Review of ‘Bill Bruford: The Autobiography’

by admin on Jun.15, 2009, under Opinion

Before I write the following “review”, I want you to take notice of the fact that I am posting it under the category “Opinion”, rather than “Review”. I don’t intend for there to be a review category in this blog, as I am thoroughly disinclined to write reviews for the most part. It is, of course, expected of a music journalist to want to use his perceived position and the platform it provides to foist his own tastes onto his readers. If your taste happens to be different from mine then I am supposed to “educate” (interpretation: belittle) you until your tastes will more closely match my own, so that you, too, can be “hip” and “informed”, as I obviously am. After all, I’ve interviewed a lot of famous musicians; I must know better than you, right?

Wrong. The inherent problem with reviews, as I see it, is that they are only valid insofar as the tastes of the writer and the tastes of the reader are an exact match. To illustrate my point I’ll use my favorite example, Madonna. Here is a person whose work I simply don’t like. I don’t think she’s a strong vocalist. I don’t think she’s a good songwriter. Her acting sucks. I don’t think she’s all that great a dancer. Ironically, even though she’s the most recognizable sex symbol of her generation, I don’t even think she’s particularly attractive. As far as I can see, her great talent - and the reason she’s had so much lasting success - is self-promotion. She is an entertainer who uses music as a backdrop to a larger entertainment spectacle starring Madonna, rather than an artist of any real merit.

Having said that, who am I to say that? Does that mean that the tens of millions of people who have chosen to consume her products are all idiots? Or that they are all wrong for choosing to do so? Is it the purview of one person to tell another what they should enjoy, instead of what they do enjoy? I don’t think so. So the point I’m making, in a roundabout way, is that you should take the following review, and every other that will eventually follow it, with a grain of salt. Perhaps this review, and all others, should come with a warning sticker: “Individual Results May Vary”.

Now that we’ve dispensed with that . . .

I really enjoyed Bill Bruford: The Autobiography (Yes, King Crimson, Earthworks And More). I’ve read an awful lot of autobiographies from musical celebrities, and most of them have several flaws in common. First, they are quite often relatively vacuous self-promotion vehicles, and second, they are almost always written in the ‘as-told-to” format, meaning that the ghost writer who is listed second in the credits actually wrote the book after having interviewed the subject.

Bill Bruford actually did the work himself, and the result is a book that transcends the general mediocrity of its genre and delivers a sometimes funny, sometimes melancholy, always fascinating look at the inner life of the legendary drummer. Bruford writes with a world-weary, seen-it-all-done-it-all tone that effectively conveys the hard realities of the business in which he has toiled his entire life, but what I really like about this book is the undercurrent of dry British humor that runs throughout the narrative.

Take this passage, in which Bruford skewers the ill-fated Yes Union record, an expensively dubious project that essentially took a few tracks from Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman and Howe and married them forcibly (at the insistence of a record company) to some wholly unrelated tracks from the contemporary pop version of Yes: “As the sun grew warmer toward noon, musicians would reluctantly retreat to the studio to hack away at the coalface of this preposterous, directionless enterprise . . . [following lunch] a light sleep after all this would of course be necessary, by which time the sun was low and it was time to return to the studio for the serious work of assessing exactly how directionless the enterprise was.”

The drummer’s good-humored-yet-sometimes-scathing assessments of Chris Squire (”This was the only man I was ever going to know who could impose upon me, give me a near heart-attack, force me to change my own plans, and then get me to set up his bass, all in the same sentence”), Robert Fripp ( “On a good night the seated man appeared unhappy about something, and on a bad night unhappy about everything”), as well as his brutally honest recollections about the role of payola in the carer of Yes, the general idiocy of the record business as a collective, the gradually diminishing role of instrumentalists in the crafting of music in an increasingly digitized format, phone interviews, and the frustration of being trapped in the timewarp of some fans’ projected needs are all examples of Bruford’s ability to convey the everyday concerns that are a part of the day-to-day life of every working musician without coming off like a whining, spoiled rock star.

As much as I enjoyed the humor, there is a definite element of pathos in this memoir as well. In fact, Bill Bruford saves by far his harshest, most unsparing assessment for himself, often turning a critical eye on his own personal and musical failings, real or perceived. Of course part of the artistic spur is a nagging sense of dissatisfaction with whatever is, and the sense that somehow it can me re-made in a better version. As Bruford puts is, “We can all do better.” This is, after all, a man who left Yes just as it was reaching its commercial peak to join the much-less-successful King Crimson, then formed UK, only to leave when the band began to steer toward more mainstream waters. Bruford ultimately ended up in jazz, which may be the last form of music in which a progressive instrumentalist can be afforded a fair hearing. There’s a certain irony in that the music of which he is arguably the most proud is also that with which the mainstream audience is least familiar.

Like the music he plays, Bill Bruford’s autobiography is written in such a way as to be savored over repeat exposure. In fact, I read it twice in rapid succession and enjoyed it even more on the second pass, as small details emerged that I didn’t notice the first time. Also included is a free CD offer from Bruford’s own Winterfold and Summerfold Records. For more information about Bill Bruford please visit www.billbruford.com.

Read the first chapter of Bill Bruford: The Autobiography http://www.billbruford.com/firstchapter.pdf

:Bill Bruford, Earthworks, jazz, King Crimson, progressive rock, Yes

9 comments to “Review of ‘Bill Bruford: The Autobiography’”

David Binder
June 15th, 2009 on 3:02 pm
No disrespect intended, but your view of journalists is jaded and unfair. If you read John Kelman’s review of Bill’s Autobiography at All About Jazz: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=32059 I think you’d see that your whitewashing all writers with the same cynical assumptions is not fair or correct. Kelman was also enlisted by Bill to write the liners for his recent Winterfold and Summerfold compilations because of the accuracy and fairness of his reviews of Bill’s entire reissue series, again at AAJ.

It’s your right to write as you wish, but arguing the semantics of the word review seems more than a little petty to me.

Kelman has review a lot of Crimson material for the site, not to mention the new KTU today: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=33155 and I don’t see him foisting his views on anyone. He’s just telling it as he sees it, and let’s people make up their own minds after reading.

No disrespect intended, but generalizations are rarely a good thing, imo, and Bill’s book has received a lot of positive and accurate press. There are lots of writers out there who are not coming to their reviews with agendas and are no less passionate than you appear to be. And that includes, amongst others, Kelman. You should check out his Crimson and Crimson-related writings at http://www.allaboutjazz.com and maybe you’ll think differently when you cast aspersions on other writers. It is absolutely not a proper assumption that writers, to paraphrase you, are expected to want to use their perceived position and the platform it provides to foist their own tastes onto their readers.

So please: stop with the hating.
Dave
Sterling Whitaker
June 15th, 2009 on 9:18 pm
David:

No disrespect accepted. I didn’t say all journalists are hacks, but I have worked in music journalism for most of my adult life, and I stand by my assessment that most of the writers working within it are neither very good writers, nor particularly interested in an unbiased look at the work they review. I should clarify that I am talking primarily about rock journalists since that is my bailiwick. Perhaps jazz is another matter, but I’m sure you are aware that Bill devotes some space in his book to exactly how incompetent most interviewers/reviewers are. As much as I wish I could disagree, I cannot.

I didn’t cast aspersions on any other specific writers, although there are certainly some major name writers whose work I think is poorly considered. There are undoubtedly many others with both genuine intentions and the ability to translate those intentions to print, but those are the exceptions, not the rule; and I still contend that reviews are so subjective as to be virtually worthless. As much as I enjoyed Bill Bruford’s autobiography, for instance, I’m sure there are an awful lot of people who would not enjoy it - people who are disinterested in the genres of progressive rock and jazz, for instance, or those who prefer salacious tell-alls in their music bios. So if I tell them they will like Bill’s book, does that make me wrong? Does it make THEM wrong? I always find that an interesting riddle.

My favorite example of this goes back to 1985, when I read a scathing review of Marillion’s ‘Misplaced Childhood’ album, I think it was in Keyboard magazine. It’s been more than twenty years, so I can’t remember it verbatim, but the gist of it was ” If you’re the sort of sad, pathetic loser who still listens to your old Styx and Genesis records and actually likes them, you’d probably like this terrible record, too.” Words to that effect, clearly intended as an insult not only to the album at hand, but to anyone who disagreed with the writer’s opinion as well. But I read that and I thought, ‘Hey, wait a second, I’M the sort of sad, pathetic loser who still listens to my old Styx and Genesis records . . . I’m going to buy this record!’ I wound up purchasing the album, never before having heard Marillion, solely because of that review, and ‘Misplaced Childhood’ has been one of my favorite records of its kind ever since.

Again, the point I was trying to make was that my opinion, and the opinion of any writer, carries no more weight than anyone else’s. As for my being a cynic, that’s absolutely true. Most writers are. But I “hate” nobody.

Thanks for the link to John Kelman. If I have a chance I will check it out. I hope all is well.
Kevin Becketti
June 16th, 2009 on 11:25 am
I enjoyed reading the ‘opinion’ of Bruford’s autobiography and the ‘conversation’ it prompted. I work for the publisher of Bill’s book, which is how I discovered these posts, but I will continue to check back for more thoughtful discussions about music.
admin
June 16th, 2009 on 12:04 pm
Thanks Kevin. I neglected to thank you in my post for having arranged for my review copy . . . so . . . special thanks to Kevin Becketti of Jawbone Press!
Jorodu
July 8th, 2009 on 10:33 am
If there’s something I found on you opening statement of your “opinion” piece is sincerity
and humility. I agreed with all your comments on the book how you grasped the visceral emotion contained in mr Bruford’s book.
Wonderful review ( you recorded conversations with Bill are also priceless)
thanks for a great written piece.
Greetings from a avid Bruford fan
j
admin
July 8th, 2009 on 11:17 pm
Hello Jorodu:

Thanks for writing. I enjoyed both Bill’s book, and our conversation very much.

As far as my perceived humility, I honestly think it is an inherent part of every writer to have a healthy slice of ego, and I definitely have that; but I try to temper that with the realization that whatever I write, no matter how heartfelt, is merely my point of view, and does not control the universe. All I have to give as a writer is my point of view, and I do so with every bit of passion and skill that I can muster, but in the end you are all going to like a certain piece of music or not. That’s the way it goes and I accept that.

Thanks again, I hope you are well.

Sterling
Jorodu
July 9th, 2009 on 6:01 am
I try to temper that with the realization that whatever I write, no matter how heartfelt, is merely my point of view, and does not control the universe. ….

which is precisely now I have become an ardent fan of your blog!!.
;-). bookmarking it right now

the above statement can be applied to musicians, actors and dancers, alike…..we all need to apply it
that was the reason I dared to write a comment here, first your humble reviews…and then the first comment, or attack, because it found your opinion offensive….!!!(?)!!
I felt an imperative need to write something.

thanks Sterling,
all the best
digital scale
February 6th, 2010 on 7:05 pm
Do you believe that is the best way to share your thoughts?
admin
February 7th, 2010 on 10:58 am
I’m not sure to whom you’re directing that question . . .?