Four new books by musicians challenge stereotypes
By Jeff Miers
Drummer Stewart Copeland has penned his new memoir, “Strange Things Happen.”
Actors should never make albums. Rock musicians should never try to play jazz. Bob Dylan shouldn’t release a collection of Christmas songs. And rock stars should never pass themselves off as writers.
So the conventional wisdom goes. Every rule has its exceptions, though. And most rules are made to be broken.
In recent weeks, several musicians of varying degrees of celebrity have released books, sans the ghost writers and cowriters so common to the arena of star memoir. They vary in format, from travel book, to biographical memoir, to a pair of fairly ambitious novels. The cynic might suggest that this is simply the result of an overactive ego, of the sort that convinces its owner he can do anything he attempts to, and do it well. But four books released over the past month counter such a notion. Perhaps all art is not interchangeable, and the artistic impulse is not an all-access pass to the literary after-show party. But then again . . .
Interestingly, all four of these books — “Bicycle Diaries” by David Byrne (Viking), “Strange Things Happen” by Stewart Copeland (Harper Studio), “The Death of Bunny Munro” by Nick Cave (Faber & Faber) and “It Feels So Good When I Stop” by Joe Pernice (Riverhead) — boast strong narrative voices, ones that handily mirror the personalities evident in their authors’ musical creations.
Byrne’s “Bicycle Diaries” is a wonderfully odd travelogue, and it screams of Byrne’s often obtuse, dry, post-modern musical voice. Which is to say that it is written from the point of view of a slightly detached intellectual who also happens to be in possession of a biting, self-deprecating wit. Same as it ever was, for Byrne.
The book collects reflections on modern urban landscapes, observations Byrne made from the bicycle he rides everywhere — whether on tour or at home in New York City. Though Byrne has been employing a bike as his main means of transportation for some 30 years, “Bicycle Diaries” is not necessarily a book with a chip on its shoulder regarding automobiles and the burning of fossil fuels. This is implicit in Byrne’s choice, naturally, but he never feels the need to get preachy about it. Instead, his dry humor and keen eye for detail allow him to see history in architecture, an economic treatise in a shop window, or implications of a crumbling culture in the sharp angles of a corporate office building.
Not surprisingly, for the man who named a Talking Heads album “More Songs About Buildings and Food,” Byrne sees cities as tangible manifestations of human needs, beliefs and desires, as if they were our collective subconscious dragged into the material plane. All of this makes for some absolutely fascinating reading, much of it delivered with Byrne’s deadpan wit. It comes as no surprise to learn that Byrne is a more than an able writer of prose.
Stewart Copeland, respected drummer with the Police, Oysterhead and his various solo projects, as well as a composer of film scores and television soundtracks, delivers “Strange Things Happen” with all the subtlety of a full-strength rim-shot in an otherwise dead-silent church. It is an often hilarious, always candid and astutely observed memoir chronicling a life observed, largely, from the vantage point of a drum throne.
Like his drumming and songwriting, Copeland’s prose is fresh, vibrant, unusual, visceral and irreverent. He jumps all over the place — from a childhood spent in Lebanon with a CIA spy for a father, to the arenas of the world with the Police, to the plains of the African Congo, and even to the stiff-upper-lip traditionalism of polo fields in the English countryside — but does so with enthusiasm and precision.
It’s a rollicking read for fans of the man’s work. Oh, and if you’re looking for some dirt on Copeland’s well-documented torrid relationship with Sting — well, there’s a bit of that. Copeland is measured and fair, however. In one of the book’s most revealing passages, the man many hold to be the finest drummer of his era insists that he was never the right drummer for Sting’s music. He delivers this observation without malice, despite the fact that it implies he spent the better part of his career in the wrong job. (I don’t buy this one bit; Sting has never been as good with other drummers playing behind him.)
Memoirs and travelogues are one thing, but tackling a novel is an entirely different type of endeavor. This requires summoning believable characters out of the thin air. Coming up with something resembling a plot wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.
Australian punk and alternative rock icon Nick Cave manages both with “The Death of Bunny Munro,” his second novel following the 1989 publication of the epic, ambitious and flawed “And the Ass Saw the Angel,” a book that makes Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” read like a romantic comedy by comparison. The McCarthy comparison is apt, if only because Cave writes like a student of the Southern Gothic tradition — McCarthy, Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner all come to mind. “Bunny Munro” is a far better book than Cave’s first novel. Its tone is measured, its characters and setting convincing, its language ably juxtaposing Cave’s great themes — romantic love and existential horror. Not a light read, but a worthwhile one.
Of indie rocker Pernice’s delightful “It Feels So Good When I Stop,” I will say only this — if you have ever been a down and out musician with serious romantic issues, no money, and very little in the way of a promising future, this book is a love letter to you. Read it, and laugh until you cry.
jmiers@buffnews.com
Posted: 24 Oct 2009 04:04