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New popular music books reviewed: Memoirs and more

From Martha Wainwright’s scarily frank memoir to Velvet Underground and Bowie

Martha Wainwright pulls no punches in her memoir, particularly when it comes to her father, Loudon Wainwright III. Photograph: Lorne Thomson/Redferns

Tony Clayton-Lea's face
Tony Clayton-Lea
Sun Apr 3 2022 - 06:00

Subtitled The Guitarist who Changed the Sound of American Music, Philip Watson's authorised biography, Bill Frisell: Beautiful Dreamer (Faber, £20) outlines the subject's life in a series of scrupulous strokes and intimate interviews that are rare in such undertakings. The bonus here is that the life of the musician who played the guitar the way Miles Davis played the trumpet is enhanced by an 11-part chronological sequence of what Watson terms 'Counterpoints'.

These feature other musicians and producers, including Hal Willner, Sam Amidon, Justin Vernon, Martin Hayes, Paul Simon, Gavin Bryars, and Rhiannon Giddens, listening to Frisell’s albums (from 1987’s Lookout for Hope to 2019’s Harmony) and answering questions put to them by Watson about the album tracks. It’s an unusual biographical exercise, yet the responses highlight aspects of Frisell’s work that a non-musician would surely rarely (if ever) detect. The consequence of Watson’s sometimes tangential approach is a cool, casual victory.

You might not apply the words cool and casual to Stories I Might Regret Telling You by Martha Wainwright (Simon & Schuster, £20), but only because it's like reading extremely private diary entries through your laced fingers. From page one, chapter one, Wainwright pulls no punches (her father, singer Loudon Wainwright III, informed his daughter when she was a teenager that "he didn't want me at first and pressured my mother to have an abortion"). It continues with equal measures of directness and poignancy.

For better or worse, she says, “music is the family business” and she blends insights into each area. Neither the industry in which she works nor her family gets off lightly, and that includes Wainwright herself, who is to candid self-reflection as a moth is to a flame. The family ties, however, are the most vicariously gratifying to read. Her father? “He’s a bit of slut, which I’ve always found somewhat impressive.” Her brother Rufus? “Tends to get squirmy when I sing for too long.” Herself? “I do not regret telling you my story.” Confessional and contemplative to the nth degree, you won’t regret reading it, either.

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Vashti Bunyan describes in her memoir how her promising career was quickly derailed.

Mention the name Vashti Bunyan to all but the most curious and/or committed music fan and you'll probably receive a vacant stare and a who-is-that shrug of the shoulders. The UK singer-songwriter, now 76 years of age, remains a classic example of how a (theoretically) career musician can be ignored by the public for the best part of 30 years. The bittersweet story of her life, from being discovered in the mid-1960s by Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham to being rediscovered over 30 years later, is told by the singer in Wayward: Just Another Life to Live (White Rabbit, £16.99).

Across a tidy timeline, Bunyan details how her early ambitions were undermined by casual misogyny (one producer, she writes, “patted me on the backside as he showed me the door”) and immorally shrewd guidance (“I hated to be so dismissed as just a darker-haired, rather dumb version of Marianne Faithfull”). The more positive industry elements begin upon Bunyan’s rediscovery in the early 2000s, but the heart (and hearth) of Wayward belongs to her so-called wilderness years, which she spent in Scotland and Ireland, raising a family and, generally, staying true to her instincts.

‘Living with integrity’

"This is not a biography and this is not a hagiography," writes music journalist Caryn Rose, the author of Why Patti Smith Matters (Faber, £9.99). Rather, Rose's book is about Patti Smith's work, from her early 1970s poetry readings and her 1975 debut album, Horses, to her non-fiction books, Just Kids (2010) and M Train (2015). Horses, notes Rose, pitched Smith as "our pathfinder… a signal to the rest of us that there was a way out", its album cover image (by Smith's close confidant and cherished friend, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe) "as much a statement of intent as the music inside." In a thorough, insightful chronological format, Rose covers the decades, noting that throughout her career Smith has had no interest in being a niche artist. Rather (says Smith), she has "important things to communicate". Through these dispatches, writes Rose, Smith "continues to teach us how to live with integrity… and how to persevere through it all."

Patti Smith at the Electric Picnic in 2012. She is the subject of Caryn Rose’s book, Why Patti Smith Matters. Photograph: Dave Meehan

"Not since the Titanic ran into that iceberg has there been such a collision…" So noted the Los Angeles Times of The Velvet Underground during their inaugural 1966 US tour. The cultural fallout from those shows continues to reverberate throughout certain areas of popular music, not least those musicians and songwriters who favour the shadowy side of life. In the capable hands of veteran music writer Chris Roberts, Velvet Underground (Palazzo Editions, £14.99) tells the fascinating story of one of the most influential (if strictly non-mainstream) bands of the past 60 years. The narrative might hinge on three interviews that Roberts conducted with VU's mainstay Lou Reed (hardly the basis for a book, one might have thought, unless you're the canny type), but there is enough contextual meat around the bones to make the book more than just a round-up of the usual pop-cultural suspects. Moody swings and roundabouts, murky goings-on, and some of the best canonical art-rock songs of the Sixties: they're all here.

David Bowie at Slane Castle in 1987. An enormous but disappointing new book chronicles all of his songs. Photograph: Dermot Barry

Scrutinising David Bowie's output, song by song, isn't a new idea – American writer Chris O'Leary has already covered Bowie's work in two brilliantly researched books (Rebel Rebel 1964-1976 and Ashes to Ashes 1976-2016), but we will warrant there isn't a book as sumptuously designed (and heavy) as David Bowie: All the Songs, by Benoît Clerc (Hachette, £45). That, however, is where the plaudits end. Not that we're picky but cross-referencing many tracks here with O'Leary's books, Clerc falls short each time – the writing isn't as critically astute and there isn't as much detail. Of course, not everyone wants or needs such a level of insight, so if you're a casual Bowie fan who wants to dip into a photo-driven coffee table book and read more about the hit songs than the outtakes, then this will certainly do the trick. Be advised, however: you will need a very strong coffee table to support it.

Into the abyss

A line from a song by UK musician Frank Turner acts as a telling preface for Bodies: Life and Death in Music by Ian Winwood (Faber, £14.99): "We're all broken boys and girls at heart, come together fall apart." The failings of the music industry to confront tragedies as musicians and songwriters (and peripheral but no less important figures such as managers and touring crews) first look into the abyss and then dive into it has long been known, but Winwood's book investigates why this is so.

He talks to many high-profile music acts (including Trent Reznor, Green Day, Chris Cornell, Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam, Mark Lanegan) as well as psychotherapists, clinical psychologists, and academics about why acceptance, if not celebration, of displays of some form of mental breakdown is par for the course. Winwood is a witty writer (“I thrive on ruination”) as well as a wise one (“In the music business, people who don’t take drugs are tolerant of those who do. Nobody’s against it”), and his book, which skilfully weaves in his own story of mental health issues, should be required reading for music fans and music makers.