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A review by mattycakesbooks
Bruce by Peter Ames Carlin
3.0
Obviously, if you're reading this, you're going to be a fairly huge Bruce fan, so in that sense, it's hard to really dislike this. That said, I found myself kind of frustrated and annoyed at the end of the book. A few years ago, at the beginning of the Wrecking Ball tour, I read a New Yorker article that I feel got a little bit deeper into the musician's personal life and psyche than this book, at a solid 460 pages longer did (here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/07/30/120730fa_fact_remnick?currentPage=all).
I know this is a big task, and I know that a lot of it depends on the access he has to his sources. But this book seems hamstrung by its promotional line, that it was the first biography to have Bruce's cooperation. It just doesn't go deep enough for that to be the case. There are times that Bruce being a bit of a dick and prima donna sneak through, but he excuses them. He actively defends Bruce against negative reviews published a decade ago. He barely touches on Bruce's serious mental illnesses until the last chapter, and when he mentions a brief bout of depression in the early 90's, he says friends used the word "suicidal" and then doesn't expand.
The relationships between him, Jon Landau, and Steve Van Zandt seem relatively well fleshed out as well, but it was strange reading a book where both Clarence and Patti seemed like peripheral characters. It was particularly frustrating because of how much detail each recording session got. We're familiar with his music, we want to hear about him.
It's possible I'm being too hard on this book. It just seems like it missed a lot of the stuff that I was looking for when I bought a Bruce Springsteen biography.
I know this is a big task, and I know that a lot of it depends on the access he has to his sources. But this book seems hamstrung by its promotional line, that it was the first biography to have Bruce's cooperation. It just doesn't go deep enough for that to be the case. There are times that Bruce being a bit of a dick and prima donna sneak through, but he excuses them. He actively defends Bruce against negative reviews published a decade ago. He barely touches on Bruce's serious mental illnesses until the last chapter, and when he mentions a brief bout of depression in the early 90's, he says friends used the word "suicidal" and then doesn't expand.
The relationships between him, Jon Landau, and Steve Van Zandt seem relatively well fleshed out as well, but it was strange reading a book where both Clarence and Patti seemed like peripheral characters. It was particularly frustrating because of how much detail each recording session got. We're familiar with his music, we want to hear about him.
It's possible I'm being too hard on this book. It just seems like it missed a lot of the stuff that I was looking for when I bought a Bruce Springsteen biography.