It’s unfair to designate someone a hero. Heroes are brave, wise, honorable, honest, and noble exemplars. And if you poke deeply enough into a real person’s life, you’ll likely be disappointed at what you find, what with humans being inclined toward selfishness, spite, and bad decision making. How can we expect someone to live up to the impossible standard of “hero” for one day, much less forever?
Ok, so what is Bowie to me? Beyond all doubt, a musical genius. Most artists stick to the one thing they do well and typically embarrass themselves when they venture outside those cozy confines. Bowie jumped musical genres like a nimble 9-year-old playing hopscotch, effortlessly trying on rock, pop, electronica, techno, folk, glam, R&B, and just about any other kind of popular music style you can name.
Yet, I can’t call him a musical inspiration. His songwriting and lyrical prowess is so far beyond my own that I am unable to channel even a feeble likeness of it. Hunky Dory is the very first album I ever bought, and it’s still my favorite. Every song on it would be the best song most other musicians ever wrote.
Bowie was also avant garde in every aspect of his artistry, be it his clothes, his music, his stage show, or his ever-changing persona. He was a charismatic actor, a playwright, and maybe even an alien. But not my hero. He smoked heavily and became addicted to cocaine and no doubt acted like an arrogant prick at times in the early days of fame. He surely disappointed people throughout his life and may have been rude to a fan or two.
Well, I guess there are two heroic aspects to Bowie, because they inspire admiration in me, and admiration is the main ingredient when you set out to make a hero for yourself. One: After the Let’s Dance album sold a bajillion copies, Bowie could have spent the next 30 years reaping countless riches doing greatest-hits stadium tours. Space Oddity. Changes. Life on Mars. Ziggy Stardust. Starman. Young Americans. Rebel Rebel. Suffragette City. Ashes to Ashes. Let’s Dance. Modern Love. China Girl. Cat People. Under Pressure. LatherRinseRepeat.
Instead, Bowie continued his experimentation with such commercially inaccessible releases as Earthling, an unmelodic album laden with hard techno grooves that were sure to alienate the “greatest hits” crowd.
Two: Whether releasing albums he knew wouldn’t sell many copies (because he wanted to do something new), or dressing as a woman in public, or performing on Soul Train, or doing whatever otherwise struck his artistic fancy, he didn’t care what you, I, or anyone thought about it. He believed in his vision and followed his muse, and he didn’t need beta listeners or approval from anyone calling himself an expert.
Ok. On that count, I’ll let Bowie be my hero. Just for one day.
If you want to be popular, you usually have to be good-looking, wealthy, charismatic, famous, athletic, or have some sort of talent in the arts. I arguably possess a bit of the last one, but widespread dissemination of said talent is often needed before you can go clubbing in New York with an entourage that may or may not include current NBA stars, Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and at least two former Nickelodeon starlets who are now 25-going-on-50 and totally wacked-out on cocaine.
However, there is a secret side-door for us normies into the world of the cool kids: Resembling a newly famous celebrity. Remember all the girls getting their hair straightened to look like Jennifer Aniston back in the ’90s? Teenage girls are probably dressing and styling themselves after Rihanna and Taylor Swift these days, though I wouldn’t know because I haven’t worked in a shopping mall since VCRs.
I’ve never had the good fortune to resemble a trendy famous person. I look more like Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan, than I do Justin Bieber, and I can’t believe this sentence now exists.
Then, two weeks ago, things changed. British actor Peter Capaldi took over the lead role in BBC’s global phenomenon Doctor Who. Whenever a new performer steps into that iconic role, he instantly becomes the most talked about actor in Great Britain.
And what are people discussing about Mr. Capaldi? His acting? No. His eyebrows. Dude’s brows are already legendary.
I was chatting about the latest episode with a friend the other day when she stopped in mid-sentence. “Holy crap, Eric,” she said. “You got Capaldi brows!”
I immediately took to Twitter with this boast and, as if to prove my point about side-door popularity before I even thought of it, BBC picked it up and retweeted it to thousands and thousands of people. Somehow I doubt uncool kids get retweeted like that.
Here’s the photographic evidence:
Capaldi vs Baker
Note: If you’d like to be in my entourage, please submit an essay explaining why you are cool enough and how many drinks you are willing to buy me. Thank you.
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A bit of sad news this week: Lost amid the chatter about the Jennifer Lawrence photo-hacking scandal was the death of singer Jimi Jamison of the ’70s and ’80s pop-rock band Survivor, whose hits included Eye of the Tiger (with a different singer), The Search is Over, I Can’t Hold Back, and High on You. Survivor never received critical recognition and, to be real, their music didn’t have much substance. However, they did know how to craft a good pop song. Regardless of their place in music history, Jimi Jamison had a killer voice. You don’t have to like their music (which I do) to admit the guy owned serious pipes. He could have sung for Journey.
Jamison died this past Sunday at age 63. Rock on, Jimi!
When I reviewed Chase Bell & White Licorish’s album Skywords last year, I described it as something like “jazz and soul-infused pop.” In other words, pop music for people who want to hear less Auto-Tune and more singing and who value musicianship and composition over computer processing (can you tell I’m old-school?).
Chase Bell
My minor critique of that album was its tendency to become White Licorish & Chase Bell at times instead of the other way around. Chase’s voice I likened to that of Bruno Mars: Intimate and sensitive, more bobbing and weaving than power punching its way through the music, and I didn’t think it took center stage often enough on that release.
Now back with a new 5-song mini-album entitled I Know U U Know Me, Chase and his bandmates seem to have drawn the same conclusion. This time around, Mr. Bell is given more sonic space to play with. The arrangements are softer, less busy, and more dynamic. Instead of occasionally competing with the vocals, the other instruments pick their spots with greater creativity, supporting and emphasizing the main melody. The keyboard work stands out for its subtlety, and the collective effect is to make the songs catchier and that much more memorable.
The other notable change is the participation of Chase’s talented sister, actress and singer Emma Bell, who duets on four of the five tunes. You may recall Emma from her role as Amy on season one of The Walking Dead or currently watch her play Emma Brown on TNT’s Dallas revival, though, being the horror fan than I am, I know her best from her lead roles in Final Destination 5 and Frozen (the good Frozen from 2010, with man-eating wolves and lots of unmitigated terror, not that bleeping cartoon!).
Emma Bell
Anyway. Emma Bell can sing. It is the burden of writers, when facing the impossible task of explaining music with words, to compare the artist under discussion with another artist readers already know. Given that, I’ll say Ms. Bell reminds me just a little bit of Emmylou Harris. Suffice to say her vocals mesh well with her brother’s and the harmonies are sweet and pleasing to the ear throughout.
The standout track for me is the dynamic “Cats and Dogs,” which alternates between sparse, introspective verses and big wall-o-sound choruses to great effect. Other songs include the bouncy, lightly funky “Paint the Wind;” the piano-heavy “Like a Taxi,” with a rather Queen-like melody; the folky “Hear You There;” and the haunting ballad “Savior,” featuring the string work of renowned session violinist Darius Campo.
If the goal of a songwriter is to make people want to hear his song again (and it should be), Chase Bell & White Licorish’s I Know U U Know Me is 5 for 5 in that regard.
The EP will be available online from September 1. For more info visit the band’s website.
Fresh from her appearance on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, music journalist and author Amy Yates Wuelfing sat down with little old me, of all people, to talk about her new book No Slam Dancing, No Stage Diving, No Spikes: An Oral History of the Legendary City Gardens. What was she thinking?
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For the unfamiliar, City Gardens was among the country’s most notorious punk rock clubs of the 1980s and ‘90s, and everyone from the Ramones to the Dead Kennedys to Green Day graced (?) its rickety stage. The stories told in this book are quite literally insane, the mayhem on stage frequently surpassed by the lunacy playing out on the dance floor and in the parking lot. It’s a must-read for music lovers, psychology majors, and people dangerously obsessed with fire.
EJB: Why write a book about a punk-rock club in New Jersey?
Amy Yates Wuelfing:City Gardens was in the middle of nowhere. Not Philly, not New York, but it was still a big club. That fact that it was so close, and in the middle this dead zone, made the community of people who went there stronger and tighter. It was almost like college, you saw the same people all the time so they became your friends. That was the main thing for me. And unlike the clubs in Philly or New York, the pretentious element wasn’t really there.
EJB: People will be shocked by some of the stories recounted in the book. What are some of your favorites?
Amy Yates Wuelfing: I like it best when people have completely different recollections of the same event. It is left up to the reader to decide who, if anyone, has the story straight. The one story that people seem to gravitate
to is the riot at an Exploited show. Some people say that the band’s van was completely ransacked and set on fire, other people say, no, just a broken window or two. Which is correct? You have to decide. There is a similar story about the one time the Beastie Boys played there. Was it the best show ever – or the worst show ever? That’s why I love oral histories so much; you get every side.
EJB: You talked to members of The Ramones, Green Day, Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, and other big punk acts as well as plenty of pop, metal, and rock bands from the era. How receptive were these musicians to being interviewed? Did anybody give you a hard time?
Amy Yates Wuelfing: No one gave us a hard time, but some people just didn’t take part in the project and that’s fine. In the end, the book turned out exactly like it was supposed to. Anyone who passed on talking to us isn’t missed.
EJB: You told me a lot of publishers were iffy on your plan to interview “normal” people (as if City Gardens’ patrons could be qualified as normal) along with the bands, believing readers wouldn’t care what they had to say. However, I found that to be the most fascinating aspect of the book. I’m convinced a sociology course on disaffected youth could be built around this thing. What it your plan all along to paint that kind of picture, or did the theme and direction of the book evolve as you compiled and transcribed the interviews?
Amy Yates Wuelfing: The book started out as a project to write the memoirs of City Gardens promoter Randy Now, then it just kept expanding in scope. Early on, I realized that the club was so important to so many people, that I felt it was essential to include those viewpoints as well. The normal, not-famous people had great stories. And you are not the first person to recognize the sociology angle! It is a total case study in how misfits found each other before the internet. As we began interviewing people, it all just came together. The book became what it was meant to be, not to get too “new age” on you. The book had a force of its own.
EJB: This title is selling out all over the place. Someone stole mine before I could resell it on eBay for a profit!
Amy Yates Wuelfing: Dude, that’s so punk rock.
Where can people get a copy?
Amy Yates Wuelfing: The first pressing, which was 2000 books, sold out in less than a month. If anyone had told me this a month ago, I would have laughed and bought them a drink. We are doing a second pressing right now. To get a copy of the book, head to infinitemerch.com. They are the first people we will restock with books when they come in, mainly because they are really close to my house, which is where the books will be delivered. This whole thing is DIY, just like the old days. No publisher wanted to touch this, so we have to do the grunt work, but we don’t mind. The book was a labor of love and to it see it get this much attention makes me so happy. At every signing we do, people thank [co-author] Steve and I for putting it together. That alone makes it worth the time and effort.
Co-authors Amy Yates Wuelfing and Steven DiLodovico
If my grandfather were alive, he would look at this and ask me, “So who took your picture?”
This post is going to degenerate into another “I hate writing rules” rant. I can feel it in me bones!
[Who knew old bones were sensitive to not just to changing weather but also to one’s own bad attitude? Old bones make excellent bludgeons by the way (especially femurs), though I believe I’m drifting off topic.]
I’ve been playing in bands or at least engaged in some kind of music project on and off for almost three decades. I’ve recorded in professional studios and performed on many stages before all kinds of audiences. The only “rules” I remember hearing are: 1.) Practice a lot, and 2.) Listen to different kinds of music, not just the style you play. Granted, I don’t read musician blogs (are there any?), but that seems like a stark contrast to the massive volume of writing advice and rules heaped upon us daily. It’s alarming how many ways I am failing as a writer.
I’m particularly negligent when it comes to “reading in my genre.” Partly because I don’t know what genre I’m in (is Twilight Zonish a genre?), and partly because, beyond my desire to be entertained and moved by good storytelling, I don’t care what other writers are writing. I’m a bad student, I know.
“Listen to all different kinds of music” is fantastic advice… much better than, “Listen to all the bands that play the same style of music you do.” Absorbing the tones, rhythms, and textures of jazz, metal, soul, reggae, classical, disco, punk, and blues music has made me so much better of a rock musician than if I’d been admonished to listen to the other rock bands to see what they‘re doing! Writing songs comes from the heart and soul, not from carefully tracking trends, as should writing prose.
Sure, no one said only read in your genre. But I’d go as far as to say, “Deliberately read outside your genre. Bring something unique when you come back.”
[Before you hurl some “apples and oranges” comment toward the stage (I’m specifically addressing Mr. Frutman in the aisle seat on the left, row 7), I don’t like apples or oranges and am therefore impervious to your cliché. Arguments about illogical thinking, on the other hand, might carry some weight.]
Look at that! I made my point in under 400 words. Who loves you?
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I’ve been podcast again! To relive the excitement of my post on cringe-inducing books, this time with a professional voiceover specialist, click here.
Andy Warhol made many unique contributions to popular culture. I wish he would have made one fewer.
When the pop-art guru said, in 1968, that everyone will be famous for 15 minutes, I don’t think he intended his words to become the de rigueur insult in response to every single last stinkin’ internet article about a current celebrity.
I happen upon this hackneyed cliché at least a dozen times per week, and it always irritates. But, like Joan Crawford discovering a wire hanger in her daughter’s closet, I finally snapped this Tuesday. The online article that sent my synapses into electric fury appeared on a popular entertainment site discussing an alleged feud between early ‘90s pop singer Sinead O’Connor and current pop singer Miley Cyrus over the usual nonsense from which celebrity feuds are contrived.
The feud is irrelevant. The reader responses, however, made me very grumpy (pointlessly so to the people around me, it turns out. Their reactions were rather less passionate than mine). Not only did at least 412 people write, “Your 15 minutes of fame are up, Miley,” another 275 wrote, “Weren’t Sinead O’Connor’s 15 minutes of fame up 20 years ago?”
Dear people who write things on the internet: Please, for the love of Zeus, stop using “15 minutes of fame” in reference to people who are actually famous. I don’t think that’s what Andy Warhol meant.
You see, Miley Cyrus is actually famous. She’s a multimillionaire, has sold millions of records, has performed before hundreds and thousands of fans and many millions more on TV, and has been a widely recognized public figure since March of 2006 when Hannah Montana debuted to huge ratings.
Lindsay Lohan, Kanye West, Kristen Stewart, Ben Affleck, and other reviled celebs who draw similar comments are actually famous too, and many have been for a long time. Way longer than 15 minutes.
Being a commenter on entertainment web pages who comments that famous people aren’t worth commenting about because they are almost not famous anymore… well, that’s like me, a blogger with a web footprint the size of a post-it note (the small kind) saying no one uses Facebook anymore.
My relative obscurity won’t stop me from offering this bit of advice, though: I implore you, internet commenter, to stop using the expression “15 minutes of fame.” It is a cliché. Clichés equal bad writing. When you use clichés, it means you are unable to express your own thoughts. Or, more likely, that you don’t have your own thoughts. And there’s really no reason to leave a comment about Miley Cyrus on the internet if you have nothing to say, is there?
I shall begin, in most appalling fashion, with a tangent: Please excuse and do not misinterpret my use of the word “jazzy” in this review. Many people fear words related to “jazz.” They know jazz is supposed to be cool and hip and that fandom is a sign of musical erudition, but they just don’t like it. It’s weird, what with all that lack of commercial appeal and the odd time signatures.
To clarify, Chase Bell & White Licorish’s U.S. debut album, Skywords, is not jazz. It is a pop/rock record. I simply believe that every musician in this band secretly plays jazz when not recording pop songs as Chase Bell & White Licorish. This music has that spontaneous, textured, lively feel of jazz, and, like great jazz recordings, it brilliantly captures the natural ambient quality of the instruments.
Damn, too many uses of the j-word so far. Pop pop pop. Rock rock rock. How’s that, Google search algorithms?
Lyrically introspective and musically adventurous, Skywords is pop music that defies easy classification in the same way that old Police albums did: They were pop, but even casual listeners could sense that a lot more than three-chord Monte was going on. Like Sting did after he left the Police, Chase Bell & White Licorish expand on the “sophisticated pop” concept by adding a horn section. That New Jersey-born singer/songwriter and bandleader Chase Bell recruited his musicians from Italy adds further dimension to the sonic landscape.
Bell’s voice resides in the higher-pitched Bruno Mars range, while the melodies and phrasing evoke John Mayer. As a listener drawn to belters with lots of power, I did not find the singing on the album immediately attractive, as Bell tends to use a lot of soft falsetto as he jabs and rolls his way through and around the arrangements. That said, the style suits the jazz-infused (yeah, I went there) musical arrangements perfectly, and the songs draw the listener without resorting to excessive production or digital effects. The best word I can use to describe Chase Bell & White Licorish’s music is “organic.” From an old-school guy like me, that’s a big compliment.
To learn more about this artist and hear sound samples, check out chasebell.com.
I spend way too much time bitching about technology problems without praising the tech gods when things work. Such as the confluence of do-it-yourself music recording and social media that allows artists to create their work and get it out there without being beholden to some executive in suit. That is awesome and powerful.
How else would the world be able to discover original artists like PoetryMisses, who performs her spoken-word poetry to a beat and then posts to YouTube? Don’t let the smile fool you. She’s unapologetic, and she ain’t playing around.
PoetryMisses answers my questions below this clip, “Best for me,” a real slow burn of tension and angst. Listen as you read!
EJB: What made you decide to put your poetry to music?
PoetryMisses: I’ve been writing poetry since before the age of 10, and I’ve always had a strong passion for all genres of music; I just never saw myself actually doing it! Recently I started getting more serious about what I want to do with my life and decided my poetry needs to have more energy to it, because it just couldn’t be wasted. So, after I started playing around with the words and instrumentals, I knew I had found my niche.
EJB:How confident were you that you could make your poetry work with beats and rhythms?
PoetryMisses: You would be surprised how much I struggled in the beginning. To me, poetry is freedom with no limits, no exact number of words because I’m all about free verse. So, when you have only a certain number of bars and a certain beat to keep up with, it gets confusing. Practice truly does make you better at anything in life, because before you knew it, I was writing complete songs with confidence that came from nowhere.
EJB:Please tell us about your recording process.
PoetryMisses: My first step is to find a beat. I usually have a “beat finding” day when I get online to browse for the perfect sound I need. Depending on my mood of the day, the beat will be slower or fast paced. I usually don’t write on the same day, just so I can let the tunes sit in my head for a while. Then there is my writing process. First verse, chorus, second verse, and whatever else comes behind that. I usually have had the same mundane writing process since I’ve started rapping, but I love EVERY step. I record myself most days. It’s very stress relieving when I can do it alone, but my daughter always wants to “spit” right along with me. Recording for me is pretty straightforward. I don’t like to waste time.
EJB: What inspires and influences your poetry?
PoetryMisses: It’s simple: My life. I can only write about and share what I know and have been through. There used to be a ton of unhappiness, being lost as a teenager, and love. Now I try to focus more on the happiness, freedom, and pure love for life. My dreams are what inspire me to write. I used to hate the way my mind would expand when I was younger. Now, as an adult, it’s what fuels me. To be able to share the countless wonders that float by in my head means everything to me.
EJB:What do you hope to do with your music?
PoetryMisses: Inspire! That is truly my main mission. To let everyone know that you can have the life you want and be who you want to be without caring what the next person thinks. I want to spread happiness. That’s the only way to live.
EJB:What do people need to know about you?
PoetryMisses: That’s a pretty tough question. I’m still learning and creating myself each day. I’m nowhere near perfect, but I love myself and I love the mission that God has planned for me. Listening to my music will tell you everything you need to know! I’m what you call a “privately open” person. My past is what has made me and besides being a mother, inspiring people and letting you know it’s okay to love yourself and be happy even when life is taking more than giving, is what I’m here for.
Ok, here’s PoetryMisses’ self-introduction in the form of a poetic monologue that appears to be totally off the cuff, since she’s sitting in a car. The language gets pretty rough, so proceed only if you are ok with naked honesty . And F bombs.
Greetings readers and fellow writers. I have an awesome treat for you today!
Peter Benjaminson, author of several books about the famed Motown record label and its artists, was gracious enough to sit down with me for a few minutes this weekend to discuss his newest biography, Mary Wells: The Tumultuous Life of Motown’s First Superstar (Chicago Review Press).
For the uninitiated, Mary Wells was not the first Motown act to score a number one hit (that honor belongs to The Marvelettes and Please Mr. Postman), but she was the first solo artist to become a recognizable star for the label, thanks to a smash hit song that, nearly five decades later, is still beloved the world over: My Guy. She also toured with The Beatles (!) in 1964 and influenced a generation of singers. But instead of joining the ranks of Motown legends such as Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder, Mary’s life took a different turn. Several, in fact. And Peter Benjaminson’s book is by far the most in-depth chronicle of those events ever written.
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EJB: Thank you, Mr. Benjaminson, for taking the time to talk about your latest book with us. What inspired you to tell the story of Mary Wells, Motown’s first solo star?
Peter Benjaminson: I was working as a reporter for the Detroit Free Press when Woodward and Bernstein used what they called “investigative reporting” to topple President Nixon. A fellow reporter named David Anderson and I went to the library to look up a book on investigative reporting so that we could learn about that kind of reporting. When we found out that no book had ever been written on the subject a light bulb ignited over our heads because we were actually doing that kind of reporting and figured we could write the book ourselves. So we wrote it – it was titled, believe it or not, Investigative Reporting — and was the first and best how-to in the field. It went through two publishers and two editions and stayed in print for 20 years. This convinced me that book writing was for me.
Since I was in Detroit, I thought of writing about the auto industry, but that had been done already by numerous other writers. Then one day when I was sitting in the City Room waiting for an assignment, an editor told me he had heard that Flo Ballard, formerly of the Supremes, was on welfare. I roared over to her house, interviewed her, and wrote a story about her being on welfare, which was the equivalent of writing in the Washington Post today that Joe Biden is on food stamps. Flo was pleased by the sympathetic reaction to her story and invited me back to visit her on evenings and weekends after work to record her life story as told by her. But when I tried to sell the book idea to Grove Press in New York, they pointed out (this was in 1977) that no book had ever been written in this country about Motown itself. So a bright light went on over my head and I filled that gap by writing The Story of Motown, which Grove Press published in 1979.
I kept trying to sell the Flo Ballard book idea, but I was unable to do it until – gulp – 2006 – the year that the “Dreamgirls” movie came out and convinced movie makers and book publishers that there was money to be made in the Supremes story. I then sold the Ballard book idea to Chicago Review Press, which published it in 2008 as The Lost Supreme: The Life of Dreamgirl Florence Ballard.
Then a guy named Randy Russi called me from Florida and told me he was a friend of Mary Wells (Mary had lived near him in Florida for a time). He suggested I write a book about Mary. I got peeved at him because I thought Mary’s story would be a replay of Flo’s story with the names changed, but he convinced me there were 100 or so reasons why Mary’s story was more interesting than Flo’s. Because The Lost Supreme had done so well, it was easy to convince Chicago Review Press to publish Mary’s story and they recently published the book we’re talking about, Mary Wells: The Tumultuous Life of Motown’s First Superstar.
EJB: What do you think would surprise people the most about Mary Wells?
Peter Benjaminson: Some, but not all of her fans will be surprised to learn that, a), she married two brothers, one after the other (Cecil and then Curtis Womack, although her marriage to Curtis was common-law) and had children with both of them, and, b), that she had a fairly good musical career, including a No. 1 hit, Gigolo, after leaving Motown.
EJB: This is the second biography you have written about a Motown star who died young, the first being The Lost Supreme, about Diana Ross’s fellow Supreme Florence Ballard. Tragic figures make for fascinating subjects, of course, but what is it about the Motown era that intrigues you so?
Peter Benjaminson: It’s not just me. I don’t believe there’s another record company anywhere about which more than two or three books have been written. More than 180 books have been written about Motown, with mine being the most recent. That’s because Motown succeeded in closing the gap between white and black music in America, something that no other company was able to do and that will never happen again.
EJB: What’s next for Peter Benjaminson? Do you have any more Motown artist biographies in the works? How about one on Gladys Horton? Marvin Gaye? Tammi Terrell? I can guarantee you at least one reader!
Peter Benjaminson
Peter Benjaminson: Thanks for guaranteeing me at least one reader. I would hesitate to write a book on Marvin Gaye or Tammi Terrell because other authors have already done so. I admit I was the third author to write a book on Flo Ballard, but I had one thing that the previous authors did not: an eight-hour revelatory interview of Flo audio-taped the year before she died that had never been previously publicized or released. There’s no book on Gladys Horton I know of but she has fewer fans than Marvin Gaye, Tammi Terrell, Flo Ballard, or Mary Wells, which would make a proposed book a very difficult sell to publishers and readers.
What I am working on is books on two people who had millions and millions of fans: Rick James and Farrah Fawcett. James was Motown’s final superstar, sold literally millions of records and was a popular character on TV, sometimes playing himself, as late as 2004, which was also the year of his death. Farrah, a major TV, stage and movie star who died the same day that Michael Jackson died in 2009, changed the hairstyles of many American women, struggled to improve as an actress throughout her life, and was nominated for a posthumous Emmy for producing a movie about her own death. She also appeared on the cover of People Magazine some 14 times. Neither has been the subject of a serious biography. In book publishing terms, writing about either person wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for me: James would be the third Motown star I’ve written about, as well as the fourth book I’ve written on Motown, and Fawcett would be the third female entertainer whose biography I’ve written.
EJB: Any quick tips for non-fiction writers looking to break into music journalism?
Peter Benjaminson: They should take heed of the greatest advice ever offered to a music journalist: “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” The saying originates with Nietzsche but has been stated more recently by others.
More seriously, since I don’t actually believe the above, in my career “music journalism” implies writing articles for music magazines, websites, and blogs and “music book writing” implies just what it says. If you’re a staff writer or contract freelancer for a music journalism outlet, that’s great, but otherwise, at least in the world of journalism in which I grew up, you have to propose every single article to every single outlet you want to write it for, and writing the proposal and dickering with the editors about what it’s going to say usually takes much more time than actually writing the piece. In book world, you only have to write the proposal and dicker about it once or twice, and then spend years writing the book. I prefer the latter. (Please note that this advice may be outdated in the world of on-line and self-publishing in which I did NOT grow up.)
EJB: Thanks so much, Peter, and good luck with your latest projects.
Mary Wells: The Tumultuous Life of Motown’s First Superstar is available on amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and at any bookstore with good taste. I also urge you to check out The Lost Supreme, Peter’s biography of Florence Ballard. It’s a vivid portrait of a talented singer who met a tragic end.
The Grim Reaper has been working overtime in the entertainment world this week.
We lost TV legend Jack Klugman (The Odd Couple, Quincy M.E.) and veteran character actor Charles Durning (Dog Day Afternoon, The Sting, and about a million other films) on Christmas Eve, and today it was announced that 1960s soul singer Fontella Bass has also departed for the great beyond. She was 72.
Some of her better-known tunes include “Don’t Mess Up a Good Thing” and “Recovery.” Here is Fontella’s biggest hit, “Rescue Me,” which came out in 1965 and hit #1 on the R&B charts. You’ll know it when you hear it, because it shows up in a lot of commercials and movie soundtracks:
A reminder not to take for granted the people you care about… even ones you only admire from a distance.
Eric the Gray 