The fact that books and music fit together like puzzle pieces is not headline-making news. Well, maybe it is. Willie Nelson just landed a book deal to tell the "unvarnished, complete and tremendous" story of his life. Morrissey's Autobiography is very popular in the U.K. and headed to the U.S. December 3. Linda Ronstadt's Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir is a hit.
In recent years, Keith Richards and Patti Smith wrote bestselling memoirs, as did Janis Ian, whom I met earlier this year promoting her children's book, The Tiny Mouse, at a trade show in New York City. The Band's Robbie Robertson was also there, discussing Legends, Icons & Rebels: Music That Changed the World.
With all these music legends in print, other great reads with a beat could easily get lost in the (excuse my iPod reference) shuffle. And that would be a damn shame. Two of my recent favorites:
Kay Larson's Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism and the Inner Life of Artists (now in paperback) is an intriguing look at this extraordinary composer's life, but it is also about creativity, artistic exploration, spirituality, humor and much more. Of 4'33", Cage's legendary "silent piece," Larson writes: "The important thing about having done it, he said, 'is that it leads out of the world of art into the whole of life.' And so it does."
In The Boy at the Gate, singer-songwriter Danny Ellis recounts his tough Dublin childhood and years spent at the notorious Artane Industrial School orphanage for boys. He moves fluidly between present and past, exploring a hard early life and its aftereffects with a mischievous tone: "It's Brother Fallon. He's teaching us the Do-Re-Mi thing. It's mustard! He's showing us how to find the notes in the air.... The music, the notes have names and addresses, just hanging there. When you know where they live, you can go back to them any time you bloody well want." I don't read music, but I do read music books. And these two are mustard! --Robert Gray, contributing editor
