Good-hearted but lightweight autobiography by the composer of A Chorus Line and many film scores, including The Way We Were. Like Orson Welles, workaholic Hamlisch hit it big while very young, garnering three Oscars at age 28 for 1973's The Way We Were and The Sting, and composing Broadway's longest-running musical ever—but then he found himself floundering on a treadmill with every step a misstep. Hamlisch tells his story with a light hand, much like his own background music, without ever really digging into the nitty-gritty of film-scoring or even of writing musicals. The author covers his work scoring Woody Allen's first two films (Take the Money and Run and Bananas) in less than a page, simply by Hamlisch describing Allen as being uncommunicative. The focus remains always on the author, his music, his ulcers. At six, Hamlisch showed such promise as a pianist that his Viennese- immigrant parents enrolled him in Juilliard. Hamlisch forever was drawn to lyrical fluff while his father insisted that he learn the basics. While still in his teens, the budding musician worked as a Broadway rehearsal pianist, his biggest thrill being with Barbra Streisand and Funny Girl when they opened in Boston and later on Broadway, and then as a musical coordinator for TV's The Bell Telephone Hour. Then came calls to score Sam Spiegel's The Swimmer, to arrange the music for an Ann-Margret Vegas show, and to boost aged Groucho Marx's spirits as his accompanist for his farewell comeback. Writing A Chorus Line and then Hamlisch's subsequent failures (Jean, about the life of Jean Seberg, etc.) are covered thinly here. Pleasant but synthetic, with not enough struggle in the writing. (Two eight-page photo inserts—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 9, 1992
ISBN: 0-684-19327-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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