them into recreating his muse, and it’s testament to the band that they were in fact able to actually play this mad noise and to Courier for making sense of it all for us.
Ruby Palmer

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