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Bill Evans: Time Remembered

Director Bruce Spiegel mines the archives to present a tender portrait of the jazz great.


Make no mistake, this is a tragedy. Bill Evans: Time Remembered (2015) recounts the life of the inimitable jazz piano great, tracing his rise to professional acclaim and his deep personal and professional relationships to their devastating conclusion, bleeding out in a car on the way to hospital. Why this is a tragedy, Spiegel lets you decide for yourself. 

Marshaling a trove of archival footage and exclusive interviews with Evans’s friends, family and colleagues, the documentary is a collective attempt at divining the man behind the music, the soft-spoken pianist from New Jersey. From the very beginning, Spiegel, speaking through the interview of bassist Chuck Israels, gives us the answer he arrived at after eight painstaking years, “Damn if I know, really. But all the information that’s really important, it’s in the music.” 

Time Remembered is first and foremost a paean to Evans’s music. His all-star cast of interviewees, compromising luminaries like vocalist Tony Bennett and the recently deceased drummer Paul Motian, are most effusive when they discuss Evans’s work. Their praise may not be novel- many critics have extolled Evans’s expressive touch and command of harmony – but this profusion of jazz notables consistently lauding Evans’s deep connection to his music drives the point home. In the words of Marty Morell, Evans’s longest serving drummer, “He’s just so connected to his heart.” We associate genius with surpassing the common man, but Evans’s power lay in his unflinching portraiture of his humanity. You don’t need to understand bebop enclosure or modal jazz to be moved. 

Spiegel lets the music speak for itself. He intersperses discussions of Evans’s work in the context of the 1960s jazz scene with snippets of his recordings. For a full minute, Spiegel makes you sit with “Peace Piece” (1958), a delicate meditation, cradled by the same three chords on the bass clef as the melody winds its way from serenity to bittersweet longing, before it is soothed into resolution. Friend and poet Bill Zavatsky closes the segment, declaring “Bill spoke to me in a way I hadn’t heard anyone talking.” 

And Evans spoke chiefly through his music. Referring to the famous photographs of him bent in concentration over the keys, lyricist and critic Gene Lees says they were “a pretty accurate portrait of his personality”. His playing was unequivocally articulate, but he seemed to physically shrink from the world. In a clip of Evans at the piano, his lanky, spare frame is almost curled in on himself with only his arms extended, long, tapering fingers murmuring across the keys. Photographed with the famous 1961 trio, he does not wear attention with Motian’s suave polish or bassist LaFaro’s affable grin. He hangs back, nursing a nervous smile. Even further back in the archives, Evans rarely breaks with his terse professorial persona. In footage of him smoking, the gaunt planes of his face are rendered in stark monochrome, eyes shaded over by his glasses, the set of his shoulders guarded. In his childhood photos, his neutral half-smile is unreadable. 

With a suite of exclusive interviews, Spiegel edges the curtain back on Evans, the man. Brother of Harry. Mentor to Scottie and Marc. Lover of Ellaine, Nennette and Laurie. Father to Evan. The warmth of his character bleeds through in his praise for LaFaro, enthusing “he was a constant inspiration to me.” You see his deep love for his family, in the uncontrollably fond smile of Debby Evans, Evans’s niece for whom he wrote Waltz for Debby, as she recalls their trips to the beach and her uncle and father, “two jazz brothers”, in animated conversation at the piano. Through Laurie Verchomin’s eyes the audience encounters Evans, the tender romantic, as she describes visiting him in New York at the start of their relationship. But we bear witness also to the corrosive self-doubt he laboured under. Bob Brookmeyer recounts how at the Cafe Bohemian with the Miles Davis Sextet, Evans was crouched in the corner, adamantly refusing to go on, insisting “I can’t play good, I can’t do this”. We see the sensitivity of his character, the weight of his grief. In the aftermath of LaFaro’s car accident, Evans, bewildered and in denial, admits “I can’t comprehend death,” with a trailing hesitance. Evans, falling silent at the piano midsong, tears streaming down his face, on the day his brother committed suicide. Talking to Zavatsky near the end of his life, Evans admits he can find no reason to stay alive. 

But this is no Hollywood tell-all. Rooted in their deference for him as a mentor and bandleader, they keep a respectful distance from the details of his personal life, particularly its painful episodes. Discussing Evans’s addiction, they hint at his “inner demons” without pinpointing them. But there are some telling flashes of emotion. The disdain is evident in Orrin Keepnews’s, Evans’s record producer, voice as he narrates “Almost imperceptibly, he became a junkie.” Lees unblinking intones,“I think he hurt a hell of a lot of people.” 

More than reconstructing his life, Spiegel brings Evans back into conversation. Recordings of Evans talking or playing bookend each segment, and the effect is disconcerting. The audience rarely sees Evans speaking on tape, mostly encountering him as a disembodied voice floating over monochromatic stills, an echo of the past. In his taciturn remarks, we are scrying for hints of his inner world as he moves forward through his turbulent life, while we look back, knowing what comes next. Evans’s work is an uncannily prescient soundtrack to the twists and turns of his life. The tender warmth of “Lucky To Be Me” (1959) accompanies rare childhood photos of him smiling toothily, arm in arm with his beloved brother, Harry. Its bittersweet undertones almost foretell Harry’s devastating suicide, which precedes Evans’s death by a year. Spiegel opens the discussion of Evans’s addiction with a foreboding passage from “NYC’s No Lark” (1963), as his colleagues recount what Gene Lees called “the longest suicide in history.” There in the music, Evans speaks back. 

I left the documentary feeling empty, forlorn. But I couldn’t quite pinpoint what about Evans’s life was so affecting. Was it in the way he passed, the abject irony of him succumbing on the way to rehabilitation? The turmoil of his personal life? Or the cruel symmetry, between the deeply-felt humanity of his work and his self-inflicted cruelty? Perhaps it was all of these, and that we want our heroes to be happy. Even if it was just a mirage constructed by pithy one-liners, a flash of a smile in a yellowing photograph, the sigh of a melody, I saw in Evans a kind, gentle character who might have deserved that happiness. 

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A musical history of Broken Greek

Acclaimed music critic Pete Paphides’s autobiography is a vivid account of a life illuminated by music.

“Do you sometimes feel like the music you’re hearing is explaining your life to you?” Broken Greek, by acclaimed British music journalist Pete Paphides, is a love letter to the magic of those electrifying, heart-rending and profoundly cathartic moments. In equal parts an autobiography and a pop music retrospective, Paphides assembles glittering fragments of daily life – his cross-cultural upbringing, scrappy schoolyard games of English football, the wonders and anxieties of boyhood and the music illuminating it all –  into a kaleidoscopic diorama of growing up in the 1980s in Acocks Green, Birmingham. With unfailing wit, candour and compassion, Paphides pays homage to the pivotal role of music in our lives and how the personal is deeply intertwined with the larger cultural moment. 

Paphides’s debut novel is about his halting, broken greek, his displacement from the cultural world of his immigrant parents, his gruff Cypriot father, Christakis Paphides, and his doting Greek mother, Victoria Paphides, and the yawning chasm between the family dinner table and the world beyond his front door a young, skittish Paphides had to cross. But this is more than a tale of insufficiencies. Over the ten years the book covers, we watch Paphides emerge from his four year long spell of selective mutism to venture into the unpredictable, technicolour the world beyond, and find the confidence to take his place in it. 

In spite of the book’s weighty subject matter – marital rifts, cultural displacement, the history of pop music itself – Paphides is undeniably hilarious. Despite the associations of long-windedness a 600 page debut novel tends to confer, Paphides’s writing is taut with insight and humour. Testament to his journalistic training, his writing marries character with concision, interspersing the profound and even the heartbreaking with zingers on his childhood escapades. Surging from one quip to the next, Paphides hurtles over large swathes of narrative ground, his readers in tow.  

51-year old father of two though he may be, Paphides is phenomenal at inhabiting the headspace of a 7-year old. He is resonant on the fears and foibles and guileless wonders of childhood, no matter how far into their past that may be for some readers. As someone with scattered memories at best of anything that happened before I was 10, I am in awe of his childhood powers of recollection and the sheer amount of detail he marshals. He captures the almost irrational but deeply intuitive way children react to music and the world around them, recalling how at age 7, the forlorn crooning of a Greek song his father enjoyed, “Cloudy Sunday” (Sinefiasmeni Kiriaki), shrouded him in a pallor of “imminent peril,” compounded by the disquieting sense that the pagan sun on the record sleeve was staring at him. The book narrates the series of anxieties the timid but winsome younger Paphides cycled through, ranging from the inane, like children’s television star Jimmy Osmond, to the morbid, such as his parents’ abandonment. Paphides also pays homage to the enduring role of music as “a periscope into (the adult) world,” a thrilling gateway of discovery for children. With minor adjustments, the scene he recounts of himself and two others whipped into an exhilarated frenzy by cameos of entry-level expletives in “Greased Lightnin’” could have been plucked from any reader’s childhood. 

Paphides leaves no room to doubt his journalistic credentials. Wielding the language of cultural critique with panache, he traces the arc of various musical styles and their accompanying aesthetics, bursting into and trailing out of vogue, and the intricate webs of calls and responses woven throughout the pop ecosystem. Paphides is in his element writing about pop music, authoritatively capturing the zeitgeist of a musical era in the turn of a phrase. Of the 1980s English 2 Tone and ska revival bands, he writes that they were “unified by an aesthetic that felt like the logical third act in the wake of the nihilism of punk and the crafted ennui of new wave.”  Even when outside the remit of his musical expertise, Paphides is cogent on the historical and musical context of his father’s favoured Greek music. He narrows the cultural gulf by highlighting the parallels to British pop, giving us a glimpse into his multicultural upbringing where these two cultures were different, but not separate. 

Though Paphides is separately competent as an autobiographer and a music journalist, what distinguishes Broken Greek is his marriage of the two. He lifts the latch on his innermost world where the chorus of ABBA’s “Money, Money, Money” coloured the silhouette of his father, bent over a chip fryer, toiling to provide for his family, strains of David Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes” curled themselves into the locks of his mother’s hair, splayed against the pillow of a hospital bed, and Leo Sayer’s “When I Need You” spoke for him in his petrified silence, wracked by guilt for his mutism.  

Rather than unravelling an imperial history of British pop music, developments in pop are told first through the eyes of Paphides the younger as a shortlist of potential adoptive parents from the Top of the Pops’, BBC’s weekly music chart show, to be tapped on if and when his parents abandon him. Paphides narrates the history of pop through the lens of what these songs meant to him. He describes how artists lent him the words and melodies for his nascent meanings as he navigated familial tensions and struggled with his perpetually dismal position in the schoolyard pecking order. Over the years, the varied artists gracing the radiowaves and record player were simultaneously chilling soothsayers presaging his fears for the future, spokespersons for his desires, and cooler, more confident versions of himself. Paphides pinpoints the impalpable yet powerful sense of communion we share with our music, declaring that music does not amplify our emotions, but that reality “(authenticates) the sentiments of the song.”

He is a faithful scribe not only to his own relationship with music, but also the musical obsessions of the people around him. He chronicles his brother and friends’ adolescent evolution accompanied and led by music. Writing about his brother Aki’s obsession with The Teardrop Explodes and neighbour Emily’s devotion to Adam Ant, he underscores how music could be an epiphany, a revelation not just about what music could sound like, but how you could dance, dress or talk. Who you, a hungry teenager facing the wilds of the world to come, could be. Even if Paphides does not inhabit his parent’s cultural universe, he reimagines their reality with compassion and patience. “For them music didn’t exist to enhance the present. It was a means of temporarily obliterating it” he writes. His parents’ indifference to the British pop juggernauts and his father’s insistence on Greek music are presented not as wilful ignorance, but reflections of the gruelling realities of supporting a family as immigrants cut loose from existing support structures.  

Broken Greek held my attention even though I am barely literate in the pop music canon of the 1970s and 80s, not an immigrant to the United Kingdom experiencing cultural displacement, or a fifty-something primed to gush with nostalgia by sepia-toned childhood recollections because Broken Greek was not written by Paphides the Greek-Cypriot immigrant or Paphides the music critic, but Paphides the music lover. As intimate and ephemeral as the relationship between a listener and their music is, it is also a familiar shared experience. By grounding the book in this experience, he anchors readers who might otherwise be swept away by the barrage of unfamiliar references or disoriented by the world of 1970s Birmingham.

Paphides’s focus on the inner world of his childhood and his experience of music means that a good portion of the book is devoted to his thoughts and feelings. The events of the book’s ten years are riveting, but do not command seismic degrees of drama. It can be argued he should have covered more ground, like the histrionics of late adolescence. At times the level of detail felt excessive given the repetitiveness and banality of the school-going routine he chronicles, especially in the blow by blow accounts of schoolyard soccer matches. But the authentic retelling of a life is perhaps less about communicating the sequence of events which occurred, than it is about parsing what they meant to the subject. By that standard, Paphides has authored a faithful and insightful account of his early childhood. 

But this begs the question – examining cultural eras populated by some of the most colourful public figures in recent memory, why should we care about the individual’s experience of music? Much ink has been spilt detailing the development of pop music and putting the lives of its icons under the microscope, rather than invoking them only as accessories to an individual’s bildungsroman. Yet, why is there still magic in Paphides’s worm’s eye view account?

In spotlighting the subjective experience of music, Paphides reveals how music is embedded in deeply personal realities. His most evocative writing on music is an act of imagination, rather than a dogmatic narration of the music’s factual provenance. He conjures these musicians from an age past with his childhood self’s vivid imagination, for instance asserting British pop group Racey’s Richard Gower’s “perpetually needy expression was somehow discernable merely by listening to his pleading delivery of the vocals.” Through these conjectures he locates the emotional core of the music, taking him closer to the heart of what earned artists like Bowie and The Clash pride of place in the pop pantheon for a generation of listeners than what a factual recapitulation could achieve. 

Conversely, when Paphides fails to balance factual details and his emotional relationship to the music, his critique can come across as ponderous. The anecdotal nuggets are necessary intermissions for those not intrinsically enthused by the biographical minutiae of ABBA. My attention wavers when he jumps into two page long close readings of songs, though to his credit he is discerning about which songs he spotlights. His trenchant critique and droll asides are elevated in the moments when music and autobiographical elements intertwine, speaking uncannily to each other across time and space through the tinny speakers of the household radiogram.

But more than that, the unique, subjective experience of music Paphides hones in on is precisely what makes up a cultural era. A pop cultural moment is only as powerful as its personal resonance. The cultural significance of ABBA of the Sex Pistols doesn’t derive from the millions album sales or number of weeks spent at number one on the charts. The magic of the pop phenomenon is located in living rooms and record stores, school fields and radios. It is in the raucous schoolyard debates of U2 versus Echo & the Bunnymen, a needling sibling rivalry because this was your band, so obviously your younger brother couldn’t be a fan too, in the flash of illumination, a teenager in a bedroom, listening to what feels like the anthem of his life. So why should our understanding of cultural history be limited to the bird’s eye view, looking down from the top of the chart or across the rolling expanse of the broader musical narrative? Pop has always been the music of the people, the elastic boundaries of the genre constantly shifting in response to the audience it is written for, defined only by the singular ability to resonate throughout the population; the grand narrative of pop would be incomplete without the account of the listeners at its heart. Broken Greek is not an autobiography accessorised by music, it is a sliver of musical history itself. 

 

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The Man No Fool Could Stop

Jimi Hendrix could dazzle on stage, and was an important figure in the counterculture movement. Philip Norman captures his life in Wild Child.

(Image Credit: David Redfern/Redferns)

Jimi Hendrix was one of one. During his 27 years on the planet, he became widely known as the greatest guitar player of all time. Hendrix was impossible to categorize as a musician. On stage, Hendrix pulled off stunts like no other. He would frequently play the guitar with his teeth, smash his guitar into bits, or even light the instrument on fire. His life was in some ways the epitome of sex, drugs, rock and roll – he loved all three. And yet to define him as just another Rockstar would be an irresponsible simplification of one of Rock’s great characters.

Music historian Phillip Norman’s Wild Thing: The short spellbinding life of Jimi Hendrix, is an impressive feat of historical research and writing. Norman covers Jimi’s entire life, sometimes in painstaking detail. At all turns, Norman does his best to provide maximum context, and present the different recollections of important events. Hendrix had a habit of misleading the press, which Norman notes frequently throughout the book, and for which Norman deserves even more credit for his efforts to decipher and deliver the truth.

And the truth, to put it mildly, was a long story. Born as Johnny Allen Hendrix on 27 November 1942, his name was soon changed to James Marshall by his father, Al. Hendrix had a bizarre early life, which included being adopted away from his family in Seattle to a family in southern California, only to have his father return from the Army and head down the coast to claim his three-year-old biological son. Al was a constant source of insecurity and anxiety throughout Jimi’s life. An alcoholic, Al never approved of Jimi’s (who at that time went by Buster) guitar playing. Even after finding a broken guitar in a scrap heap and learning to produce great sounds from it, Jimi had to convince his dad to buy him a proper guitar. From there, he was completely devoted to the instrument for the rest of his life. Even when his son returned to Seattle to play sold-out shows many years later, Al was unimpressed. Being the best of all time was apparently not good enough for Al, and Jimi tried and failed to make his father proud of him to the day he died.

Norman is at his best with short bursts of brilliant writing that add value to his historical record keeping. In describing Hendrix’s biggest hit, a cover of Bob Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower, Norman writes that “a terse ‘hey!’ announces a break which, for me, surpasses any other to have been recorded since guitars had electrical wires threaded through their bodies like keyhole surgery and metal pickups and volume knobs and tremelo levers dentist-drilled into their faces.”

At other points, Norman’s writing lacks pace, and seems unfit to describe someone he defines as “spellbinding.” For example, Jimi’s early years as a musician were covered in complex detail, through his numerous adventures joining and leaving bands. Many of the events could have been summarized, and the book would have benefitted from fifty less pages. Another disappointment in the book were the spelling errors, almost 10 in total, that were unusual for a published work like this one. They were unprofessional and distracting as a reader and while likely not Norman’s fault, they hurt his writing.

For all of his greatness, Jimi’s black skin would often set him apart from other Rockstars. While trying to make it as a young musician, he had to cut his teeth on the “chittlin circuit,” a nationwide series of bars and clubs that featured African American performers. It was there that he met and played with a great number of the premier black performers of the era.

Jimi’s once-in-a-generation talent was not destined to be pigeon-holed. Norman describes in detail how the Beatles and other British groups helped to import “black” music like R&B back into mainstream American society. At the same time, Jimmy was growing bored of the same old music he was playing, and was beginning to pay more attention to new Rock groups. Norman wrote that it was difficult for managers to place Jimi, because “he wasn’t exactly rock nor pop nor soul nor R&B nor blues nor country nor folk nor jazz but a bit of everything. In a world of racialized music, Jimmy could cut through genres at will.

Put another way, music promoter Bill Graham, describes in the book that Hendrix was “the first black man in the history of this country who caused the mass of white females in the audience to disregard his race and want his body.”

 

Jimi’s biggest hits would come as a member of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, a three person band formed in Britain. Hendrix was known to play covers throughout his career, but other tunes like Purple Haze, Hey Joe, and Voodoo Child became hits as well. More than for his studio work though, Jimi was known for his incredible skill as a performer, emphasized by his frequent habit of playing in bars and clubs despite his fame, all the way until his death.

The 1960’s were an intense and violent time in the history of American race relations, but Hendrix was not initially the radical symbol of counterculture that he may be remembered as. Despite the increasing urges of the Black Panther Party for Hendrix to more directly take up their cause, it took Jimi years to fully embrace their agenda. “He grew adept at deflecting suggestions from hefty brothers in black berets and sunglasses” wrote Norman. One reason for the initial hesitancy was Jimi’s own career in the military. Norman wrote “his sympathies were as much with the young soldiers fighting a clearly unwinnable war, especially the black ones… who were allowed to die for their country yet not granted equality in it.”

Despite his initial stance, Hendrix became the target of COINTELPRO, the counter intelligence program operated by the FBI and its director J. Edgar Hoover, who used the program to target the Black Panther Party. In addition to being wildly illegal (and eventually exposed as one of Richard Nixon’s many spying ventures), the program was extremely racist. As a high-profile black person in the country, let alone a scandalous Rockstar, Hendrix was a main target of the program, although Norman describes the “findings of COINTELPRO’s sleuths proved disappointingly thin,”  proof that targeting Jimi had more to do with racism than any evidence of wrong-doing.

Despite the attention of the government, Jimi slowly became more and more engaged with the cause of Black Power, ultimately leading to his most famous performance. Hendrix waited all night to play in a muddy farmer’s field in Woodstock, New York. With an 400-500,000 visitors over the course of the weekend, the festival was the largest ever for a festival, and as Norman points out, “arguably the largest ever convened for a purpose other than fighting battles.” But the line up was so delayed that Hendrix had to wait until Monday morning to play.

In describing Woodstock and the performance on-stage, Norman produces some of his best writing. He writes that Hendrix had played the Star-Spangled Banner before, but never quite like he did that day. The performance included Jimi’s “long dying falls erupting into a feedback cacophony that somehow mimicked the war’s sounds – the whip of helicopter blades, the whistle of falling bombs, the whoomph of Napalm, the screams of its shredded victims.” Perhaps not fully on purpose, Hendrix provided the counterculture movement with its lasting moment on stage. While he hadn’t initially wanted to be a symbol of a political movement, he became one that day. A column in the New York Post would write “You finally heard what that song was about, that you can love your country but hate the government.”

In a poignant summary, Norman writes, “he walked off stage as Mitch Mitchell recalls (Jimi’s bandmate), ‘cold, tired, hungry, and unhappy with his performance.’ He would never know he had just created the defining moment of Woodstock – and, many people believe, the whole decade.”

At times, appealing to all races means appealing to none. After Woodstock, Norman writes that “performing for such a huge, overwhelmingly white crowd inevitably brought cries of ‘Uncle Tom’ from the Black Panthers (just as it brought threats from redneck whites to beat him to a pulp if he ever defiled the National Anthem like that again).”

However not long after his biggest successes and most memorable performances, Hendrix was dead. How he actually died is shrouded in conspiracy theories and changing stories. The official story is that Jimi died on an overdose of sleeping pills, taken from a young woman he was staying with at the time, German and former figure skater Monika Dannemann. Dannemann alleges that Jimi couldn’t sleep and asked for a pill, but when she woke up she found that Jimi had apparently taken nine of the tablets. However, Dannemann’s official recount of the events of that night changed some 14 times, and friends who arrived on the scene the morning Jimi died poked holes in the timing of events. Some allege that hours passed between the time that Dannemann called friends in a panic and the time that she called the ambulance. As Norman notes several times, Dannemann was a new figure in Jimi’s life, and older friends of his described Monika were suspicious. She appeared to show relatively little grief, especially considering how tragic and traumatizing the episode must have been.

Jimi left this earth far too soon. Throughout his short but massively successful career, he rubbed shoulders with many of the best guitarists and musicians to walk this planet. They almost all agreed that Jimi was the best. Eric Clapton for example, was seen to be God on the guitar. One night, Jimi sat in with Clapton’s band Cream, to play a number. ‘Halfway through the song, Eric stopped playing” recalled Chas Chandler, a friend of Jimi’s. Clapton retreated to the dressing room and said ‘you never told me he was that fu**ing good.’” Jimi would have high voltage fans for the rest of his career. A headliner for Hendrix once reported seeing many of Rock’s biggest stars waiting to see Jimi play, saying that he saw “all my biggest heroes… Pete Townshend (The Who)… Keith Richards (Rolling Stones)… Stevie Winwood… Eric Clapton, looking like “Oh my God, I’m not God anymore.”

Trying to explain the legacy of Jimi Hendrix can be tough, even with 350+ pages. Talented, unique, and short are the descriptors that best describe the man and his life. A Billboard magazine edition just after his death provided perhaps the best memorial for a man like no other.

“To a black gypsy cat / who rocked the world / when it needed to be rocked. / Sleep Well.”

Jimi faced challenges at every stage of his life. From an alcoholic, violent father, to the military, to coming up as a black musician in a still overtly racist and violent country. Eventually, greedy management, drug use, and creative burnout hurt him as well. But Hendrix was not only remarkably talented, but resilient as well. As long as he had his guitar, he was happy. And boy, did he rock this world.

Norman’s history is but one of a long line of tribute books, movies, and albums. For longer than he lived, people have been memorializing the best guitar player in history. “I still have my guitar and an amp, and as long as I have that, no fool can stop me living,” he once wrote to his father. Indeed, no fool ever could. And while a series of small pills took him away from this planet, Jimi’s legacy remains untouched as the greatest shredder to ever pick up a guitar.

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PLASTIC HEARTS ALBUM DISCUSSION: Miley Cyrus

Emily Hurwitz & Andie Chapman

Filled with exciting collaborations, Miley Cyrus’s new album, reveals a pop-inspired deep dive into the world of 1980s synth-punk.

 

From the days of Disney to being publicly shamed for her VMA performance with Robin Thicke to starting the Happy Hippie Foundation to advocate for vulnerable populations, Miley Cyrus has [maybe lived her entire life] always been in the public eye. She has gone out of her way to create her own independent, fearless image amidst an oppressive music industry and negative public perception. When the band SWMRS wrote an entire song about Miley, calling her a “punk rock queen,” it seemed out of place. I clearly failed to see Miley’s versatility at the time; in my mind, she was a pop star. She continues to prove her musical versatility, as on November 27, 2020, she released her first rock album, Plastic Hearts. This bold 80s-inspired album, filled with pop and rock collaborations, has since climbed to the top of Billboard’s rock charts.

Compared to her eclectic discography, Plastic Hearts is a leather-studded, new sound. In 2015, she wrote a psychedelic record, Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz, and two years later pivoted to country with Younger Now. Miley has explored several genres, with her increasingly raspy timbre guiding her towards rock. The punk-ish era kicked off with a series of covers and a Stevie Nicks-sampling cover. Digitally, the covers bejewel the end of the album, including “Zombie” by The Cranberries and “Heart of Glass” by Blondie. This week’s Riot Grrrl (with all three r’s) is Miley Cyrus with her fresh studio album, Plastic Hearts. Here are our thoughts on some tracks! Are they riotous enough? 

 “WTF Do I Know”

A: Miley unravels lyrically in the opening track, lines stinging with pure honesty atop a dark bassline. The instrumental strikes me as forgettable; her nuance lies in her voice and words. Her delivery feels authentic yet the melodies are unsurprising. While listening I was flooded with comparisons from my emo phase. Bands such as All Time Low, Fall Out Boy, and Jimmy Eat World have created the easy-listening rock songs that fit snugly into a radio rotation. Miley is adding one more, bringing a standout message with a familiar, shadowy guitar sound.

E: The first notes of the bass line draw listeners into the album, enticing them with mystery, and the musical lines build until the chorus where Cyrus explodes with her raw, rocking vocals. It’s catchy for an opening song, but a bit cliché. The blasé guitar solo in the middle sounds too standard for Cyrus’s experimentation with rock and punk. While I hate to compare her to her Disney channel character, I couldn’t help but think the whole time that this sounds like an alt version of Hannah Montana. 

“Night Crawling” (feat. Billy Idol)

A: Miley Cyrus and Billy Idol conjured a camp, eighties-loving song, following the new pop pattern of drawing from a synthy era. Billy Idol’s voice sounds a bit austere over the high-production track. It’s glossy without any of the prized imperfections of punk music. The melody, again, is predictable, and the lyrics don’t save the track either. Miley’s rasp shines in the last chorus though as she ad-libs with Idol. Knowing how experimental and innovative she can be from her psychedelic era in 2015, I left this track disappointed. Sorry Billy. 

E: “Night Crawling” stands out on this album — it’s synth-filled, but not with the standard formula of today’s pop songs. Rather, it goes back to the roots of synthpop with a definite 1980s style. Miley’s gritty vocals throughout the song stand in stark contrast to the smooth sounds of the synth, making for a unique texture that is rare on the more produced side of new-wave and punk. Billy Idol, who led England’s punk scene in the 1970s as a member of Generation X and rocked multiple generations with “Rebel Yell,” is the perfect collaborator for this song. This connection alone brings Cyrus more credibility in the world of punk rock, something that will be valuable to her if she continues her new direction into rock.

“Bad Karma” (feat. Joan Jett)

A: Yes! The nearly-moaned vocals that surrounded the track feel strange in an exciting, sexy way. Her lyrics are unadulterated, admittance gleaming: “I’ve always picked a giver ‘cause I’ve always been the taker / I’d rather just do it, then I’ll think about it later.” The chorus feels classic eighties rock yet nuanced. Joan Jett’s voice is punk distilled, crowning the track. Their voices on one track, singing these brutally honest lines, is modern punk rock by women. 

E: Cyrus and Joan Jett, punk music extraordinaire, both have histories of feminist activism and stand as notoriously powerful females in their respective genres. In 2015, Cyrus gave the induction speech for Jett’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Here, they come together again for a head-banging anthem. In the same manner as “WTF Do I Know,” “Bad Karma” starts out with just a minimalistic backing beat and grunting “uh huhs.” The chorus hints at a bit of country twang in the way Cyrus sings words like “say” and “heart,” which is a quality not usually heard in this genre but is refreshing. Perhaps her country roots will be how Cyrus redefines punk for herself on later albums. This song is not a hard-rocking track; instead, its power comes in the potential energy that explodes in the bridge when she sings “I don’t give a fuck, I don’t believe in love.” In my opinion, this is the best track on the album. It’s unique and radiates a certain energy that brings us back to the early days of feminist punk.

“Golden G String”

A: I’m not fond of the ballads on this record, but “Golden G String” glitters with tongue-in-cheek lyrics and a cutesy melody, swinging up and down like a good conversation, moments of glee and moments of blue. “Golden G String” is an ode to the judgmental media world, their ignorance of depth. Miley sings with love about her wild nature and owning her powerful personality, but admits she is still growing, trying to work it out. The instrumental blooms gradually, synths appearing and drawing back. Moments of this song are just Miley and a soft, electric piano. She mentions a “place” in the chorus, and wishing to walk away, but decides on staying – this is the world that her art can flourish in, and Miley makes peace with the press. 

E: Though Plastic Hearts may be too abundant with ballads, “Golden G String” stands as an emotional song with poignant lyrics. Cyrus sings of her struggles with the media shaming her sexuality, with lines like “There are layers to this body / Primal sex and primal shame / They told me I should cover it / So I went the other way.” She laments that we live in a man’s world where they “hold all the cards,” but even in the title of the song, Cyrus uses her sexuality as her power. It’s her own, and no one can take that from her no matter how hard they may try to tame her. In fact, 2020 marks “Can’t Be Tamed”’s tenth anniversary. 

Plastic Hearts Full Tracklist 

Takeaways

A: Even though I found this record rather over-produced, the lyrical content is resplendent with Miley’s honesty. She makes her art with unfettered love and expression. Her voice and words are punk, but the instrumentals and melodies are not. Perhaps we shouldn’t label her; such complex and colorful personalities don’t need to be shoved into an easy-to-read archetype. She is a pop star that transforms, evolves, and creates albums when she feels anew. 

E: Like most albums, Plastic Hearts is a mixed bag, this one being of innovative 80s-inspired tracks and other songs that prove nothing more than forgettable. She caters a bit too hard to pop fans before easing them into her rock side, though this album may in the future stand as a purely transitory time. The collaborative tracks with Dua Lipa, Joan Jett, Billy Idol, and Stevie Nicks are the highlights of this album and are remarkable songs that bridge generations. Plastic Hearts may not be Cyrus’s best album, but it’s an exciting and pivotal moment in her career. If nothing else, it shows how diverse Miley’s musical endeavors can be and establishes her rightful place in the punk rock scene.

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A Birthday Salute to John Lennon

Artists pay tribute to the beloved Beatle on his big day.

lennon

The Empire State Building shimmered sky blue on October 9th. A peace sign shone against its spire. One thousand feet below, the world remembered John Lennon on what would have been his 80th birthday. John’s son, Sean, who organized the Empire State lighting, coordinated a collection of additional tributes for the occasion. After performing his father’s song, “Isolation,” on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Sean encouraged the music community to produce their own covers of John Lennon’s solo works. His call was answered with enthusiasm from musicians eager to pay homage to their musical hero.

Of all the tributes given, Sean’s performance of “Isolation” was perhaps the most arresting. Standing before the camera, he didn’t have to sing one note to conjure the image of his father. His free-flowing hair, angular nose, and ovular glasses were enough. But sing he did, making the resemblance all the more profound. Sean skated across verses with the mellow melodicism of a young, mop-top John. Hitting the bridge, he beckoned the vivacious howl that became a staple of his father’s later works. Sean backed his vocals with loose, heavy swipes at his electric guitar—an unorthodox rhythm style championed by, as you might have guessed, John Lennon. A mere smudge of the camera lens could have duped viewers into believing they’re watching John himself.

Following Sean’s lead, Rufus Wainwright took to Instagram to post a cover of “Mother,” a heartfelt ballad which Lennon wrote of his parents, who were never sufficiently present in his upbringing. Wainwright, known for his scintillating tenor voice—and for taking a break from his pop career to compose a full-length French opera—seized the opportunity to flaunt his classical abilities. Slowing the song down, he carefully carved a collection of notes into every phrase of the first verse. Intermittent silence between lines was broken by the soft trickle of notes dripping off of a grand piano in the background. Moving through the song, Wainwright slowly sheds his articulate embellishments for a more resonant, emotive tone. Upon reaching the refrain, he lets his shimmering trill carrying him through the end. Wainwright’s gentle, sentimental approach acknowledges the solemnity of the song’s content. His performance reminds us that while Lennon was the comic, clever popstar whose face was printed on lunch pails worldwide, he was also complex, sincere, and unafraid to express his inner thoughts and feelings through his music.

It’s often said that John Lennon inspired musicians of all genres. This notion was affirmed when Kevin Parker, the man behind the experimental, psychedelic phenomenon Tame Impala, threw his hat into the rink, posting a cover of Lennon’s “Jealous Guy” on Instagram. Stripped from the bright lights and electronic effects that usually accompany his performances, Parker is filmed lying in bed with a sole acoustic guitar—an image reminiscent of Lennon’s famed “Bed-Ins for Peace.” Parker’s throaty wine and simple guitar are prudent and unadorned. This raw style pairs well with Lennon’s unencrypted lyrics. Lines like “I was feeling insecure/ You might not love me anymore,” refuse to hide behind a wall of metaphors and symbolism. In this confessionary song, Lennon means as he says, openly reflecting upon his faults as a husband. Parker, shelving his usual electronics to go acoustic, embraces the honest, unvarnished nature of Lennon’s music in his tribute.

One final tribute came from Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, who uploaded a cover of Lennon’s song “God” to YouTube. Recording from his home studio in Chicago, Tweedy’s was backed by his son, Spencer, on drums, and his son’s childhood friend, Liam Kazar, on bass. Standing at the forefront of the frame, Tweedy draws a few jangled chords out of his acoustic guitar to the soft, steady tap of the drum. The easy undercurrent of instrumentation is quickly pierced by Tweedy’s gravelly croon. With little regard for pitch or melody, his performance more closely resembles spoken word than song. This style is most fitting for the chosen song, which is a potent proclamation of Lennon’s philosophy on life. It is with utmost purpose and conviction that Tweedy sings such striking likes as “God is a concept by which we measure our pain” and “I don’t believe in Jesus/ I don’t believe in Kennedy… I don’t believe in Beatles/ I just believe in me.” In Lennon’s day, few artists wrote so directly about themselves. Even fewer had the bravery to convey their deepest, unfiltered philosophies in song. Cautiously aware of the difficulties of performing one of Lennon’s most personal pieces on this day of tribute, Tweedy abstains from musical showmanship. The lyrics, still pulsing with the energy which John breathed into them so many years ago, need little musical support to make an artistic statement.

From his flaring voice to his sloppy guitar style, Lennon’s signature sound lives within each of these performances. Then again, these imitations might not be intentional. Tweedy is known for his loose rhythm playing. Wainwright and Parker constantly reach decorate their vocals with high, airy trills. It’s hard to say for sure, but one could argue that Lennon’s influence reaches deeper than these tribute songs, touching how these artists developed their own sounds. Perhaps these tributes are not only celebrations, but payments of debt to a man who moved music forward, providing inspiration for countless performers. Of course, as these performances show, Lennon’s influence goes far beyond sound. While Dylan spoke through symbolism and Springsteen through story, Lennon just spoke, delivering his raw, candid thoughts to the world. Sean Lennon, Wainwright, Parker, Tweedy, you and I listened. We listened to his far-reaching, forthright messages of truth, peace, and love. We will be listening for the next eighty years to come.

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Less of a Star, More of a Friend: Bob Marley’s Legacy Unpacked

Roger Steffens Has So Much Things To Say In 2017 Book on Bob Marley

So Much Things to Say - Roger Steffens

Roger Steffens’ 2017 biography, So Much Things To Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley, dives into the life of Bob Marley from the perspective of those closest to him. Contrary to many other biographical works done on musicians, Steffens’ book makes Marley into a person, a friend, even. And for people like me, whose exposure to reggae is limited to the Arthur theme song and familiarity with a few Bob Marley songs through a “Reggae for Kids” CD from my youth, Steffens’ writing is understandable and intoxicating. With contextual tidbits sprinkled in between page-long anecdotes from band members and friends, So Much Things to Say pays homage to Marley through an intimate and accurate account of his life. As Marley earned his fame through his congenial and positive personality, Steffens returns to those who knew his kindness best of all. Steffens’ book, filled with the history of reggae and tales of Marley’s life, offers an honest look at what made the reggae superstar such a unique performer and so intoxicating to audiences.

In this great future, you can’t forget your past – “No Woman, No Cry”

The book starts in Jamaica during Marley’s youth. Born in Nine Mile, Jamaica to a single mother, Cedella Booker, Marley lived day by day, finding joy in the mundane. He never saw his poverty and familial situation as a setback, however, and found community among others in similar economic situations. As we enter Marley’s life in Trench Town, Kingston, we hear from Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, childhood friends of his who would become the original Wailers. In Trench Town and other slums of Kingston, music was an outlet for antsy youth and adults, providing a channel for energy that would have otherwise been spent on school or a career. “Among the only ways that law-abiding people were able to escape were through sports or music,” Steffens informs readers, “and the area was known as an incubator of great talents in both fields.”

And I hope you like jammin’ too, ain’t no rules, ain’t no vow, we can do it anyhow – “Jammin’”

Junior Braithwaite, one of Marley’s vocalists, remembers the original band, before their music career became serious, saying “the Wailers was like just a singing group, a harmonizing group. We had nothing to do with instruments.” When Bob, Bunny, Peter, Junior, and Beverly began making music together, they were just kids having fun. Their music was from the soul, the financial barriers that barred them from other activities had no influence on the songs they could create through the vessel of the voice.  Led by Joe Higgs, a respected singer who was integral in the foundation of Jamaican reggae, they weren’t always trying to create something beautiful. Singing was simply something fun to fill their days. Alvin “Seeco” Patterson, a percussionist who grew up with Marley, wasn’t a part of the group but knew of Marley’s love for music, saying “it was a spiritual thing, from he was very young he was planning to sing to people.” According to Junior Braithwaite, “to us, [making music] was just fun” and in Jamaica, “singing was just something that everybody needed to do…It wasn’t like something special that no one else couldn’t have done. And while Marley enjoyed singing casually and with his friends, he wanted to do more. He knew his voice was meant to be heard around the world.

Most of them come from Trench Town, we free the people with music – “Trench Town”

The first studio album released by the band, “The Wailing Wailers,” was a hit within the Jamaican community. “Simmer Down,” the first and most notable single off the album, echoed off of radios all over Kingston. Beverly Kelso describes the track’s popularity, saying “It was like Trench Town light up when ‘Simmer Down’ come on the air…Everybody radio turn up blast high.” Perhaps “Simmer Down” was so irresistible because of its casual nature, obviously the product of a bunch of kids in Trench Town jamming with one another above unembellished instrumentals. The track is raw and understated when compared to Marley’s more well-known tracks that he produced in his later years. But then again, Marley’s career was never about singing “correctly.” Joe Higgs, Marley’s idol and mentor, noted Toots’ (of reggae legends Toots and the Maytals) reaction to Marley’s first album release, “Toots turned to his partner, listen to this, this is the group that’s going to give us a hard time, and they can’t even find their key.” Molded by the sunny beaches and carefree lifestyle of Jamaica, Marley’s music has been loved for its easy-going tone and powerful lyrics, more than the complexity and accuracy of the composition.

Don’t let them change ya! Or even rearrange ya! – “Could You Be Loved”

The middle of the book follows Bob and the Wailers as they gain fame, releasing new works and touring internationally. The band members realized the impact that they could have upon the ideologies of those who listened to their music. Marley wanted to spread positivity to his audience, so when political conflict was getting worse in Jamaica and the Wailers were asked to perform for Edward Seaga, who was running for office at the time, he was torn between remaining impartial and representing his community. George Barrett, a reggae radio DJ and cousin of the Barrett brothers who played with Marley as the Wailers, explained how Marley decided that he would perform for the candidate, “Seaga was representing Western Kingston. Bob lived in those areas. So Bob didn’t want any conflict…his music was beatin’ down this politics that was breaking up the community.” To Marley, he had a duty to spread Rastafari, which included preaching peace and unity. Promoting a political figure contradicted his beliefs and he didn’t want to be divisive. Years later, as tensions grew in Jamaica and violence became unbearable, Marley realized that he needed to represent the community that shaped him. The slums of Kingston were being destroyed and people were beaten daily; Marley, a beacon of hope with a large following, was obligated to be the voice of the disenfranchised.

Free yourselves from mental slavery – “Redemption Song”

During 1973, Bob Marley had a secret relationship with Esther Anderson, one of many affairs that the star would have during his short life. A gorgeous and outspoken Jamaican actress, Anderson helped Marley begin to think about politics and revolution, telling Steffens, “I was teaching Bob how to be a rebel, based on what I learned from living with Marlon Brando for seven years.” From their conversation on a plane from Haiti to Jamaica, Marley and Anderson wrote one of Marley’s timeless anthems, “Get Up Stand Up” which would go on to inspire communities globally to speak up about injustice and fight for their rights. During the seventies the Wailers began churning out songs with bolder and more controversial messages than their previous Rasta-filled tracks. Lee Jaffe, an American artist who lived with the Wailers in Kingston and has written extensively on their music, speaks to Steffens about helping Marley write “I Shot the Sheriff.” “[Jaffe] came up with the line, ‘All along in Trench Town, the jeeps go round and round. ‘Cause the police and military drove jeeps.” Jaffe goes on to explain why this line was so important to him, “I was thinking of…what it was like for the poor people, the sufferers.” Not only does this anecdote highlight the evolution of the Wailers’ lyrical complexity, but also the importance of collaboration in Marley’s composition process. Another politically-motivated song, “Burnin’ and Lootin’” took inspiration from a traumatic event that Joe Higgs experienced, “he had awakened to find the police surrounding and raiding his house in Trench Town. So [Esther] told Bob about it and said that we have to write about it.” The Wailers had the freedom to make comments on the political and social landscape around them, and did so through catchy tunes and funky guitar lines.

Get up, stand up, stand up for your right – “Get Up, Stand Up”

One of the biggest catalysts for Marley’s success in the United States was his rebellious spirit. His new songs filled with empowerment arrived in the seventies, during a time when young Americans were gathering in hundreds to protest injustices. Gayle McGarrity, a friend of Marley’s who taught Marley about the political institutions and inequality around the world, was originally a fan of the group, telling Steffens “because we were all so into very leftist, revolutionary stages of our lives, this group just became the articulators of our deepest, most innermost political feelings.” He gained respect from audiences who had radical ideas but needed someone to tell them, get out there and change the world! “Marley became the voice of third world pain and resistance…” states Jon Pareles, chief music critic for the New York Times,“outsiders everywhere heard Marley as their own champion.” Marley was never performing for the fame nor the money. He was a kind of prophet for the communities of oppressed individuals all over the world, who could listen to his music and hear a man singing for them.

Until the philosophy which hold one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war – “War”

Using their role as international stars, the Wailers produced music that encouraged empathy and equality, even addressing specific conflicts in different parts of the world. According to Gilly Gilbert, Bob’s personal chef and good friend, “Don’t business whether your color white, or your color black or pink or blue. No racism in Bob at all.” So when the Rhodesia Bush War was coming to an end in Zimbabwe, Marley and the Wailers packed up their things and flew to Africa, determined to provide a voice for the black community of Zimbabwe, who had risen up and won. Steffens describes the role of Marley’s music in Zimbabwe during the conflict, saying “Marley’s song ‘Zimbabwe,’ though banned, had become a rallying cry among the freedom fighters.” Marley’s performance in the newly independent Zimbabwe became a prime example of his role as a figure of hope. When looking at the stage prior to his performance, “I saw him cry,” Dera Tompkins, the Wailers’ unofficial tour guide for their Zimbabwe trip, recounts, “and it was because he loved revolution and he loved revolutionaries. Because he was really like them.” Though he had the privilege of being a light-skinned man in Jamaica, Marley grew up in poverty and saw people close to him suffer as the result of their social status. His Zimbabwe performance was a powerful experience, a reward to those who did as he encouraged and rose up against their oppression.

Forget your troubles and dance, forget your sorrows and dance – “Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)”

In the final pages of the book, Marley’s friends and managers share their experiences with the cancer-stricken musician. It was the eighties and we learn about the composition of Marley’s final album, Uprising, a solemn compilation of tracks that encapsulated the hopelessness that the Wailers were experiencing at that point. “It was filled with intimations of mortality,” Steffens describes the slow-moving final work, “and [in ‘Work’] he counts off his final days.” With each page, tragedy comes closer and closer, as the Wailers begin their world tour. During the New York leg of the tour, Marley’s bandmates were finally made aware of his illness when he “had an epileptic-type fit, foaming at the mouth” in Central Park. It’s heartbreaking to read the experiences of the Wailers and friends of Marley’s when they realized his condition. Dessie Smith, Marley’s personal assistant and friend, said that after Marley’s first visit to the doctor, “he was just like out of it…he was just like limp. He wasn’t saying nothing.” Though not everyone knew the details of his illness at the time, those around him saw the once happy-go-lucky Marley become depressed and empty. In Pittsburgh, the Wailers decided they would perform for the final time, though according to Junior Marvin, guitarist and singer in the group, “if [Marley] could have done a dozen more shows after that, he would have done it.” It came down to pressure from those around him for Marley to agree to make Pittsburgh his last show, revealing the enormous impact that the singer’s friendships had on his career.

One good thing about music: when it hits you feel no pain – “Trench Town Rock”

Marley’s health got worse, and with it went his happiness. Shipped off to Dr. Josef Issels, who had a renowned yet controversial cancer clinic in the German Alps, Marley was on his own in the antithesis of his hometown. Cindy Breakspeare and Rita Marley, Marley’s girlfriend and wife, “felt that Mexico would have been a better place, because we felt the climate and the culture, he just would have been more comfortable there.” Hearing those who cared for Marley the most lament about the way he was spending his final days, it is obvious that just as music brought Marley closer to people, these relationships were integral to his state of mind. Zema, an American reggae singer who visited her mother at the clinic and, in turn, met Marley during his last few days, remembers Marley expressing his love for Jamaica, “he spoke slow and pensive and described the beauty of Jamaica…he made you feel like you were right there in Jamaica even though there was three feet of snow outside.” On Marley’s birthday, the two played guitars and sang together, “Bob didn’t play very long or very loud…just jamming…I got the impression he wasn’t doing much of that anymore.” Perhaps being surrounded by those who demonstrated their love for Marley through music would have helped the ill musician heal. He told his son, Stephen Marley, “Just sing that song there, money can’t buy life.” Until the end, Marley was never overcome by his wealth and fame. He simply wanted to sing for people, sharing important messages and spreading love.

I wanna love ya, every day and every night – “Is This Love”

The last chapter of the book, “Marley’s Legacy and the Wailers’ Favorite Songs” encapsulates the impact that friends and family had on the musical talents of Marley. Since Steffens is a collector of reggae materials, he has been able to host the Wailers at his Reggae Archives. In 1987, Steffens writes, “we looked at three hours of videos that have been held back from the public.” Then, he asked each member to share their favorite tracks. Junior Marvin’s favorite was “War,” since “every time Bob sing ‘War’ is like the first time him ever sing it, and the last time.” Al Anderson, guitarist, preferred “Roots,” because he watched Bob write it, and said “I just hadn’t seen anyone work like that, and use all the elements that were in front of him, and put them into songs like that.” “Bob wrote his songs in community,” Steffens tells us, “the band would sit around on the porch or in the studio and people would throw lines at him.” From the very beginning, music was a means of connecting with others for Marley and the rest of the Jamaican community. And until his dying days, Marley’s need to bond with others was evident. Bob Marley’s music has lived on into the 21st century, not because of unmeasurable talent, but because it was always from the heart. Every song, every note, every rhythm, is the product of friendship and beckons us to connect with one another. For Marley maximized the power of music; he asked us to take a break for just a few minutes and listen to the wailing coming from Jamaica.

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Kim Gordon In Focus: Inside the Mind of the Art-Rock Enigma

Kim Gordon’s 2015 Girl in a Band  chronicles her artful life in vivid vignettes. 

Coolness, mystery, and artfulness create curiosity; Kim Gordon’s allure and opaque persona unravel as she documents her life. Known for her taciturn nature in Sonic Youth band interviews where her now ex-husband Thurston Moore would domineer the conversation, there is now only one voice across these pages. Her west-coast upbringing and New York evolution are told with precise, visceral recollection. Kim Gordon’s writing is mostly straightforward, so the poetic flourishes she describes performing with are bright and enchanting:

“I wondered if they were like me and craved the feeling of electricity and sound mixed together, swirling around my head and thru my legs. I always fantasized what it would be like to be right under the pinnacle of energy, beneath two guys who have crossed their guitars together, two thunderfoxes in the throes of self-love and combat, that powerful form of intimacy only achieved onstage in front of other people, known as male bonding.”

Throughout her memoir, she mentions the feeling of performance and pure expression, threading the serendipitous moments and frayed relationships into one form. In the first chapter, she documents the last Sonic Youth show. The shared history is over within an hour; Kim disenchants the reader, pulling them closely inwards. This is her life, the strangeness and betrayal of failed marriage, young-girl idealism shattered, a triumphant leap into another phase of life.

Kim launches us deeply into her childhood, writing in a hyper-sensory, poetic way, transporting us to 1960’s Los Angeles: “Eucalyptus bathed in the haze of ambition.” She parses apart the darkness beneath LA’s allure, the specific dichotomy of academic and showbiz families. Along with the ever-changing, turbulent 1960s culture of beatniks and political bedlam, Gordon gives an intimate recounting of her relationship with her brother who eventually was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Keller Gordon, described as a “hyper-verbal troublemaker,” created Kim’s icy demeanor that the media is so tantalized by – a woman with quietude is inherently shocking, especially in a musical scene with loud rockstars such as Courtney Love and Kathleen Hanna. Now the press can go home, the mystery has been unlocked.

Kim details her teenage escapades and bullheaded desire for a life in art. Her tiny wonders are sprinkled throughout the book, details like jewels. The serendipity of encountering bandmates at small, crowded city clubs where groups would perform and disappear shortly after, similar to her initial bands that formed and dissolved quickly, leaving room for Sonic Youth.

She often brings up her past relationships and attraction to intellectual renegades, the minds with nuance who supported her artwork. Kim credits them with shaping her fearlessness in art. Her affinity for men devoted to art led her to one of the most innovative guitarists  in rock history, Thurston Moore.

Since Girl in a Band was written in 2015, Moore is slyly mentioned most of the time, as she admits that her heart is still broken following their divorce. Some of this commentary comes off as truly snide; digs against cultural figures such as Billy Corgan, Jeff Koons, and Courtney Love almost feel too personal and unnecessary in paragraphs. However, this is Kim’s life, and her unadulterated opinions. Moments of brashness are juxtaposed with her day-to-day self-consciousness.

Sometimes it is difficult to discern whether her judgments are drawn from the media or her own mind. Phrases littered with “maybe that’s why,” “probably because of,” and “I think,” skew the reality of the book. One could suppose that her life is as she sees and experiences it, however, the voice of judgment appears often, never quite clear if it is just her thoughts or something that has been said to her. Her heartache is palpable especially towards the end of the memoir when describing the cataclysmic discovery of texts and emails from the “other woman.” The reader gets vicious insight into a shattering marriage and how Kim’s daughter, Coco Gordon Moore, was hope incarnate. Maternal love and instinct is a natural concoction of determination. Even before her divorce, she undertook the balancing act of rock stardom and motherhood. Kim sweeps the disillusionment that the public has of musicians in her own words. Sonic Youth’s 1988 album Daydream Nation may be in the Library of Congress for its imprint on American culture, yet her stories of divorce and insecurity all ring with the same melancholy of the human experience.

The most bemusing stretch of her autobiography is the tale of her own art history. Her vivid descriptions of New York City in the seventies and eighties elucidate its non-stop energy. A life in pursuit of art is seldom talked about in detail. Usually interviews deal with the content of albums, but Kim walks us through the cheap foods and menial jobs, and most importantly the steadfast desire to stay in New York. These pre-Sonic Youth are redolent of Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids. Pure artists live in squalor in the pursuit of self-expression. Gordon remarks “everyone says they knew at age five that they wanted to be an artist.” New York is the quintessential art city, an eternal buzz of restlessness beckoning for more ideas in the air. She leaves LA knowing that she “had to in order to become who she always wanted to be.”

After becoming a member in Sonic Youth, her story takes off. Chapters rush by like their seven-minute noise-rock jams. Kim captures the flashing punk rock touring scene with old diary entries from a collection called Boys are Smelly. Typical diary entries are prosaic and confessional; this collection teems with rock-and-roll history and gender study. She writes that “For many purposes, being obsessed with boys playing guitars, being as ordinary as possible, being a girl bass player is ideal, because the swirl of Sonic Youth music makes me forget about being a girl. I like being in a weak position and making it strong.” Male bonding is a curious thing for her; touring, performing on stage, and creating music allows her to enter the male dimension, or in her ideal case, the genderless art realm.

The halcyon days of Sonic Youth are laced with her current heartbreak as Kim recalls her past with Thurston. She intersperses the golden past with ultimate betrayal, winding in and out of positive so he never comes off as lovely as he once did. I found that these moments of mentioning the present broke the transported nature of Kim’s writing; her sensory details and city context are lush but turn sour when the present is threaded into the story. She begins with a self-quote from therapy:

“The codependent woman, the narcissistic man…It’s a dynamic I have with men.”

A relationship centered around art is a recurring theme for Kim, as most relationships in her life in this memoir are linked to or are purely art-based. They are also numerous in the beginning, giving insight into her development as an artist through supportive relationships. As she moved around the country from LA to Chicago and ultimately New York, she encounters brilliant minds along the way. It’s a joy to see who she gravitates towards; they’re all unique creators such as Mike Kelley who later designed Sonic Youth album artwork. The budding romance between her and Thurston shines with their old passions to create something new in the music world; this part holds some of Kim’s best passages in the book – when she’s not including the future mess. I found myself smiling when turning the page. Vignettes of holding hands and waltzing into a movie theater or conversations about “reclaming the term ‘noise rock’” warmed my heart. Their initial union with Thurston’s confidence and Kim’s quieter ambitions shine with potential that eventually materializes in the album-by-album rundowns.

Throughout the memoir, Kurt Cobain’s story waltzes through. She describes him as having an otherworldly kindness and sensitivity. Soft details of Cobain are seldom shown in media. Usually one sees his punk rock stage-self and tragic stories. Gordon humanizes him, transports the reader into a moment with him. He wasn’t tall, he was a rather meek, sensitive figure off-stage. She noticed his self-destructive tendencies and even leans into the writing to tell us that making a home with Courtney Love was a quicker path to darkness. Gordon describes the immediate kinship she felt with Cobain, the intuitive sense of meeting another emotional and sensitive person. She never fluffs up the narrative, admitting that they weren’t best friends, but that the connection was strong. Gordon’s stories of the enigmas of the nineties rock world give insight to a place no journalist could ever go.

Distilling the unique feeling of creating and performing music is no easy task. Kim Gordon reminds the reader throughout her memoir why she loved the heart-racing lightning strikes of on-stage moments. She even makes a jovial comment that if she couldn’t express herself through music that she’d probably just be a sociopath. The act of creating art fuels her, never demurring. Her first and only solo record thus far, No Home Record, was released in the fall of 2019. It recalls the noisy, art-rock of Sonic Youth, but melded with new futuristic-sounding percussion and electronic embellishments. She admits in Girl in a Band that she always had a cloud of insecurity even in the more confident moments; No Home Record is the few-years-later coalescence of growth. Kim Gordon never stops creating, whether it is visual art or music or poetry – her mind has always been a tender yet forceful one in the art-rock scene.