Scatman Crothers offers Haskins one of the liveliest of the writer's 50 or so books (Richard Pryor, Mr. Bojangles, Queen of the Blues: The Story of Dinah Washington, etc.). Crothers had a long career as a drummer, scat singer, and bandleader before moving into acting. Some readers may remember him best for his role as the paranormal black cook in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, who explains the title's meaning and later tries to save little Danny from ax-wielding Jack Nicholson. When Crothers, a very longtime weed smoker, met Nicholson on the London set for the Kubrick movie, Nicholson, another herbalist, said, ``Well, ol' buddy, we're about to make our fourth classic together!'' Crothers had played the orderly who lets the inmates have their party in Nicholson's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and long roles as a black gangster in The King of Marvin Gardens and The Fortune, both Nicholson features; Crothers felt that Nicholson took an interest in him. Kubrick, ever the perfectionist, had Nicholson ax 68-year- old Crothers again and again: ``Somebody said something about me being too old to fall down that many times, and Nicholson jumps in and says, `Who says my man's too old to fall down? Why, he can fall down 50 or 60 times if he has to.' '' Crothers was born in Terre Haute as Sherman Crothers, ``quitulated'' from high school to play in a band, was later known as the man with ``the shiniest mouth in town.'' He married Helen Sullivan, a Hungarian white woman, ``for contrast,'' and the marriage lasted until his death 48 years later. Much of his story takes place in Chicago and midwestern speak- easies, with gangsters as heavy tippers for Scatman's bands. In later years he starred widely on TV, his biggest role being three years with Chico and the Man. He died of cancer in 1986. Warm and full of good spirits. (Twenty-four b&w photographs- -not seen.)
Pub Date: Sept. 20, 1991
ISBN: 0-688-08521-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1991
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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