Syd Barrett: A Very Irregular Head

TM’s creaking bookshelf of Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett-related literature attests to the exhaustive (and sometimes exhausting) attention applied to this rich strand of British rock history. Nicholas Schaffner’s Saucerful of Secrets remains the best overview of the entire Floyd story, but individual biographies of Barrett – the band’s original leader and creative force – have often felt under-powered and prone to conjecture. Right from the start, it is clear that Rob Chapman’s book is in another league altogether: determined to peel away the myth and focus on the creative life, Chapman contextualises Barrett in a thrillingly evocative portrait of late ‘60s psychedelic London. Of course, the familiar elements of the story – a dazzling period of creative brilliance followed by drug-aided fracture and 30-plus years of silence until Barrett’s death in 2006 – are present and correct, but Chapman excels in his ability to draw parallels, be it via typically astute quotations from Susan Sontag or comparing Barrett’s 1982 on-foot flight from London to his native Cambridge to the poet John Clare’s ‘journey out of Essex’ to Northamptonshire (a journey recently recreated by Iain Sinclair in the brilliant Edge of the Orison). Utterly compelling, A Very Irregular Head deserves to be the final word on the Barrett story.
David Davies

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Songs of the North Country: A Midwest Framework to the Songs of Bob Dylan David Pichaske (Continuum)

Initial foundations on the Dylan Wing of Contemporary Scholarship were erected back in the ‘70s, but the pace of construction has definitely increased of late, with Greil Marcus’s Like A Rolling Stone, Clinton Heylin’s two-volume The Songs of Bob Dylan and Christopher Ricks’s Dylan’s Visions of Sin among the countless titles to have competed for the Bob-head’s hard-earned during the last half-decade alone. Inevitably, writers are pursuing evermore niche – some might say obscure – angles in order to shed fresh light on a much-told story, and for David Pichaske this takes the form of an analysis framing Dylan’s work in the context of his Minnesotan roots (an eminently logical choice given that the author is Professor of English at Southwest Minnesota State University). The personal and political preoccupations that have run like a river through Dylan’s creative life are given a new and generally resonant twist by Pichaske’s allusions to writers as varied as Ernest Hemingway, Garrison Keillor and Camille Paglia, although the academic tone earmarks this as one for the passionate fan only. Now, how about a few more scholars turning their attentions to Dylan’s contemporaries – and equals – Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young?
David Davies

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Away From The Light Of Day: Amadou & Mariam
Amadou Bagayogo, Mariam Doumbia (Route Publishing)

Written, in the main, by Amadou, tracing his early years in Mali, coming to terms with his blindness and subsequently discovering a love of, and natural ability for creating, music, Away From The Light Of Day initially left this (white, comfortably off, European) writer bloody thankful that he wasn’t born in a country where a perfectly treatable eye complaint could lead to blindness, and if it’s frustratingly light on the actual nuts and bolts of creating music in a country where bootlegged cassettes are the musical currency it is nonetheless a very revealing look at the cultural traditions and - to western eyes at least - the superstitions that make up the nuts and bolts of Malian life. In short there is hardship here on a level that people born in the west simply cannot imagine, and yet not once does Amadou bemoan his lot, in fact he remains upbeat and thankful for every minor victory, every helping hand, every small act of kindness he encounters along the way and his and Mariam’s eventual success, after many long years of hard slog, is as well earned as it is welcome. Think you’ve got it tough? You should read this, you really haven’t.
The Oracle

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Working On A Dream: The Progressive Political Vision of Bruce Springsteen
David Masciotra (Continuum)

When your work’s perceived ‘message’ has been endlessly scrutinised by newspaper commentators, and you have lent your support to two successive Democratic Presidential candidates (John Kerry and Barack Obama), it’s only a matter of time before you are the subject of a rigorous academic-style overview. For Bruce Springsteen, that moment has now arrived with the publication of Working On A Dream, an admirably thorough dissection of Springsteen’s political and social stances, and their influence on his 40-year body of work. From the much misunderstood sentiments of ‘Born in the USA’ to the defiance-after-tragedy of ‘The Rising’ to the ideas of renewal that infuse his most recent studio album that gives this book its title, it’s clear that Springsteen is profoundly engaged with the issues that define his homeland, but above and beyond all that there is a preoccupation with the idea of community and its capacity for encouraging compassion and social cohesion. The tone can be a little dry and is unlikely to capture the more casual reader, but for the connoisseur there are insights aplenty and further confirmation that Springsteen is that rare breed in rock – a thoughtful, intelligent writer forever determined to look up from the parameters of his own life and take the broader view..
David Davies

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Forever Changes: Arthur Lee and the Book of Love
John Einarson (Jawbone)

I’ll likely get a fair stack of hate mail for saying this but Arthur Lee really was a bit of a tosser. A bully from an early age who remained one right up until his demise - at the admittedly early age of just 61 - he made idiotic decisions (turning down both Woodstock and Monterey and refusing to tour in support of his early, successful albums), and his obsession with money became a bone of contention with just about everyone he ever worked with, indeed he alienated pretty much every musician he ever met. He also made an awful lot of pretty duff albums. So why is he held in such high regard? In two words Forever Changes, one of the most ground-breaking and influential albums ever recorded, and naturally enough, as it was so well loved and he was such an ornery bugger, for the vast majority of his career Lee would have nothing to do with it. That said Lee’s life story makes for fascinating reading (Einarson does a tremendous job narrating the tale, interspersing his own work with plenty of Lee’s own purple prose), and it’s likely that once picked up you won’t be putting this down very quickly. Just don’t expect to like the man.
The Oracle

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Listening to Van Morrison
Greil Marcus (Faber and Faber)

In Mystery Train, Lipstick Traces and Invisible Republic, Greil Marcus – think the US equivalent of Paul Morley, but with an even wider circle of reference – wrote three of the seminal, undying works of popular music writing. The more recent book-length dissection of a single song – Bob Dylan’s Like A Rolling Stone – was also compelling, but something has gone decidedly awry with this surprisingly lightweight effort about Van Morrison. Although clearly in no way intended to be a definitive tome on the famously cheerful Belfast-born singer/songwriter, the book’s scattershot approach to discussing key songs and performances often fails to convey much more than the fact that, like most major artists, Morrison has both good and bad days. Granted, the sections on ‘Madame George’, The Last Waltz version of ‘Caravan’ and the title track of 1997’s underrated The Healing Game are revealing, but to encapsulate Van’s work from 1980 to 1996 in 11 (rather dismissive) pages is almost laughably reductive. At less than 200 pages for your £12.99 of hard-earned, it also doesn’t rate too highly on the old value-o-meter. So definitely not one out of Marcus’s top drawer, and those new to his work would be advised to purchase the delightful, illuminating Mystery Train instead.
David Davies

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Apathy for the Devil: A 1970s Memoir
Nick Kent (Faber & Faber)

Another month, another account of talent undermined by hard drugs. Alongside Charles Shaar Murray and the late Ian McDonald, Nick Kent was a star player during the NME’s mid ‘70s heyday, bringing his reflexive prose style to seminal pieces on Syd Barrett, Brian Wilson and The Rolling Stones. More than any of his fellow writers, however, Kent also hung out with his subjects and shared their spoils – to increasingly disastrous effect. Some of the anecdotes accrued during this period are priceless – Kent’s attempt to explain Steptoe & Son to Iggy Pop; Keith Richards’s perplexed fury at the rise of the ‘Boppin’ Elf’, aka Marc Bolan – but the overall trajectory is a descent into darkness. By the end of the ‘70s, Kent was writing much less and scoring much more, existing in that weird twilight world where normal life is jacked in favour of chasing the next hit of junk. Fortunately, there is a happy coda – Kent cleaned up in 1988 and is now a contented family man living in Paris. Whilst a familiar tale in many aspects, Apathy for the Devil’s vivid character portraits and delicious turns of phrase mean that it deserves a place on your bookshelf alongside Kent’s superlative selected journalism, The Dark Stuff.
David Davies

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Signed, Sealed, and Delivered:

Endless twists, turns, ups and downs – not to mention truckloads of fantastic music – mean that the Stevie Wonder story has everything that might appeal to a prospective biographer. Despite this, the gifted vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer and activist has hitherto been rather underserved in this department – a point acknowledged by Mark Ribowksy in the introduction to his extremely detailed and highly readable account. From the beginning, it is clear that Wonder simply refused to let his blindness and impoverished background stand in the way of realising his musical dreams. The ability to get a tune out of pretty much any instrument you care to mention quickly brought him to the attention of Motown, where he became the label’s resident child prodigy. 1966’s ‘Uptight (Everything Is Alright)’ was his songwriting breakthrough, but a mere taster for the phenomenal run of self-composed and mostly self-played albums spanning 1972’s Music of My Mind and 1976’s Songs In the Key of Life – a period whose heady creative rush and palpable sense of excitement is well-evoked by Ribowsky. Some readers might question the compression of Wonder’s post-‘70s life into only 50 pages, but most are likely to applaud the overdue examination of an extraordinary musical career.
David Davies

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Japan And Self Existence
Mick Karn (MK Music)

Before we begin we should clear something up. Mick Karn is not the world’s greatest bass player, probably not technically even in the top ten (by his own admission he seldom bothers to pick up the instrument when he isn’t working on a music project), what he is however is one of the most recognisable players in the history of rock, no mean feat given the instruments primary use - i.e. to be buried away in the mix somewhere right up the back - and that, along with an unerring ear for monumentally quirky bass lines, is why he is such an important and influential bass player. So why the hell is he struggling to make ends meet when most of his ex-Japan compadres are doing pretty-well-thank-you? It’s certainly not due to poor solo material (pretty much everything he has released is well worth a listen, and some is simply superb). Nope it’s down to a mix of management shenanigans, band power-struggles and his own innate inability to press the right flesh. All of which is outlined herein with a frankness that is occasionally squirm-inducing, and in a style which is hugely readable, entertaining and should be required research for anyone just setting out on a music career.
The Oracle

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Zaireeka
Mark Richardson
(Continuum)

It’s no secret that we are jolly fond of the 33 1/3 series of books here at TM-Towers and the 68th release, dedicated to the Flaming Lips four CD folly Zaireeka, shows no let up in quality, in fact Mark Richardson’s little gem is one of the finest releases to date. For those that are unaware of the album(s) Zaireeka was released in 1997 as four separate CDs intended for playback at the same time, which of course meant that four CD players, eight speakers and four hands were required to make it function properly. This was of course an idiotic undertaking, and, as Richardson so ably outlines, also nothing short of inspired. In these days when everything has to fit on nano-sized technology to release a piece of music that needs a small audience to work it is, frankly, brilliant. Richardson joins in with the general theme by breaking the story into four chapters (all with eight sections to mirror the albums tracks), and it does exactly what you would hope these books do, leaves you desperate to hear the album(s), now if I just had three friends…
The Oracle

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