"Working Musicians: Defining |
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Bruce Pollock is a record producer at BMG Entertainment and has written for Musician, Entertainment Weekly, Playboy, and others. He says in the introduction that he started this book as a fictional novel and it evolved into a kind of testament for the creative community. He has done a wonderful job in this book of chronicling the stories of over 100 musicians. From session players to big acts the reader is treated stories that inspire working musicians and fans alike. The stories are categorized by applicability - Starting Out, First Gigs, The Studio, songwriting, and a very interesting section on habits of successful musicians at the end. All of the interviews are one to two pages in length, with very few running longer than three pages. Many of these musician’s memories are of chance encounters or twists of fate that changed their careers and lives forever. The Starting Out section has some insightful prose from artists on when their big breaks came and sometimes went. Many of these shorts are not sugar coated, some of the artists here don’t make it and are still struggling to perform. The section on Playing includes violinist Boyd Tinsley of the Dave Matthews Band discussing how he started out and how he ended up with the band. Lou Reed talks about being self-taught and his constant search for simplicity in musicians. Jerry Garcia discusses his personal playing method sand the zen of live performance and how he found his style in the moment each time he played. Each artist here gives the reader an intimate picture of their individual philosophies and they all are interesting not just for musicians but for anyone interested in the craft of music. In the section on Songwriting there are some significant accounts by John Lee Hooker, Paul Simon, Donald Fagen, Frank Zappa, Richard Marx, Carole King, and Laura Nyro on the process of songwriting and how each of them composes. Hooker, in fact, tells the story of his inspiration for his famous boom, boom, boom. Keith Richards talks about how he and Ron Woods get down to writing tunes. It’s amazing how many of the famous writers here are always in search of the next hit single. I guess I always thought it came naturally. Then again, some of the other artists don’t’ seem to worry too much about the hit factor. Pollock’s website has his bio and updates on some of the artists interviewed. One basic fact of this book is that there are so many wonderful words from so many artists that I couldn’t possible go through them all. All genres are covered from opera to punk, country, hip hop, rap, you name it; its here. I loved this book and highly recommend it for inspiration, for guidance, and for some great music history. |
Book Review |