Nick Coleman - Voices: How A Great Singer Can Change Your Life

(This review first appeared in issue #77 of Shindig! magazine.)

JONATHAN CAPE BOOK

Coleman's previous book A Train In The Night was a poignant but hopeful account of suffering from Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss. A big deal for anyone but more so if you've spent the previous 25 years writing about music for a living. Though impaired his hearing has returned in sufficient form to allow the consumption and enjoyment of music again.

Voices is the result of binge-listening to his favourite singers in an attempt to store up the feelings, insights, nourishment and emotions they generate. Over the course of ten taut chapters Coleman distills what it is about an artist's voice that makes it so affecting, mixing in some social history and a little autobiographical colour. He dissects why certain music chimes with us at certain times (or not in the case of Sinatra). It's a subjective book but covers much ground mixing the great with the unexpected. Whether analysing rock 'n' roll giants, Motown legends, footnotes of jazz, or ruminating on British blue-eyed soul, rock's mature sophistication and punk's re-scattering of the dice, Coleman always presents a precise and engaging case.

As Coleman knows only too well there are times we'll all need the services of a doctor, nurse, specialist or surgeon. Hopefully not often and not for long. Our favourite singers however can be called on every day for solace, sensitivity, salvation, inspiration and wonderment. Coleman's book is a warmly written reminder of this that will have you delving into your music collection with fresh thanks and renewed appreciation.

Click here to buy via Amazon.

Mike Love - Good Vibrations: My Life As A Beach Boy

(This review first appeared in issue 60 of Shindig! magazine)

Faber & Faber

More villain than hero. That's how the world views Mike Love in the pantomime story of The Beach Boys. This book attempts to set the record straight, with Love placing the biggest blame for the band's fractious nature on the Wilson brothers' father Murry, a control freak whose bad management decisions would haunt the band over the ensuing decades.

He's equally candid about his own shortcomings, with evidence of his contradictory personality throughout; the most business-minded Beach Boy, but one with an interest in meditation and astrology; a clean-living, drug-free vegetarian with anger issues; a serial womaniser who won't live with a woman outside of marriage. As self-appointed “road-dog” Love has worked harder than anyone in the band to keep their stock high, a role he claims he was forced to take after missing out on songwriting credits and losing rights to the back catalogue. (Murry Wilson again!).

Aside from the score settling, all the juicy stuff is here – making Pet Sounds and SMiLE, lawsuits, tour punch-ups, Maharishi, Eugene Landy and Charlie Manson. Love may never win a popularity contest when up against Team Brian, but he's good company and disarmingly gracious when it comes to his extended family of bandmates, complimenting all three Wilson brothers, and expressing palpable sadness over Brian's mental decline and the deaths of Dennis and Carl.

As rock's most dysfunctional family band, The Beach Boys' story is one we'll never tire of, and from this angle it's less black and white than some observers would have us believe.