Bodies: Life and Death in Music

Product Information

The book struggled to stick to the topic, and it didn't answer questions, only reaching one conclusion as the possible cause of addiction and death in music business. Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's pageview limit. With classics such as Ted Hughes's The Iron Man and award-winners including Emma Carroll's Letters from the Lighthouse, Faber Children's Books brings you the best in picture books, young reads and classics.

Conversations about mental health and support for those with issues should be an essential part of looking after artists. Sure, it touches on the topic of suicides and overdoses but then it will drift to Twitter and streaming and money, all the while Ian tramps all of the places he's been and all the wonderful things he's experienced by you. The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report. But what he’s saying seems universally applicable: there’s no way of telling directly from Bodies if things are different in, say, the world of hip-hop, but the mortality rate among young rappers strongly suggests they’re not. I really liked this book written by the talented music journalist Ian Winwood, noted for his contributions to Kerrang magazine among other musical writings and books.Finally tipped over the edge, one British band’s drummer attempts to stab their guitarist during an argument over a spilled beer. Gutting details, triumphant moments that anyone in the field will have latched to after their first byline, but without the impressive addition of actually meeting the bandmates as Winwood often does. But the main story plots the sinister machinations of a music industry that is more interested in profiteering from the creativity of its artists, than supporting their health and well being. Whether it's because of drug abuse in the rock community, or mental health woes allowed to go unchecked by an uncaring industry, self-destruction isn't cool in 2022.

Working as a music journalist his life is adjacent and exposed to the same culture as these musicians, some of which he counts among his friends. He makes a compelling argument and overturns some long-held notions about “rock and roll excess” by deftly tying together a vast amount of information – from first-hand accounts to interviews with psychologists – and liberally lacing it with dark, self-deprecating humour.The guy seems likeable and honest and, even if I’m not a fan of most of the bands mentioned, the stories of life on the road were very interesting.

First and foremost, though, Bodies is a memoir that shows the intoxicating allure of music journalism, written by one of its most incisive practitioners, shining a light on the perverseness of a job in which you’re celebrated for chronicling the suffering of others while, often, being subjected to the same pressures and temptations they’ve fallen foul of. But while these elders and kind-hearted individuals are doing their best, the industry itself has a ways to go. No other industry brags about a suicide squad (hello the ominous 27 Club - Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, you know the drill) and no other industry fails to pay its employees, driving them to drink, drugs and death. And it’s a story still unfolding: in the gap between writing and publishing Bodies, two of the book’s subjects - Mark Lanegan and Taylor Hawkins - lie dead.It’s telling that the most pro-active organisation Bodies describes is a charity partly funded by musicians themselves, which plans to set up hubs in venues and provide a kind of mental health MOT to audience members and performers alike. It’s clearly a book with limitations: Winwood sticks with the world he knows best – heavy metal, hard rock and punk predominate – which means the vast majority of the interviewees are male and almost all are white.

Visceral, empathetic, profound and affecting, Winwood’s book operates on a number of levels: as a j’accuse of the music industry not only in its failure to safeguard those who operate within in but for the ways it drives them to addiction and self-destruction; as a plea for greater awareness of mental health issues within said industry; as a cautionary tale of how said industry pulls into its destructive orbit associated practitioners, most notably music journalists; as a memoir of personal loss, grief and aftermath; as a threnody for those who didn’t survive; and as a hymn to those who did. The saga of Ian Watkins is, by some distance, the most shocking in Bodies, a book filled with shocking stories. It was certainly the least to acknowledge that some idols (Bowie, Prince, Steven Tyler, Iggy Pop, Jimmy Page just off the top of my head) did some extremely shady (illegal? I didn't realise that this book would also be about Ian's descent into addiction (and recovery); if at least one person reads it and it resonates with them and they seek help (be they a musican or not), great (not doing it justice but I hope you get what I mean.

I reviewed this without reading the extra chapter that was apparently written on Taylor Hawkins, as despite me purchasing this after it was added, it wasn't included in my Kindle version.