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John
| | Posted on Monday, July 12, 2004 - 04:38 am: | |
I don't remember this being mentioned before, but my apologies if it has.
The May 2004 Mojo contains a short review of David Nichols' book. It concludes by saying that, "Nichols' efforts [are] both thoroughly entertaining and entertainingly thorough."
David – this issue should still be on sale in Melbourne. If not, let me know. |
Anonymous
| | Posted on Monday, July 12, 2004 - 10:32 am: | |
It's been available at its regular store price (as oppossed to earlier, expensive air-frieght copies) for about a week now. |
Bruegelpie1
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Friday, September 10, 2004 - 06:07 pm: | |
There was also a review in the Courier Mail this summer:
Best still to come
By Martin Buzacott
The Courier - Mail
Brisbane, Qld.
Jul 10, 2004.
The real story behind The Go-Betweens is more than this, writes Martin Buzacott
THE material injustices encountered in the history of seminal Brisbane band The Go-Betweens are legendary.
Their six albums from the 1980s were released on as many different labels, with none of them becoming major hits or gaining the marketing support or sales their intrinsic musical value suggested they deserved.
But if the revised version of David Nichols's biography is anything to go by, the band and their core songwriting team of Robert Forster and Grant McLennan will be rather better served by history than most of their peers.
There are far more popular bands who haven't had this degree of biographical attention lavished upon them, and certainly not with the near-adulation which Nichols bestows, at least in the first three-quarters of his meaty study.
The book itself is cast in the style of many recent rock biographies, and in particular those by Clinton Heylin in his epic portraits of Bob Dylan and Van Morrison. Substantial, often massive, quotes (or interviews up to three pages in length) from the artists and their peers are linked, interspersed by the author's own narrative, so in effect the story has multiple first-person narrators.
This atomistic approach, wherein minute details are laboured over and the perspective of the artist is always paramount, is of course a delight for fans -- and Nichols is clearly that.
But just as in Heylin's books, the Nichols biography is front- loaded. Most of the weight falls on the years before fame arrived (if fame is something The Go-Betweens ever really achieved).
Before we get within cooee of the group's "classic quartet" configuration featuring drummer Lindy Morrison and bassist Robert Vickers, Nichols offers more than 100 pages on the early years of songwriters Forster and McLennan as University of Queensland students with a passion for film as much as for music. Long- forgotten Brisbane bands also are catalogued with loving descriptions.
WHILE this exercise in nostalgia is a treat for those of us who were there at the time, it's unbalanced in terms of the band's later, more important progress.
During the 1990s, for instance, when Morrison, as a crucial former participant (although not songwriter) in the creative life of the band, sued Forster and McLennan for unpaid royalties, the fascinating issues of power and creative control implied by the lawsuit are noted in just a sentence or two with a footnote.
It's not the only time when Nichols's intended biography veers dangerously close to mere fanzine prattle.
When describing the band's first British record label, for instance, we're told: "Fortunately, every record released on Postcard was magic."
In the same vein, although perhaps more plausibly, the song Part Company is described as "one of the most perfect pop ballads ever written", and Twin Layers of Lightning is also a "perfect ballad", while the album Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express is hailed as "a contender for the best rock record of the 1980s".
Such well-meaning hagiography is risky, especially when the idols are revealed to have feet of clay.
Forster and McLennan's solo work from the 1990s is given perfunctory and not especially favourable commentary (one of the latter's efforts is described as "a drowning man clutching at straws"), while the powerful Was There Anything I Could Do? is criticised as an unsuitable opening track of the band's 1999 compilation album Bellavista Terrace: The Best of the Go-Betweens.
What is lacking here is analysis of just where The Go-Betweens stand in Australian rock history and why they were so under- appreciated. Was it because they based themselves in London for so many years, or because their dream to record in New York never materialised? And how did they compare, really, with the now- legendary Smiths, whose arrival at Rough Trade coincided with the deterioration of the Australian band's relations with the label?
If The Go-Betweens' music is as good as Nichols claims (and few would dispute it is very good indeed), then surely they can cope with a more objective analysis of their strengths and weaknesses.
The Go-Betweens, by David Nichols (Verse Chorus Press, $31.95). Martin Buzacott is co-writing a book on Van Morrison. |
jeff whiteaker
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Saturday, September 11, 2004 - 12:55 am: | |
The article brings up some good points. Although I really like the biography, I've always been a little irked by what seemed to be greater attention given to the pre Lullaby, pre Lindy, Brisbane stuff, with less focus on the band's life during their "classic" line-up. It breezes through the whole LIberty Belle - 16LL era. But I've said this all before. Just interesting to see it brought up here. |
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