Holding the Note
Writing On Music
Published on 12. October 2023
Book
Hardback
304 pages
978-1-0350-2397-4 (ISBN)
Description
ESSAYS ON ARETHA FRANKLIN, BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, BOB DYLAN, PAUL MCCARTNEY, LEONARD COHEN, BUDDY GUY, MAVIS STAPLES, PATTI SMITH
A Financial Times Book of the Year 2023
The greatest popular songs, whether it's Aretha Franklin singing 'Respect' or Bob Dylan performing 'Blind Willie McTell', have a way of embedding themselves in our memories. You remember a time and a place and a feeling when you hear that song again. In Holding the Note, David Remnick, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and editor of The New Yorker, writes about the lives and work of some of the greatest musicians, songwriters, and performers of the past fifty years.
He portrays a series of musical lives - Leonard Cohen, Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, and more - and their unique encounters with the passing of that essential element of music: time. These are intimate portraits of some of the greatest creative minds of our time written with a lifetime's passionate attachment to music that has shaped us all.
A Financial Times Book of the Year 2023
The greatest popular songs, whether it's Aretha Franklin singing 'Respect' or Bob Dylan performing 'Blind Willie McTell', have a way of embedding themselves in our memories. You remember a time and a place and a feeling when you hear that song again. In Holding the Note, David Remnick, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and editor of The New Yorker, writes about the lives and work of some of the greatest musicians, songwriters, and performers of the past fifty years.
He portrays a series of musical lives - Leonard Cohen, Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, and more - and their unique encounters with the passing of that essential element of music: time. These are intimate portraits of some of the greatest creative minds of our time written with a lifetime's passionate attachment to music that has shaped us all.
Reviews / Votes
Remarkable, not just for the essays' expertise and vividness, but for the aeons he spends talking to his subjects and those around them * Observer * This collection of articles by David Remnick can stand as literature. ... He treats the reader as an informed, intelligent equal * The New York Times * Always up close and personal, always tenacious and informed by deep background, and always vivid and veracious * The Times * [A] standout collection of pieces . . . What's most remarkable is [Remnick's] ability to give due at once to the artists' larger-than-life musical legacies and their all too human fallibilities * Publishers Weekly * Written over the past three decades, these are keenly observed, deeply felt, and judiciously detailed encounters of genuine communion mixing interviews, biography, and analysis, all lyrically and radiantly composed . . . There is acuity here, bemusement, tenderness, and gratitude -- Donna Seaman * Booklist * Remnick, the intellectually nimble editor of the New Yorker, has lately been focusing closely on world politics, but he finds time to profile a number of artists who, having enjoyed early success, 'were all grappling, in music and in their own lives, with their diminishing gifts and mortality.'. . . There's dish here . . . and plenty of astute observation . . . A perceptive pleasure for literate music lovers * Kirkus Reviews *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Pan Macmillan
Target group
Interest Age: From 18 years
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 160 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
506 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-0350-2397-4 (9781035023974)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
David Remnick has been the editor of The New Yorker since 1998. He was a staff writer for the magazine from 1992 to 1998 and, previous to that, the Washington Post's correspondent in the Soviet Union. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for his book Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire. He is the author of seven books, including Holding the Note, King of the World, a biography of Muhammad Ali, and The Bridge, a biography of Barack Obama. He lives in New York City with his wife and children.