Bibliography 15

 “Diary of a Bookseller” – Shaun Bythell

It seems I’ve read a ton of autobiographies this summer: Elton John’s Me, Tina Turner’s My Love Story, Stewart Copeland’s Strange Things Happen. I also read a bio of Freddie Mercury and Chris Heath’s fly-on-the-wall account of life with Robbie Williams. If you see a theme here, you’re right on the mark—the rock stars who have provided the soundtrack to my life are telling their stories and I’m devouring them. Each of the aforementioned is a worthy read. As laugh out loud funny as Copeland’s brash American POV is, Dame Elton’s voice is particularly enjoyable for its honesty and humour; the British tendency toward self-deprecation is as hilarious as it is harrowing ... which leads me to the subject of this post.

Shaun Bythell is a fellow from Scotland who returned to his hometown in 2001 and somehow ended up buying a used bookshop. At one point, given the daily dramas encountered with quirky staff and regular customers, not to mention the antics of rogue patrons as observed from behind the counter, he decided to keep a diary, the end result of which was first published in 2017 as Diary of a Bookseller.

It may be a keeper. The copy I read was loaned to me by a friend and I’m unsure if I will purchase my own, though after reading Shaun’s experience with online selling and the insatiable monster that is Amazon, I feel somewhat compelled to support the bookselling industry by amassing as many hard copies as possible, even if I don’t have room for more than a hundred volumes in my reduced living space. That’s one reason why I have a Kindle—I’ve been seduced into the space-saving advantage of e-books even though the original hype of “books at lower cost” is no longer true. These days a new release download costs the same as the paperback edition; the primary bonus to the buyer is the convenience of an entire library contained on a device the size of a drugstore pocket book. Only thinner.

I digress.

This is a great book for those moments “in between”: when waiting for tea to steep, my hair to dry, or Ter to get her shoes on. If I had a half-hour to spare, I’d pick it up and read a few entries. Some are longer than others, as is the way of diaries. Some days are busier than others. If nothing else, the overall glimpse into the world of used bookselling, particularly in a small town, gave me a greater appreciation for the stalwart souls determined to endure in a world of on demand print, cutthroat competition and online conglomerates. Or impossible customers, come to that. I try to be pleasant with store clerks, recognizing that dealing with random members of the public is hard work. Not everyone shares my perspective. The beauty of this book is that the author, who could easily swing from objective to objectionable, simply notes the customer’s tone and general mien during any exchange. Rarely does he descend to disparaging criticism of any individual, no matter how appalling the individual’s attitude. The echo of his inside voice is tempered by diplomacy for the PG-13 audience while being, in my opinion, completely justified. Oh, some incidents are hysterical.

The funniest observations, however, are of his staff, particularly his regular (opposed to seasonal) employee, who gives as good as she gets both to her boss and to the customers. It’s a slice-of-life-in-a-small-town story as much as a view from behind the counter. My overall impression is that bookselling is not to be undertaken lightly. It takes a special breed to take up the profession ... but if you’re not worried about making ends meet and have the people skills to manage characters too colourful to be invented, then selling used books might be the job for you.

Bibliography XIII

“Strange Things Happen – A Life with The Police, Polo and Pygmies” – Stewart Copeland

An excerpt from my rock n’ roll journal, dated May 31, 2007:

“Strangely, perhaps because Sting has remained a pop icon and produced commercial hits since 1984, and perhaps because I’ve seen him 3 or 4 times already, I found myself more enthralled with Stewart Copeland’s masterful touch on drums and percussion. He was mesmerizing on all counts. Impossible to ignore, really. A phenomenal drummer, maybe the best I’ve seen. It was a privilege to hear him play live; if I’m glad of anything on this trip, that is it—getting to see him work his magic in sublime testament to Sting’s hilarious descriptions of him in Broken Music. The man is, as Terri said, a mad genius. Completely manic and wild, he ran laps around the stage a couple of times, like a lanky kid hyped on sugar. He actually out-did Sting himself ...”

* * *

Looking back, what I wrote about him that night pretty well describes Stewart Copeland, period, as indicated in his most excellent autobiography. Alas, though it was a Christmas present in 2009, I took almost a dozen years to read it. I say “alas” because it is easily one of the most entertaining books, and maybe the best of the autobiographies, I have ever read. 

It’s not so much the story of his life as it is a bunch of stories from his life, everything from scaling crumbled castle walls as a kid in Lebanon to playing polo against the Prince of Wales to touring with a posse of musicians during Notta della Taranta festivals in Italy to composing operas and writing film scores to judging singers on a BBC reality show to facing off against a pride of lions in Africa ... and I’m not finished reading the book! I have yet to embark on the final section, chronicling Copeland’s 2007 experience touring with Sting and Andy Summers, aka The Police.

These tales are written with such articulate hilarity that he has propelled me into areas (like opera and Africa) that hold no interest for me at all. If I felt lukewarm at the start of any such segment, I quickly learned to pay attention because the story is so brilliantly told I would regret missing it. His acuity is so outrageous that I must put the book down for spontaneous bouts of laughter—Terri asked me yesterday if I was okay because I was quaking on the couch with my hand over my eyes, and given the current health climate, she feared something was amiss. I responded by releasing the laughter I was hopelessly trying to suppress.

Aside from the Calvin and Hobbes treasuries, books that capable of assaulting my funny bone are so few as to be counted on one hand. Comedy is really hard to convey in writing, though the humour here is not in the least contrived. Copeland is genuinely funny.

I have also been disappointed by autobiographies over the years. One actress managed to make a potentially fascinating life into an appalling snoozefest, and some of my rock icons have relied on ghost writers to get their stories told—for which I’m grateful, else I’d not know the stories at all, but still. You want a sense of the artist’s self in any book about him/her. Well, Stewart Copeland’s voice is all his own: a brash, shoot from the hip, sharply witty voice that prevails alongside nuts and bolts detail about subjects too varied to name, including music itself, that few ghost writers could or would affect, and many artists, though outstanding in their fields, will not achieve no matter how expert their command of English.

In short, it’s a cracking good read that even eclipsed Sting’s!

Mercury in Retrograde

Though I am a Queen fan, I don’t consider myself to be a Queen fan. Not truly; not like someone who has followed the band from the beginning and has every album they ever made. Nope, I’m what’s known as a casual fan. Queen is featured on my life’s soundtrack, but not the way Duran Duran or Def Leppard are. Queen were red hot when I was a pre-teen, so of course I knew of them. I just didn’t know about them.

My older sister introduced me to them simply by asking one night in 1973 if I’d heard the song with the opera chops on our Top 40 radio station. I hadn’t, but since I shared a room with both sisters and my elder tended to switch on the radio when she came to bed after the wee ʼun and me, it was inevitable that I would hear “Bohemian Rhapsody”.

It took me years to figure out that the band responsible for those opera chops was the same band who’d done “Killer Queen” (which I actually liked better), and whose name was—huh?—Queen. They were strange and wonderful and Elton John was my favourite artist at the time, so while I couldn’t help but be aware of Queen, I owned none of their albums and bought none of their singles. I just liked it when I heard them on the radio.

“Somebody to Love”

“You’re My Best Friend”

“Bicycle Race”

Freddie Mercury’s voice was captivating in that one-in-a-million manner; you knew it when you heard it, and the things he did with it were remarkable. I had no idea what he or his colleagues looked like because rock videos as we know them didn’t exist in the 1970s. I only knew their sound. Since I was a kid who collected Elton and America albums, over-overdubbed Queen was apparently not going to win space in my record collection.

Which was okay. I had to mature before I could fully appreciate the intricacies and nuances of both the music and the vocals. Maybe they had to strip their sound, too, because the first Queen album I bought was The Game, featuring lots of bass and Freddie’s off the cuff delivery of “Another One Bites the Dust”. Then, the 80s happened. I became a young adult as Queen’s star began its descent, due in part (so legend has it) to the video for “I Want to Break Free” but probably more because they were an older band and the new wave was happening.

That’s why I didn’t take particular notice of their iconic Live Aid performance on July 13, 1985: I was waiting to see Duran Duran. When I heard a few years later that Freddie was ill, I was saddened by the prospect of the world losing such a charismatic talent. Freddie was more than a rock singer. He was a rock star.

When he died in 1991, I fell in line with industry marketing and bought up the collections. Classic Queen I, Classic Queen II, Queen’s Greatest Hits – and the utterly fabulous, my hands-down favourite, Innuendo. I guess when he learned his time was limited, Fred threw himself into recording as many tracks as he could, and he didn’t hold back. His work on that album is wrenching. Powerful. Tender. Funny. Courageous. Wistful.

Magical.

It seems timely to say all this now, after the much-hyped movie’s success and the Academy Award going to the actor who portrayed him in it. I may not have been present in Queen’s heyday, but I’m grateful for the technological marvels that enable me to catch up on what I missed the first, and even the second, time around. Thanks to Bohemian Rhapsody and Rami Malek’s stunning performance, Queen and Freddie Mercury have come around again.

Long—live—Queen.

John the Divine

The father of my unborn children is playing in Vancouver tonight. Ter asked me if I wanted to go—the timing was right to make it a fab birthday gift—but after the briefest hiccup when my heart rate spiked, I reluctantly declined.

Of course I’d love to see the band. They’re my all time good time band, and Nile Rodgers is opening for them, but I’ve reached the stage where the peripheral hassles of a concert in Vancouver exceed the joy of being there. Paying the ransom to get off the rock, finding a hotel at the height of gouging season, fighting big city traffic—ugh. The adventure is no longer fun.

Besides, last time the boys were in town, I almost got into a fistfight with the twit beside me. She and her string of stupid girlfriends kept tripping to the washroom during the show, resulting in an increased flailing that finally obscured so much of my sightline I had to elbow her out of the way. I won that one, but the residual remorse of being pushed that far has lingered. I didn’t regret the elbow. I regretted that it was necessary. And if any band is going to attract a gaggle of stupid girls, it’s Duran Duran.

So tonight, I’m running a concert DVD (not sure which one yet; I have most of them) while they play live across the strait. Tomorrow, I’ll pull the set list off the internet and burn a CD of it so I’ll have the recorded version—not live, but close enough—of the gig. In time, one hopes, some form of the tour will be released on DVD and I’ll add it to the collection. It’ll be worth having because one thing is certain: they will play songs from their most recent album, sprinkled among classics arranged in new ways. I’ve always said the cool thing about a Duran Duran concert is that you know what you’re going to get, just not how you’re going to get it.

During a recent interview with CBC Radio, John told the story of remarking to Nick Rhodes that none of the current Top Ten features a conventional bass, to which Rhodes drolly replied, “Let me introduce you to the (something or other) synthesizer.” The same sort of thing occurred in 2007, when they hired Timbaland and Nate Hill to produce Red Carpet Massacre—these guys are known for running bass samples through a synthesizer, so JT came to work on the first day and had to ask the question: “Hey, what am I going to do on this record?” Genius that he is, he figured it out. His instinct has made him one of the best players in the biz (no bias here!), so the bass on RCM does more than set the rhythm. It’s actually part of the melody.

He loves his bass guitars, but he has embraced the new technology and now plays a synth bass for a few tracks onstage. I know: I saw it myself in 2007, after I slammed the girl next door back into her seat.

Def Leppard

Cool graphics, too!

Their thirteenth studio album is self-titled. Fitting, from a band who needs no introduction. Every track on the disc is undeniably Leppard—the quintessential 80’s rock band. Not metal and not pop, but a perfect blend of the two that no one else managed to achieve despite the multitude of those who tried. Listen to any other hair bands from the era and you’ll hear a plethora of Joe Elliott wannabes, wailing away at fever pitch yet never quite duplicating, and certainly not surpassing, the wildcat yowl that made him famous.

And that sounds better now than it did then.

Slang remains my favourite Leppard album. I like its darkness, and its maturity. By that point in their career, the boys had become men and were unafraid to show it. There is pain in that album. There is loss. There is anger and betrayal and bitterness and desire, all so powerfully portrayed that you almost don’t recognize the work as theirs.

Maybe that’s why it didn’t sell.

The band spent the years after Slang trying to recapture what some fans feared they had lost: their signature sound. Euphoria kinda worked because it was obvious. X was a semi-departure into pop that also kinda worked (and inspired me to write the first volumes of Fixed Fire). Yeah! was a 70s cover album that totally worked because they made every track their own (their version of Thin Lizzy’s “Don’t Believe Me” blew me away). Songs from the Sparkle Lounge veered a little further off the beaten path, but you know what? Every successful band has a signature sound no matter what they produce—anything the Leps record will sound like the Leps because that’s who they are. No one else can sound like them, hence no one else will sound like them, and now that we’ve reached this inevitable conclusion, let me introduce you to what might be the best Leppard album since Hysteria.

I’ve played it from end to end a couple of times and I can’t find a throwaway track. It’s all gold. Maybe “Dangerous” is a little cheesy, but the guitars still kick butt, and as mentioned at the beginning of the post, His Royal Leppardness has maintained a powerful set of pipes. Really. I heard him perform live in April. Screaming in tune in his twenties was one thing. He’s still doing it in his fifties. I’d pit him against any of the present day howlers and dare any of them to keep pace with him.

This is a fun album. Sure, some of the lyrics are mildly embarrassing when sung by a middle-aged man, but there are serious sentiments, too. The guitars are bright and sharp. The bass is bold and occasionally funky (Sav is clearly a Queen fan). The drums boom and Joe’s voice is magnificent. I don’t say any this through my hormones, either. Def Leppard is a genuine, rock solid performance that deserves two things:

Play it loud; and

Guys, play it live! PLEASE!

The Return of the Leppard King

I thought I’d fallen out of love with them. Last December, I heard that the former producer of the Q Morning Show had died in a car crash on snowy roads and I was looking up further info on the station’s website. I was so intent my mission that notice of the Leps’ concert date on the coming events list gleaned naught but a huh? Then my wee sister IM’d me: “Def Leppard is coming to town. Are you guys going?”

“I dunno,” I wrote back, feeling uncomfortably lukewarm about what had once sent my temperature to thermonuclear heights. Joe and the boys had fallen off my radar. The world he had inspired was in a holding pattern while my passion for vampires raged anew. Neither Ter nor I listened to their albums anymore; we didn’t follow them on F***book and hadn’t visited their website in years. In fact, we were living in fear of the band turning up to play the River Rock Casino or, worse, on PBS as part of the “Rock of 80s” nostalgia pledge drive package that you just know is coming down the road.

My email pinged. The Q Crew newsletter arrived in my inbox, letting me know that the Leps were coming and tix were going on sale that Friday. I flipped it to Ter with a feeble: “What do you think?”

My phone immediately rang. “Of course!” she practically yelled when I picked up. I hadn’t heard her so pumped about anything in a long while.

“Really? I didn’t think you’d want to go.”

“Why not?” she demanded. “He’s coming to me!” Which, roughly translated, means that she’s done with traveling to see the Leppard King, but if Victoria is on their itinerary, us going is a no-brainer.

Of the Joes we know, Elliott is to Ter what Perry is to me—that mysterious memory of a previous life where he played a role so important that the effect has lingered through dimensions. Crazy, yes. Improbable, maybe. Possible, definitely. Why not? No matter what you believe, something about his current incarnation sparked the birth of our mutual hero, Lucius Aurelius, and the world of Fixed Fire. For that, I am eternally grateful to him, to Ter, and to the band who played the soundtrack for Treason.

So, yeah, she’s right. Of course we must go to the gig. Of course we must pay homage. Of course he’s come for a particular reason at a particular time, and isn’t it funny that I’ve gone back to Castasia once more? His Royal Leppardness has no idea, but it truly is a homecoming for him.

Four of us are going—Ter, my wee sister, my boy sister, and me. The kids are fans for a different reason; they just like to rock, and if you wanna get rocked, then the Leps are DEFinitely the band for the job.

More to come …

Watchin’ the World Go By

Sipping chai tea and listening to Tears for Fears at the local coffee house, I watch the Douglas Street buses performing their cumbersome ballet. The “walk” sign at the intersection flashes to the beat of Everybody Wants to Rule the World. People come and go—skirts and suits from the office tower across the courtyard, stopping for coffee to get them through another afternoon of meetings; students on spring break, dropping in for iced hot chocolate with extra whipped cream; a busker juggling his trumpet case with a cup of dark roast. It’s supposed to be raining but the sun has broken through to spill across the page as I scribble the imagery in bright green ink. Upstairs, a pile of year-end panic awaits my return, but now it’s Woman in Chains and Roland Orzabal’s voice is as deep and rich as the house coffee and I cannot tear myself away. Even the guys behind the counter are humming along with the melody.

It’s quiet in here but steady outside. No tourists yet (well, maybe one or two), so the city belongs to the locals for a few more weeks.

I want to ask why they’re playing one of my favourite 80’s bands on a day when I need no incentive to dawdle. Instead, I’ll stay to hear what song is next, then I’ll go back to work.

Maybe.

“The Day of Undying Loyalty”

My father could have been Jon Bon Jovi.

Well, not really.

For one thing, JBJ is a year younger than I am, and no matter how quirky are quantum physics, even a Master of the Universe would have trouble engineering that one.

I mean that Dad and JBJ were born on the same day—albeit thirty-one years apart. According to Gary Goldschneider and Joost Elffers in The Secret Language of Birthdays, anyone born on March 2 will share a bunch of specific traits with millions of others, including Mikhail Gorbachev, Dr. Seuss, Desi Arnaz, John Irving, and the latter half of Simon & Schuster.

So how is it that not everyone born on this date is a rock star, politician, artist, journalist, or business magnate? Personality plays such a strong part in who we are, and an equally strong part in what we become, but every soul is a snowflake. Give each child in a kindergarten class a box of Crayolas and watch how their drawings differ.

It’s half what you get and half what you do with it. What you get is, I believe, predetermined. What you do with it is up to you. We are as much a product of our environment in this life as we are ourselves, and our personalities dictate how we develop, how we adapt, how we endure, and, perhaps, whether or not we survive. I am unsure how much of what we are is influenced by planetary alignment at the time of birth, but I do wonder if the range of available traits depends on the astronomical tableau. I’ve heard that personality is connected to the ego/intellect, and that tells me it’s disposable, as in, we neither bring those traits with us when we come nor take them with us when we go. We might take the knowledge of how to use them, maybe to wield them more confidently in the next go-round, or to leave them in the box and try something else instead … and start by choosing another birthdate.

For the record, my father may not be a rock star, politician, artist, journalist or business magnate to the rest of the world, but in a very real way, he is each of these things to me.

Happy birthday, Dad.

With love,

Desktop

I ask you, how can I be stuck with the novel when my hero looks like this? He’s been on my desktop (I wish) for years; as with all things taken for granted, eventually I stopped “seeing” him. I considered replacing him last week, then I took a moment to look at him with intent.

I couldn’t do it. Aside from having nothing and no one worthy to replace him, I realized that I don’t want to replace him, probably because doing so would also be admitting defeat. He is the sun around which my novel orbits. Taking him down would be like going dark.

My computer desktops have rarely featured cute animals or pretty flowers. My pics of natural beauty generally pack an alpha Y-chromosome—even the androgynous shot of Jonathan Rhys Meyers was savagely alluring—and almost always provide me with the blueprint for a hero, a villain, a lover, a poet, or sometimes all four. I like to have inspiration close by, especially at the office, where it’s easy to forget how to be creative except when interpreting financial policy. Sometimes I’ll shut down the myriad of windows and take a sec to renew acquaintance with my man o’ the month just to remember what I do for fun … or would do, given half a chance. Or will do, once he’s woven into the fabric of whatever tale one has to tell. Some writers veer away from likening a character to a living person, but come on. Everybody looks like somebody else, and if a man like Joe Elliott can spark a fictional hero like my Lucius, how is that an insult?

By the way, it’s Joe’s birthday today. Happy birthday, Leppard King!