Paolo Hewitt

This is the Modern World!

Weller fanboy Hewitt pens a panegyric to his hero that at least covers the basic history of the Jam. Hewitt trys to be objective but usually comes off as insincere when he is negative. His opinions follow those of Weller, particularly at the time this was written, too closely to be considered truly objective. His dismissal of The Who and Pete Townsend for instance, certainly reflects a later Weller view and seems mainly due to the fact that The Who still played their old songs in concert. Always the idealist, I'm sure if he was honest Weller would cringe if he went back and honestly looked at some of the things he said over the years as he has matured. He doesn't seem to mind throwing old Jam numbers into his shows now.

On top of this Hewitt's classification of the great, good, mediocre, and bad Jam songs is all wrong and his review outtakes from the trendy and fickle music papers panders to the same sort of meaningless hyperbole that these rags are known for, which has little or nothing to do with the music and all about what is "cool" at the time. There is far too little of the Jam and far too much of just Paul Weller as well.

Still it's a fun read with lots of photos (again too many of Weller and too few of The Jam) and gets the basic history up until the breakup right.… (mer)

This might just be the best way to write a musician’s biography ever. The author organizes the book based on the albums David Bowie released throughout his lifetime, but besides an in-depth discussion of Bowie’s music he also touches on Bowie’s personal life, his inspirations, the tours, and artistic development as a whole. This technique produces snapshot pictures of Bowie’s life paired beside the music that resulted throughout his lifetime, and gives readers a logical way to enter into the life and music of an extraordinary man. I was also quite impressed with how well designed the layout of the book was as a whole. Many similar books have a hard time balancing text and imagery and in finding the right tone to engage the reader, but Hewitt keeps his language casual (he veers into gushing fan mode a few times, but I feel like just proves his motivation to write an engaging biography) while showing that he has done his research and the combination of text and images is as close to flawless as I’ve ever seen. It’s too bad that the book was published before Bowie’s final album was released, but I hope that Hewitt decides to go back and add a chapter to round things out once and for all!… (mer)

Bowie: Album by Album by Paolo Hewitt is the story of David Bowie as an artist as he first starts out as a young kid all the way up through manhood. It tells his life in songs, bands, movies, albums, friendships, and fads. It makes him the special person he was to so many of us. It goes beneath the make up to the person and lets us see the creative side, the struggle uphill to be a star, and the way he changed music forever. There are lots of photos included in this book. David Bowie was just a few years older than me and I have been a big fan all my life and had all his albums. I could relate to this book and love it because it took me behind the scenes. I would be the first one to be really critical of this if it wasn't done well but it was great! Nicely done! Will miss you Bowie!!! Thanks NetGalley for suggesting this book!… (mer)

Paoulo Hewitt was taken from his mother (who was detained under the Mental Health Act) when he was only one day old. From then on he spent his childhood in a variety of children's homes with one disastrous period as a foster child to a woman who turned out to be an abuser; reading this bhook was a salutory lesson to me, I am often in a position in court where I have to make a fine judgement whether or not a child should/could remain in the family home. We put children into car to protect them from a variety of evils which, it is thought, would blight their childhoods - and that might well be so.
However, what is chilling about this very well-written and timely book, is that the emotional and psychological damage to a child may well out-weigh the damage done by locking up the one rock of stability they have, namely the parent who cares for them.… (mer)