Bowen, a man who made millions of dollars, and seemingly as many enemies, with his ruthless management style (Jerry Lee Lewis purportedly wanted to kill him), describes his life in this candid, if self-aggrandizing, autobiography. Bowen is best known for his role in facilitating the recent resurgence of country music. He started his career as a bass player but quickly found greater success as a producer, working with Frank Sinatra and his ``Rat Pack.'' He displayed what was to become his signature manic drive when he created a hit for Sinatra out of ``Strangers in the Night,'' a song that had already been recorded by another singer and was about to land in stores. Bowen recorded, pressed, and delivered Sinatra's version within a nerve-wracking 24 hours, beat out the competition, and gave Sinatra's career a major mid-1960s boost. Ambition (and a perpetual yearning for new challenges) drove Bowen from one record label to another. He was almost always successful, sometimes spectacularly so. He managed six Nashville divisions—including those of Warner and MCA—in just over a decade. Whenever he took over a label, he would fire and replace much of the staff, update recording techniques (he was an early proponent of digital recording technology), and encourage artists to take responsibility for the direction and production of their music. The book provides wonderful flashes of music history throughout, including Bowen's shrewd assessments of the sprawling, frantic music business and of major rock and country singers. Country music fans will also find interest in the measured jabs aimed at Bowen's business nemesis, Garth Brooks, one of country's biggest stars. Though an unauthorized biography might be more revealing, Bowen is honest enough with his audience to scare: It's like watching a Great White from inside a shark cage—readers will be fascinated, but happy they aren't closer. (8 pages photos, not seen)
Pub Date: May 5, 1997
ISBN: 0-684-80764-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1997
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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