Reviews

As Though I Had Wings: The Lost Memoir by Chet Baker

motherofbird's review

Go to review page

dark lighthearted reflective sad fast-paced

4.0

A quick read! It’s all from Bakers’ point of view and he sounds really cavalier as he describes these traumatizing, frightful scenarios that drug addiction led him to. His tenderness shines through when speaking about his musician friends, specifically Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker. 

beabeabea_'s review

Go to review page

dark reflective fast-paced

3.25

kayleefromband's review

Go to review page

emotional reflective sad fast-paced

4.25

wanderlustmyfriend's review

Go to review page

3.0

While this memoir is very choppy and erratic, it's also a great "behind the scenes" kind of diary that Chet kept.

ashlynn_white's review

Go to review page

dark fast-paced

bookwomble's review

Go to review page

4.0

3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.

When Chet (first name terms seems appropriate somehow. I think Chet was that kind of guy) says, "probably less than 2 percent of the public can really hear. When I say hear, I mean follow a horn player through his ideas, and be able to understand those ideas in relation to the changes," I place myself in the more-than-98-percent category. I've got stacks of Chet's recordings and his music is some of my very favourite, but I'm not sure that I 'get' jazz. The things I like, I really enjoy listening to, but I can't say that I know what the musicians are doing, what's in their heads or hearts while they're playing, or what message they're trying to send me.

I love Chet's stuff, and really like his contemporaries, Gerry Mulligan, Paul Desmond and Dave Brubeck from the'50s and '60s 'Cool Jazz' West Coast scene, but "legends" like Charlie Parker and John Coltrane leave me cold, though Alice Coltrane is stratospherically amazing in my estimation. Is my tepid response to these 'giants' just a matter of musical taste, or a lack of comprehension and feeling for the music? I'm not yet sure. Maybe my feeling for Chet and Cool Jazz is a visceral thing that resists cognitive examination and I should just let it be.

Reading this book of Chet's diary entries/memoir hasn't really got me any further on. They pick up with the 16 year old Chet joining the army, then meander back and forth between his early childhood (briefly), then the late '40s, '50s and early '60s, with the barest of threads connecting each chapter. There are a couple of running motifs, of course, those being music and drugs. The entries end abruptly, as if Chet put his journal down and decided he'd had enough of that project, or probably just more concerned with the need to score some 'stuff'.

While in some respects this is thin fare, the interesting stuff cut with lists of largely unknown musicians and itineraries of place names, in others it is strong stuff where Chet tells us things we'd otherwise have no knowledge of. Is it all true? Is Chet, so often zonked or strung out, a reliable narrator? Does it matter, if this is his truth?

I'm left wanting more, but this is as much as Chet wanted to give or, maybe, could give, so I just have to be satisfied with what he's supplied. More importantly, he left his music. I'm sure there's more of him in there for me to find if I can just open myself to it.

clambook's review

Go to review page

1.0

If you're looking for insight into Chet Baker's music or personality, this isn't it. There's not an ounce of introspection in it. I suppose the estate published it to ride the Cult of Chet, but it's nothing but a sad account of a junkie lifestyle, and a not very good one.
More...