Best new music books: The Bangles, tensions and sexism; Sinéad O'Connor as ‘a witch, burned at the stake'

Irish Times

05-05-2025

The internal dynamics of successful pop/rock groups are at the front and centre of
Eternal Flame: the Authorised Biography of The Bangles
, by Jennifer Bickerdike (Hachette, £18.99). Although the 'authorised' tagline indicates mostly approving details about
the band
– one of the most successful all-female acts of the 1980s – there is an interesting point of view throughout that three of the original members never really dig into: the tensions that emerged from co-founder
Susannah Hoffs
garnering most of the media attention.
In both archival and contemporary interviews (Bickerdike was given full access to the band archives as well as separate time with Hoffs and the other co-founders, sisters Vicki and Debbi Peterson), there is a sense that each member doesn't necessarily have the same recollection of the same events. This makes for particularly insightful reading, as does the detailing of the widespread sexism the band dealt with from fellow
musicians
, media, DJs (who back in the 1980s could make or break an act in the
US
) and record label executives.
Not every music book, whether a memoir or biography, outlines a musician's fluctuating achievements. Sometimes, books about music are more instructive. In such cases, we suggest that any emerging musician get their hands on
Pop Music Management
, by Michael Mary Murphy (Routledge, £34.99). In this book, subtitled Lessons from the Managers of Number One Albums, Murphy, who teaches music industry and entrepreneurship at IADT, Dún Laoghaire, outlines the central tenets of music management, how these have evolved since the 1960s (blueprinted and revolutionised by Brian Epstein, the manager of
The Beatles
), and what type of associations managers need to develop with their clients.
While the focus is on the management of music acts of number one albums on the (US) Billboard charts, Murphy also astutely highlights another factor concerned with getting the best from people whose careers are sometimes on a knife's edge: namely, forging progressively caring, kind and intuitively positive relationships. Valuable and insightful reading not only for music business students but also for established managers.
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Paul McCartney (left) and John Lennon
Speaking of Epstein, there are lessons to be learned from
John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs
by Ian Leslie (Faber, £25). We think it's a first in by now far-reaching Beatles literature: a new story outline that doesn't focus on one member but two. Intriguingly, the author focuses on the symbiotic relationship (loving, platonic, conflicted) between Lennon and McCartney and their respective and/or mutual songs.
There are biographical details we have read about many times before, of course, but Leslie's side-view approach displays insights heretofore unexplored, which alone makes the book essential reading for fans. Leslie argues that the customary narrative (Lennon as the 'creative soul of The Beatles' and McCartney as his 'talented but facile sidekick') has skewed their true personalities. It's a good argument, cogently delved into and illuminated through songs such as Ticket to Ride, Penny Lane, Help!, and Julia (a mere four of the 159 Lennon and McCartney songs of The Beatles' 184 recorded works), where one was the motivator and the other the midwife.
What of George Harrison and Ringo Starr, we hear aggrieved Beatles fans ask. They are necessarily in the wings, apologises Leslie, albeit making 'indispensable contributions'. For all that, this is an excellent book about the Tremendous Two and a contender for end-of-year plaudits.
Everyone, more or less, is familiar with The Beatles, but what of some American music acts that have steadily maintained success in their homeland but not on this side of the Atlantic? The last time US soft-rock songwriter Boz Scaggs entered the UK Top 20 singles chart was in 1977 (with What Can I Say and, perhaps his best-known song, the hardy perennial Lido Shuffle). Since then, nada. This makes the first biography of the songwriter,
Lowdown: The Music of Boz Scaggs
, by Jude Warne (Chicago Review Press, $30) all the more intriguing.
The author, however, merely skims the surface of the man's life and times, interviewing collaborators and a few friends but not Scaggs himself. There is some compensation in the contributions of colleagues and musicians, but the spine of the book resides in the tried and tested album-by-album analysis, which, while insightful to those who aren't acquainted with the songs, borders on the humdrum.
Sinéad O'Connor. Photograph: David Corio/The New York Times
There is nothing at all routine about
Universal Mother
by Adele Bertei (33 1/3 series/Bloomsbury, £8.99). It comes at you instantly with fangs bared.
Sinéad O'Connor
, writes Bertei, 'was a witch of great magnitude, burned at the stake again and again'. O'Connor's fourth album is put under the microscope here, but perhaps not in the way you might expect. Rather than a track-by-track evaluation, the author takes as the basis for her scrutiny the fact that O'Connor was among the first public figures to experience 'the guillotine of cancel culture'.
Universal Mother, therefore, was created as a fresh and resolute starting point for a songwriter who took a lead from Jean Genet's
Our Lady of the Flowers
: 'To escape from horror, bury yourself in it.' The outcome is a righteous, vivid essay (96 pages) that celebrates not only one of Irish music's finest artists but also one of its best albums.
Jon King, founding member of Gang of Four
'In 1980, UK households receive a booklet, Protect and Survive ... Are these the end of days? It's the right time to write radical music.' So starts
To Hell with Poverty!
, by Jon King (Constable, £25), the founding member of Gang of Four, a feverish post-punk/funk band much admired for their search for working-class justice.
In keeping with his poverty-stricken London roots ('Woodlice skeeter about beneath floorboards that groan under our feet, the wet-rotted joists moaning with the load'), King tells his life story in a way that disrupts the norm. Christmas time 'annual luxuries' of his father 'puffing on a Hamlet' and his mother sipping an 'advocaat snowball' are soon replaced with meeting future Gang of Four guitarist, Andy Gill, studying fine art at Leeds University, adventures in America and Spain, and then things start to surge.
'We're no longer Dr Feelgood impersonators but have … become ourselves with a radical set and a fierce onstage presence …' King continues the band story to the bitter end, with taut, spiky recollections of health issues and corrupt management. Gang of Four's second album title tells it like it is: Solid Gold.
Heartbreaker
, by Mike Campbell (Little, Brown, £25) is in a similar gilt-edged category. Although Campbell is best known as Tom Petty's guitarist and co-songwriter (from 1976 to Petty's death in 2017), his life story has, perhaps inevitably, been overshadowed by his more famous associations. What a rags-to-riches life Campbell has lived, though, and how humbly he tells it.
From a ragged teenage upbringing in Jacksonville, Florida ('where my mom grew up, poor as ragweed and pretty as Ava Gardner'), getting his first guitar ('I stared at it, stunned') and music industry excess ('Slowly, the record fell apart … We were a mess …') to the first quarterly songwriting royalties from his co-write, with Don Henley, of The Boys of Summer ('When I opened the check, I had to sit down'), Heartbreaker is a wise and observant book from a musician who is much more than an accessory to the main act. Other side-of-stage performers, take note.