There are real-life tales and yarns, writes John Faulkner at the beginning of Storm in My Heart: A Lifetime in Music (The Liffey Press, €22.95), that should be passed on “before I reach an age of complete forgetfulness”.
Some memoirs are meant to be written and, thankfully, this is one of them. Faulkner was born during the second World War in a converted maternity unit in Oxford, and his life story is full of grit and connections, from Marxist revolutionary politics and women to Woody Guthrie and Peggy Seeger, from a sense of right (his working-class father’s politics “operated on a simple level”) to wrong (quoting Guthrie’s lyric “some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen”).
His associations in the 1960s/early 1970s with Seeger and her partner Ewan MacColl (“a great sense of humour ... when he wasn’t on his high horse”) drew him, eventually, to Irish traditional music and an artistic vision that he learned from MacColl: “Art cannot be created by committee”. Indeed. A singular life, then, written with focus, insight and wisdom.
The impact of another singular musician is explored in Within You Without You: Listening to George Harrison (Oxford University Press, £20) by Seth Rogovoy. The author is correct when he says that when it comes to The Beatles there has never been a greater example of the whole being more than the sum of its parts, but he is, perhaps, on shakier ground when he asks, “How did the most reluctant member of the Fab Four shape their sound?”
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It’s a moot point, of course, but he underlines it with reasonably shrewd thoughts on songs such as Here Come the Sun, While My Guitar Gently Weeps and Something. Another mildly interesting (if hardly box-fresh) view is that Harrison suffered from depression. There are too many song titles with the word “blue” in them, suggests Rogovoy, emphasising the point a tad too feebly by describing Here Comes the Sun as dwelling “on the darkness that precedes it and a long cold lonely winter that has seemingly gone on forever”.
In the exhaustive treasure trove that is Cork Folk Festival 1979-2024: Reeling Down the Years (Cork Folk Publications, €35) by William Hammond, the author writes of his first festival experience in Lisdoonvarna, in 1978: “We camped in the mud, drank warm cans of beer and ate cold beans and soggy chips, but the memories are priceless.”
Bringing those memories to Cork, Hammond would go on to be directly involved in the Cork Folk Festival from its inauguration to the present day. However, not even he could have thought that, 45 years later, he would produce a doorstopper of a book that catalogues in minute detail the growth of the festival in stature and artistic reach from presenting Cork-centric music to experiencing “the folk music of the world without ever leaving Leeside”. It might be too granular for some, perhaps, but folk music fans will surely drool over the level of detail and the highly impressive design that surrounds it.
“This is a book that’s designed to start arguments,” writes Gary Graff, the editor of 501 Essential Albums of the ‘90s (Motorbooks, £28). He’s right, especially if you’re a music fan on this side of the Atlantic. The decidedly US-centric tone might explain why the list of “essential” albums includes “Weird Al” Yankovic’s 1999 album Running with Scissors, the soundtrack to the 1998 film Hope Floats, and Bryan Adams’s 1991 album, Waking Up the Neighbours.
Key albums are featured, including Massive Attack’s Blue Lines (1991), Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral (1994), Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill (1995), DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing (1996), Daft Punk’s Homework (1997) and Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998), but the selection is too weighted towards American acts and includes a ridiculous number of film compilation soundtracks. More positively, the book is beautifully designed, insightfully written, and presents a golden opportunity for non-US music nerds to read about Squirrel Nut Zippers’ 1996 album, Hot. (No, me neither.)
The story of Island Records, one of the music industry’s most adventurous labels, continues with The Island Book of Records Volume II: 1969-70 (Manchester University Press, £85), edited by Neil Storey. As can be determined by the cost, this is a serious (vinyl album-sized) coffee table for serious music fans, but if you’re into the history and the acts of the documented period, then enter one and all.
Amid the multitude of ephemera (gig posters, album and single adverts, concert tickets, flyers, international album variants and differently designed labels) are media interviews of the era and recent interviews with the likes of Island Records boss Chris Blackwell, and a raft of musicians (including Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Cat Stevens, Mott the Hoople’s Ian Hunter, and Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson) associated with the label. Impressively contextualised by Storey (who for decades worked at or for the label), if you can stretch to the price tag, a cornucopia of period pop-culture treasure awaits.
Treasures await, also, in Further Adventures in Record Collecting: Dust & Grooves Vol 2 (Dust & Grooves, £124.99) by Eilon Paz, the sequel to 2014′s bestselling photobook celebrating global record-collecting culture.
In the past 10 years, the sales and collection of vinyl worldwide have significantly increased, something that hasn’t escaped the attention of Brooklyn-based publisher and photographer Paz, whose second volume similarly documents the collections of music obsessives and what he terms “music royalty”.
The geographical breadth is remarkable (from Japan, Israel and Canada to Brazil, Germany, Turkey and Italy, and many points in between), but what also impresses are the social histories behind the collections. Of the music royalty, the record collection of BBC’s John Peel staggers: an estimated 10,000, including one barn dedicated to 12-inch singles and a second barn for 45rpm singles.
There are surprises, too. Questlove has a turntable in his bathroom; B-52′s Fred Schneider loves kitsch albums by the likes of 1960/1970s UK entertainer Mrs Mills; and New Yorker Kristine Barilli collects albums with a BDSM theme. Sure, why ever not? A wonderful (albeit eye-wateringly expensive) book with enough superb images and perceptive writing to keep you occupied for hours.
A musician whose work has occupied music lovers for years, never mind hours, is Kate Bush, and in Hounds of Love (Bloomsbury, £6.99), Leah Kardos, senior lecturer in music at Kingston University London, extols the virtues of an album she defines as “a pop-historical monument, visionary, complex yet accessible ... an ethereal masterpiece by all critical consensus ... a middle-aged record [that] still vibrates with freshness in the continually evolving zeitgeist.”
Kardos isn’t wrong but there’s a disconnect between what even half-committed Bush fans love about Hounds of Love and what music lecturers think they want to read. “The music is reassuringly bright in B major, bobbing down from B to Asus2 and E/G# and back up again ... ” is but one example of how not to sell books about one of popular music’s most highly regarded albums.
On the plus side, there is a terrific anecdote from UK songwriter Don Black, who once asked Bush about her favourite singers. “She said her favourite is the blackbird, and her second favourite is the thrush.” Ha!
