As many musicians know, not every path to rock’n’roll success is paved with gold, but what they gain over time are often invaluable life lessons. Throughout All Roads Lead to Where You Are: From Bishopstown to the Beatles (Self-published, €20) by Joe Philpott – whatever about the fluctuating levels of fame and fortune – the most important thing to discover is that “it also gave us stories worth telling”.
In 1997, Cork band Rubyhorse relocated to Boston, signed with major label Interscope (“a machine designed to make stars”) and sensed that major commercial success would come their way if only the stars aligned. No such luck, as Philpott tells us in vibrant detail. Life experience pings on almost every page, from “Do you lads play acoustic? Yes, we lied” and “Never threaten Rubyhorse with a good time” to “When we first arrived in LA, it was exhilarating” to the city mocking the band “with its hunger for the next big thing”. The book’s achievement is to make the familiar outline of dreams and ambition crashing on to rocks into a pacy, humorous and insightful story of survival.
The recent 10th anniversary of the death of David Bowie generated the publication of numerous books about the singer, each focusing on what avid fans might regard as niche interests and what casual browsers might dismiss as either far too granular or unimportant. There is a blend of each in David Bowie and the Search for Life, Death and God (Bloomsbury, £20) by Peter Ormerod, and neither is as convincing as the author would like us to believe.
Bowie was certainly a philosophically questioning rock star, but as evidenced in various songs, he was more pantheistic than religious, and as indirect in his pondering on Christianity, Buddhism and other faiths as he was on many other subjects. For all of Ziggy Stardust’s claims to be a “leper Messiah” and the evident Christian overtones of the song Lazarus, Ormerod treads warily on an ice-thin path.
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Far better, and walking more assuredly on solid ground, is Lazarus: The Second Coming of David Bowie (New Modern, £25) by Alexander Larman. The focus is on the second half of Bowie’s life and work, from 1990 to the release just over 10 years ago of his final album, Blackstar. There is a lot to cover, but Larman sensibly chooses to investigate Bowie’s broader interests outside music, from founding 21 Publishing in 1997, joining the editorial board of the art journal Modern Painters, establishing BowieNet in ’98 (in ’99, Bowie was the first major artist to release a complete album, Hours, for download), developing investment opportunities (the so-called Bowie Bonds), obsessively buying art, upskilling his talents as a visual artist, philanthropic causes and, crucially, his marriage in 1992 to Iman Mohamed Abdulmajid.
The book ends, of course, with the release of his final studio albums, The Next Day and Blackstar, across which Larman outlines Bowie’s latter-day creativity with a markedly reduced public presence. Consciously written as an anti-hagiography, the author’s sometimes acerbic commentary is actually quite refreshing, depicting Bowie as a mix of flawed artist and “a fiercely intelligent figure who was also capable of resonant genius”.
One of Bowie’s many contemporary acts in the ’60s was Manchester’s The Hollies. Perhaps best known as the group that Graham Nash left in ’68 to co-form folk/rock supergroup Crosby, Stills & Nash, The Hollies were nevertheless one of the most original pop bands of the era. Now aged 84, the original drummer, Bobby Elliott, tells his story in It Ain’t Heavy, It’s My Story: My Life in the Hollies (Omnibus, £12.99), and while it might be light on creative details (Elliott was rarely involved in the writing of superlative ’60s Britpop songs such as Stop! Stop! Stop!, On a Carousel, Carrie Anne, King Midas in Reverse and Jennifer Eccles), it highlights not only just how successful The Hollies were in Britain and the US but also Elliott’s enduring occupancy on the drum kit and his influence on younger UK drummers such as Cozy Powell and Deep Purple’s Ian Paice.
It is, inevitably, a different era that Elliott writes about (hanging out in Los Angeles with Burt Bacharach, making eye contact with Joni Mitchell, refusing the offer of the drum seat in Paul McCartney’s Wings), but he does so with good humour and strong recall that evokes a life lived well, albeit in the background.
The golden era of Adult Oriented Rock music may have been castigated for its excessive lifestyle and anodyne songs, but it’s fair to say that the once unfashionable guilty pleasures of the music have, over the decades, morphed into classic rock standards. Focusing on the period when REO Speedwagon, Kansas, Toto, Journey, Boston and Foreigner ruled airwaves and arenas, Raised on Radio Power Ballads, Cocaine and Payola: The AOR Glory Years 1976-1986 (Constable, £25) by Paul Rees presents an oral history that is enlightening and eyebrow-raising.
From “Whatever your vice was, it was available at Studio 54” (Paul Stanley, Kiss) to “The music business is the worst. It attracts the lowest form of life” (Tom Scholz, Boston), the book is crammed with personal, often priceless insights about cut-throat life in the fast lane.
For many performers, and indeed for listeners, music can be the proverbial shelter from the storm. Scatman John: The Remarkable Story of the World’s Unlikeliest Popstar (Bloomsbury, £25) by Gina Waggott tells the fascinating tale of John Paul Larkin (1942-1999), whose song, Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop), was a multimillion-selling novelty hit in 1995. His choice of “scat” singing, however, concealed a stutter caused by an emotionally traumatic upbringing.
Aided by full access to unpublished memoir notes, private correspondence and personal archive, the author (a former vice-chair of Stamily, the worldwide network for people who stutter) digs thoroughly into Larkin’s misfit, sometimes miserable background, uncovering a love of jazz (through which he first heard scat singing by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong) and struggles with addiction and alcoholism. An obscure figure in pop music finally receives recognition via one of those rare “you-couldn’t-make-it-up” biographies.
