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Name: mikeeder
E-Mail: edermike@msn.com
Subject: Brian Jones book review for a--zon
Date: Monday, July 20, 2015
Time: 11:09:23 AM
Remote Address: 99.135.153.65
Message ID: 296281
Parent ID: 0
Thread ID: 296281
I cleaned up my earlier review and posted it on A--zon. I've not said their name out of respect for Keno. Anyhow I gave it three stars, though 2 and a half is really more accurate. Even if you didn't like what I had to say before, maybe now you will at least understand my problems with the tome as I clairified my arguments.
Needed less on sex (a lot less) and infighting, needed more on this gifted man's music.
By M. Eder on July 14, 2015
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
While this is a good rebuttal to Keith Richards, "Life", that is all that it is. It's scope I'm finding is very narrow. I don't know why but I find it's tone way too dark. Yes Brian had a hard time of it, but he wasn't always brooding. Even the high points are tinged with more angst than I think there were was. For instance I bet the Stones were getting along fine circa the "Aftermath" sessions, and even Brian's oft rival manager Andrew Oldham has said nice things about Jones in regards to them. I also see nothing wrong at with Brian on the 1966 "Let's Spend The Night Together" video, yet he's here described as a wreck.
Yes Brian needed much defense, but you can't deny the Stones have been human to him sometimes.
I also am disturbed by the nonsense regarding Brian's sex life. It gets disgusting in detail particularly the passage about Nico, and nobody needs to know this about anyone, especially a man who has been gone so many years. All the Devil Pan crap gets tiresome too. It's 2015 I think we realize the DEBIL isn't going to get us for listening to music for any sort.
I think that when the music is the focus, the book is very, very good. Basically only Keno in his book Rolling Thru The Stones has dared suggest Brian Jones wrote Rolling Stones stongs past some group compositions. Trynka does not list him as a source, but he seems to have found the same sources Keno had and now put them in a book with a major publisher. Paul has again helped confirm Brian helped write a good many songs. All the Nanker/Phelge (like Play With Fire), The Last Time, Under My Thumb, Paint It Black, and most importantly Ruby Tuesday (which to be fair David Dalton and Marriane Faithful revealed 20 years ago in their book).
Had Paul focused a lot more on the albums and songs, I would love this book. Passages about the "Degree of Murder" sessions (until they go back to the endless insecurity analysis) introducing Howling Wolf on Shindig, "Paint It Black", and "Ruby Tuesday", are excellent. Yet "Between the Buttons" and "Number 2" don't even get reviews. "Out Of Our Heads" gets a brief review with no specific songs mentioned. He talks a lot about the debut being Brian's baby without talking much about the songs or what Brian did so brilliantly on them.
.
He says "Little Red Rooster" was a session Brian only overdubbed, when it's obvious they built it around him not the other way around. He buys into Keith being the lead instrument in "Mothers Little Helper", "I Can't Be Satisfied" is a chapter title but not reviewed despite being Brian's masterpiece slide number off the second LP (which again is not even mentioned). "Two Trains", "Gompher" and dozens of other Brian highlights are overlooked. Hardly one TV show is described.
It would have made the book a lot more fun to just talk about the joy of the music. Yes again it is a needed rebuttal to "Life", but I would have done it with the music itself. Why resort to Keith Richards or Andrew Oldham's level of gossip and nastyness? It just makes Trynka look bad.
Though some are good, a few of the interviews are scrapping the bottom of the barrel. I am starting to realize that a lot of the people close to Brian are gone or won't talk.
I can't dislike the book because it positive to Brian. Still I was hoping it be a defense that would be 70 percent music 30 percent personal life and got the other way around. I mean at least he should have reviewed each UK album or major single, and the tone could have been lightened ever so slightly. Wish it wouldn't have gone all XXX either.
To be fair, it is pretty excellent up to the first IBC session. Yet the one with "You Can't Judge A Book" isn't even mentioned. Back to IBC he wrongly says "Come On" was recorded instead of "Diddley Daddy". He thinks Glyn Johns is talking about "Come On", when it is obviously "I Want To Be Loved".
At the end of that chapter we get about four times as much on Brian, Mick, and Keith sharing women then we do n their early sessions! It's sadly that kind of book. I personally don't need details about Brian's shagging habits. I want to know what he did for the Stones in detail, thankfully it's found elsewhere.
It's a book that was needed, but it could have been so much more. It's a matter of direction I think. I applaud him for not doing the death conspiracy thing, but I sneer at him for always looking for Brian's excesses and feuds including some we need no detail on. Mick, Keith, and Andrew treated Brian like dirt, but it doesn't need to be the crux of every single mention of them.
It needed to be said, but the great collaborations between them also should have been stressed. That Brian also brought out the best in the other Stones, and at times they did and do acknowledge that. Problem is they only give Brian his credit frustratingly inconsistently. He would have you believe they never give Brian credit, and that isn't true either.
I think he could have really dug into all the boots and official recordings and gone into what Brian added to everything. Again it's frustrating because he get's this part right when he wants to. It's just he would rather go on about Pan than what Brian did on "Between The Buttons". I mean there is literally nothing about the album at all.
Not the way I would have done it, and he really is no place to judge what Brian could have done in 1969. "You Got The Silver" is the only major piece we have from the period. It doesn't show a musician in decline, and that's all we have to go on except people's opinions.
Again he get's some real basic things wrong on the music and really it's group books like Martin Elliott's, Phil Norman's, and Bill Wyman's that remain the fairest to Brian.
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