Book review - Pete Townshend, Who I Am (2012)

A self-absorbed memoir from the sad man behind blue eyes

When I was a kid, I had a list of heroes a mile long, and I’d dream of meeting them. In my mind, I didn’t just want to gush my love; I just liked the idea of connecting and maybe feeling validated. As a cynical adult, I have trouble thinking of any great icon that I’d like to meet. For the most part, it’s because I recognize that my relationship with their public persona is so one-sided that it would be hard to overcome and have a normal conversation. Aside from that, though, I worry that meeting my heroes might poison my perception of them and their work. Pete Townshend’s memoir, Who I Am, offers just that kind of threat by revealing how self-absorbed he is even as it delivers insights into his creative process and stories behind his most powerful works.

His problems with drugs and alcohol have been a well-known part of his narrative, so that aspect wasn’t surprising. I expected his involvement with a child pornography investigation in 2003 to be one of the more challenging areas for him to address. But between additional information that came to light over the following nine years and Townshend’s account here, this turns out to be less of an issue. In the early chapters, he coyly alludes to being abused, but it’s awkward because he clumsily grafts vaguely defined memories onto a clear recounting of his childhood. While he’s more direct later in the book, he could have done a better job of laying that groundwork. But by the time he tackles the investigation head on in chapter 29, “Black Days, White Knights”, his explanation seems reasonable and is supported by the police confirmation that he was “not in possession of any downloaded child abuse images.”

The letdown in Who I Am isn’t from reading the horror stories about his addictions or his efforts at dredging up and dismissing revolting rumors. Instead, it’s the impression of Townshend’s casual disregard for the people around him. He writes with harsh honesty about his behavior, whether it’s kicking out his band’s original drummer, Doug Sandom, to improve the prospects of a record deal or succumbing yet again to infidelity with a groupie. Despite expressing remorse, he has trouble communicating any sense of empathy. For example, after trying to seduce director Nicolas Roeg’s wife, Theresa Russell, Townshend breezes through a conversation with Roeg. After Roeg calls him a complete bastard for going behind his back, he admits it (“He was right. And instead of simply acknowledging my deceit at the time, I had made things worse by not calling him”). Then he laughs and blames the director for making Russell so erotic in his movie Bad Timing. But when Roeg doesn’t take this well, Townshend is mostly concerned that he might have ruined his chance to get Roeg to work on his Lifehouse project.

While Townshend doesn’t do himself any favors in trying to rehabilitate his character, his memoir does succeed in sharing an inside view of The Who, the music scene they helped build and his creative process. The backstories behind his larger works like Tommy, Quadrophenia, the ill-fated Lifehouse project, and his musical interpretation of Ted Hughes’ The Iron Man reveal a lot about how he develops and evolves his ideas. In particular, Tommy’s origins are quite interesting. Sensing the shift from pop singles to full albums, Townshend was looking for a way to move beyond The Who’s core audience of young men, and a pop oriented spiritual journey seemed like a promising direction. But the story evolved as he brought in the more esoteric influences of Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha and Indian master Meher Baba. Who I Am dedicates a whole chapter to running down the realization of the project, where some of the more mystical aspects were moderated to serve the story. It’s an interesting contrast to Lifehouse, which became his mythical lost project, his Smile. Just as Brian Wilson overreached trying to create his unbridled masterpiece, Lifehouse attempted to combine an ambitiously detailed parable with avant-garde musical techniques including “mesmeric arpeggio effects,” audience participation and special surround sound amplification. If he had gotten the rest of The Who or their management onboard, perhaps they could have reined it into more practical realms, but unlike Tommy, he was unable to communicate his vision. So, the band scavenged material from Lifehouse to make Who’s Next and Townshend himself has raided it for inspiration repeatedly, most recently on The Who’s Endless Wire.

The book does a good job capturing the excesses of the classic rock era and Townshend realistically assesses The Who’s place in the 1960s Pantheon of Rock, holding the Beatles and the Stones on a higher plane and showing respect for peers like the Kinks and Cream. Of course, like any great rock memoir, countless names are dropped. There are newly revealed stories, like how he stole his windmill guitar move from Keith Richards in 1963 or an ironic tale of mutual respect with jazz virtuoso Rahsaan Roland Kirk. He also offers his own versions of well-traveled stories, like the showdown backstage at the 1967 Newport Pop Festival with Jimi Hendrix over who’d get to perform first. Townshend somewhat disingenuously suggests that Hendrix should have gone second because he was the more significant artist, but he does own up to not being sure whether The Who could have successfully followed Hendrix.

After reading Who Am I, I can still enjoy Quadrophenia with a clear conscience and I can respect Townshend’s talent as a musician. But given the chance to meet in person, I think I’d pass. His memoir conveys some of his complexity, but “No one knows what it’s like/ To be the bad man/ To be the sad man/ Behind blue eyes”. He’s right. I don’t know, but I’ve got a clearer picture now.

(This first appeared on Spectrum Culture)

Book review - Sylvie Simmons, I'm Your Man (2012)

"The Life of Leonard Cohen" lovingly revealed

The world craves biographies of celebrities who died too young. We look for closure on open questions and missing details. The longer-lived stars, the survivors, only intrigue us if they fall into one of two categories: the enigmas and the outrageous. Leonard Cohen easily fits into the former group. Rather than tell his own story, he prefers to define himself through the ambiguity of his imperfect poems and songs. But Cohen belongs in the latter group as well, due to his nomadic romantic life and improbable ties to a host of wild characters like Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, and Phil Spector. For an introspective poet primarily aligned with folk music, part of his mystery is how he found himself in the midst of such influential musicians and cultural players. In her new book, Sylvie Simmons makes a credible effort at opening up the details of Cohen’s life and sharing plenty of entertaining tales along the way. It’s not an autobiography, but Simmons did have extraordinary access to Cohen which flavors the stories and blends his more recent memories with the records and recollections of others.

I’m Your Man captures the conflicting picture of a man who hides behind his poetry, yet exposes himself within the lines. Like most artists, he wants the power of his work to be recognized, but he has largely shrugged off personal recognition. An artist with a distinctly masculine, sometime chauvinistic perspective, the best known covers of his songs are sung by women (with the exception of Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah”). He’s a libertine, a free spirit, who longs for duty and the order of monastic life. He’s a devout Jew, adept with Christian symbolism and Buddhist practice. I've often thought that this inherent complexity forms the foundation of Cohen’s popular appeal. But Simmons makes an effective case that his charm and charisma are the real roots of his power. Even beyond his personal interactions, there is something in his work that operates subconsciously on his audience, finding a path for his carefully crafted lines to slip past any resistance to poetry and lodge in their minds. Similarly, despite being a reluctant performer, his deep, raw voice imparts a vulnerable sense of truth that fills a hole in each listener’s soul.

Simmons spends a fair amount of time examining Cohen’s youth and young adulthood. With the exception of the formative experience of his father’s illness and death, it’s remarkable how ordinary a young man he was. His family’s social standing in Montreal’s Jewish community was somewhat surprising, but I never would have guessed that he had an interest in country western music, performing with his band the Buckskin Boys. His relative popularity in school was also unexpected. On the other hand, his writing has often reflected his serious religious upbringing. The other common theme that comes out of this section of the book is his development as a rootless nomad. Starting as a teen wandering the late-night streets of Montreal, he later received a grant to travel the world, writing a novel. This led him to London, then to Greek island of Hydra, which would become a second home. Although Montreal and Hydra would be his two focal points, Cohen seemed to spend most of his time in hotel rooms around the world.

After laying that groundwork, I’m Your Man balances between three separate narrative arcs. The first follows the women in Cohen’s life, who formed a long chain of lovers and serious relationships: Annie Sherman, Marianne Ihlen, Suzanne Elrod (the mother of his children), Dominique Issermann, Rebecca De Mornay and Anjani Thomas. Scattered throughout the chapters are countless flings, both named and alluded to. In addition to these conquests, this path includes the special category of muses that he never really possessed, specifically Suzanne Vaillancourt née Verdal (who inspired “Suzanne”) and Warhol’s chanteuse protégé Nico.

The second thread in Cohen’s story follows his spiritual growth. While he has remained rooted in Judaism, as his poem “Not A Jew” defiantly makes clear, he has also leveraged the universal message within the language of Christianity, he’s dabbled in Scientology, and he found true peace studying Buddhism with his teacher Kyozan Joshu Sasaki (Roshi). Cohen’s dedication to Roshi led to a long stint as his guru’s personal assistant and a five year retreat to Roshi’s Mount Baldy Zen Center. The solitude and imposed order he found there provided a respite from a demanding world and eventually had a great positive impact on his lifelong struggle with depression.

The final narrative line follows the slow build and flow of Cohen’s career, first as a poet and novelist, then later as songwriter and performer. Simmons walks us through the decades as she fills the book with satisfying details about studio sessions and touring line-ups. The section on recording Death of a Ladies Man (1977) with Phil Spector is particularly interesting. The two men seemed to connect well at first, but foreshadowing later events, Spector became increasingly bizarre and threatening. As his personality dominated the project, Cohen’s songs were buried under Spector’s "Wall of Sound" production. But that’s just an interlude in the story, which leads towards the climax of Cohen’s career and the afterglow, where he’s enjoyed a popular resurgence in the wake of losing most of his assets to his manager embezzlement. Forced back on tour, Cohen has finally channeled his spiritual peace into his performance, letting him find a comfortable place on stage that he had never really known before.

While the book does reflect Cohen’s life journey, this redemptive ending feels too reductive for such a complex man. Simmons clearly loves Cohen and his work, but her bias lets her settle for this happy, easy conclusion. This is the real weakness of I’m Your Man: Simmons doesn't challenge her subject enough. After spending the book outlining his charisma, her omissions illustrate how charmed she was. In particular, she chose not to delve too deeply into his womanizing and she completely ignored the controversy of alleged sexual misconduct associated with Roshi. While the latter point is not directly part of Cohen’s story, it is significant, especially given his one-time role as Roshi’s assistant. Despite missing these opportunities, the book is not fatally flawed. The wealth of details and personal recollections from Cohen and his friends still make for an excellent read. It doesn't unlock all of his mysteries, but it does offer a good sense of a complex man.

(This review first appeared on Spectrum Culture)

Commentary - Excuse me while I play this guy

Photo credit: Getty Images

We want so much from our heroes. They catch our eyes and ears in the media spotlight and we want more. These days, the stars oblige with Twitter feeds and photo op outings for the paparazzi. But go back a few years and we could fall in love with someone and never get enough. Especially if an untimely death got in the way. Jimi, Janis, and Jim all left us hungry for more.

Celebrity bio-pics feed this hunger even as they consume it. Whether done for crass profit, historical revision, or true love, these films tap into a primal part of our psyche. It's a messy swirl of ego sublimation, idolatry, gossip hunger, and the need for neatly wrapped answers. We're not sure whether we want to see our idols as human or bigger than life.

I'm forced to confront all of this because André 3000 is set to play Jimi Hendrix in the upcoming biopic All Is By My Side. Hendrix has a mystique that hasn't been tarnished by any of the biographies or salvaged demo recordings. I'm torn between wanting to have that illusion of an omniscient sense of his life and being afraid that a poorly executed movie is going to pollute my ideal of Jimi Hendrix.

Look no further than Oliver Stone's The Doors to see how damaging a bad portrayal can be. Val Kilmer captured Jim Morrison's look and sound, but the story was a sloppy, simplistic mess. On the other hand a pre-meltdown Gary Busey did a serviceable job in The Buddy Holly story.

I like André 3000 as a performer and I'm sure he's taking on the role out of love and respect. I'm just not sure that's enough. Despite my doubts, though, I'm sure I'll go see it. Whether I'll bask or cringe, right now it makes me want to listen to Axis: Bold as Love yet again.