Musicians look back on lives in showbiz
From Bruce Springsteen to Tony Bennett, memoirs look at the good and bad of their careers
TORONTO — You didn’t have to go far in 2016 to encounter a celebrity memoir written by a grizzled musician.
Whether it was Bruce Springsteen’s ode to his rock ’n’ roll lifestyle or Brian Wilson’s reflective take on his recovery, it seemed like anyone with a grey hair was prepared to recount their life in music.
April Wine singer Myles Goodwyn, 68, says he wrote Just Between You and Me (Harper Collins, 2016), as a record for his three children.
“I wanted it for them so they’d know what their dad was like.”
Goodwyn had to face some harsh realities in the writing process. In the opening pages an unsettling scene plays out far from the concert stage.
The musician was headed to a Montreal airport in 2008 when he passed out from severe intoxication. He was hospitalized with internal bleeding — blood loss so severe that he says he would’ve died within 24 hours if he wasn’t treated.
Goodwyn says choosing that moment to open the book wasn’t a calculated decision necessarily.
“It seems like a good place to start,” he adds. “Really, that’s when my life changed.”
Phil Collins, 65, was forced to stare directly into a number of harsh truths while writing Not Dead Yet: The Memoir (Crown Archetype, 2016), a recollection of his heyday with Genesis and a successful solo career. Two he found hardest to digest were acknowledging his workaholic tendencies and a period of infidelity that led to the dissolution of one of his marriages.
“It’s easy to confront your successes — it’s a little bit harder to admit to and confront where you’ve failed,” he says.
“I felt I needed to tell the truth, how it was, and sometimes when you do that you come up with some hard truths.”
The Can’t Hurry Love singer says he didn’t take writing a memoir lightly. Unlike some actors and musicians he chose to write it himself, with guidance from freelance journalist Craig McLean, who had interviewed him numerous times before.
Robbie Robertson, 73, spent nearly five years sketching out his vision for Testimony (Knopf Canada, 2016), a recollection of his years leading up to the dissolution of seminal 1970s rock group the Band. The story plays out like a well-crafted potboiler with Robertson as the centrepiece.
“I went through two or three biographers that were writing books on me and I didn’t like it. I thought I was cheating. I thought it was somebody behind the curtain.”
So Robertson embarked on retelling his story using the structure of a novel — rife with colourful anecdotes and seemingly direct quotes from key moments. “I do have some kind of a memory chip that allows me to go back to a place and see it,” he says. “It’s not word-for-word but it’s the gist of it.”
For 53-year-old Metallica frontman James Hetfield, it’s far too soon to consider writing a version of his life. The singer and guitarist almost unequivocally rejects the idea of the Hetfield story at this point. He says if fans really want insight they could just string together clips of his interviews. Digging up the acclaimed 2003 documentary Some Kind of Monster, which captures Hetfield’s battle with alcoholism, would also offer a dramatic window into his life.
“Maybe it’s just in my head, but the myth I believe is you write the book when you’re done,” he says. “I’m not done. The band’s not done.”
But for others like crooner Tony Bennett, churning out memoirs is just part of the business. The 90-year-old singer is on his fourth one, Just Getting Started, (Harper, 2016), which touches on everything from collaborations with Amy Winehouse and Lady Gaga to why he admires Abraham Lincoln.
“I figured at my age I should write one that explains how my career went and what a wonderful time I had performing all through the years,” he says matter-of-factly. “I didn’t have a set plan.”
Blue Rodeo’s Jim Cuddy isn’t convinced that every musician needs to follow the same steps.
“We have lots of stories to tell,” he admits. “But I think we all have to realize whatever our version is, it’s just a version — and not necessarily the gospel.”