Robert Greenfield

Ever since the days of such musical artists as Cole Porter and Hoagy Carmichael, there have been a plethora of very fine American songwriters, and of course everyone has their favorites. But in my lifetime, the two giants, who have truly delighted me and enriched the soundtrack of my life, have been Burt Bacharach (and his lyricist, Hal David) and Jimmy Webb, the greatest of them all. (I consider Bob Dylan a poet, more than a songwriter.) From my adolescence, when Bacharach was just getting show more his start with such singers as the great Dionne Warwick, his music has been a constant joy. I admired him.

Until I read this book. His music will always soar, somewhere in the more shallow recesses of my heart, and still occupy a large part of my personal "playlist." But Bacharach the man, as described in this autobiography, is a scoundrel, an egomaniac, and a roué. It is not for me to list his shortcomings; he does that quite well himself, although he seems to view them as strengths. Even in the face of a personal tragedy which I will not describe, Bacharach was primarily devoted to sexual conquests and personal disloyalties. This book is testament to the sad fact that even the most talented people can be utterly wretched human beings. Hence, my rating.

Not recommended. show less

The Book of Breaks – John Perry Barlow’s Last Words

It was a most uncomfortable feeling to receive and begin reading Mother American Night the day John Perry Barlow died. The Prologue didn’t make it any easier. It is titled Not Dead Enough. It describes how the book came about. Barlow had been dead eight minutes when a young intern yanked him off the bed onto the floor and proceeded to knee him in the chest until his heart reactivated. This after barely surviving the removal of a huge show more tumor on his spine, discovered while treating a horrendous staph infection he got from brand new cowboy boots. He decided it was time to focus on this book of memoirs.

It contains a chronological stack of wonderful stories spread over 47 lightning-quick chapters. They make Barlow an American Original. Some stories are being told for the first time, like when he drove to Boston to become the first American suicide bomber, in the 1960s. The who’s who of Wesleyan University, where he was Student President, descended on the place he was crashing, brought him back and put him in a sanatorium to bring him down. It took two weeks – and he resumed classes as if nothing had happened.

All through his life, Barlow (known as johnperry to anyone who mattered) caught breaks: getting through Customs with a life-sized head sculpture filled with hash plus a page full of LSD tabs. Or hitting gravel on a motorcycle, wearing only cutoffs and not even shoes, and taking himself to the hospital. He couldn’t wear clothes while he healed, and showed up at a university board meeting in just shorts. Given the choice, Barlow always took the more dangerous path, and never got caught.

Aimlessly, he managed to be in absolutely the right place at the right time. He spent the Summer of Love (1967) in Haight Ashbury, right in the home of The Grateful Dead. In the early 70s, he lived right by Needle Park on New York’s Upper West Side, and dealt cocaine in Spanish Harlem. He got into computers in the mid 80s, and his links to the Dead got him entrée to computer high society, which was populated by deadheads.

Among the right places at the right time, Barlow:
-had his pick of top eastern universities (despite his school record) simply because he was from Wyoming, where few applications originated.
-forged three medical excuses from the draft, and though discovered (he used the same typewriter for all three), got away with it.
-worked with Dick Cheney to get him into Congress, but realized he was a “global sociopath” interested only in pure power. They argued fiercely, and went their separate ways.
-had John F. Kennedy Jr as a 17 year old summer intern on his ranch, taught him how to fly, and warned him about instrument flying, which, like Barlow, he could not master. Before Kennedy plunged his plane in the ocean, they danced together at a Prince concert in New York and got the whole Radio City audience up and dancing – and no one recognized them.
-became a close friend of Timothy Leary, after having been taken to see him as an anonymous undergrad. It was Barlow who Leary wanted at his side when he died, though that didn’t quite work out.
-got a $5000 advance on a novel while an undergraduate, and instead of finishing it, took off to India with the money.
-with no connections, sold several screenplays to Hollywood to raise money for the family ranch.
-wrote the lyrics for 30 Grateful Dead songs.
-with no qualifications but his Dead connection, worked for Steve Jobs on a book idolizing the corporate culture of Apple, and later, the NeXT news magazine.
-co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation with Mitch Kapor, who diverted his private transcontinental flight to Wyoming to meet him.

It was a remarkable, varied, exciting, and high profile life. But it’s not as if John Perry Barlow is anyone’s idol. He was an alcoholic, smoked three packs a day, took more than a thousand hits of LSD, dealt cocaine, cheated on women (a family tradition) with abandon, and tested his luck constantly. With homes in San Francisco, Wyoming and New York, he was an absentee father of three. On the other hand, he consciously and deliberately tried to make things better, opening up copyright for art’s sake, helping Wikileaks in its time of need, and building an environmental startup to clean and recycle biomass. The book ends as it begins, with his newly acquired appreciation of love and how he had finally been able to accept the love freely shown to him over a lifetime. His wish seemed to be that we not wait quite as long.

David Wineberg show less

The recently deceased author had a really colorful life. He seems to have known everyone and done everything. Born to a cattle ranching family that was powerful in Wyoming politics, he went to school with Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, and later went on to write lyrics for the band. He mentored JFK Jr., and was campaign manager for Dick Cheney. Yes, he was an acid loving, alcoholic, Republican. The cognitive dissonance is still rippling in my head. Later he became a computer hacker and show more cofounded the Electronic Freedom Foundation, well as writing a book that was basically an ad for Steve Jobs and Apple. He hung at Andy Warhol’s Factory and dated the Dalai Llama’s sister. I’d have thought it was all bullshit, but the people involved say his life really was like that.

All was not sweetness and adventure. As I said, he was an alcoholic. He smoked three packs a day, was a coke dealer, cheated on women, and took off with a $5000 advance for a book he never wrote. He did some of the stupidest things with his health and safety; it’s a miracle he lived as long as he did. One thing his life never was, was dull. And he tells his story in short chapters, as if he was telling them over drinks. At least in the first half of the book; somewhere near the end he sort of … slows down. Given that he was in failing health, I suspect that he just ran out of energy for telling. The prose in the latter part of the book even has a different voice to it, as if the first part was Barlow telling it in full, while the co-author had to fill in a lot in the end. A truly amusing book- I figured I wouldn’t be impressed by the man, but I was. Four and a half stars. show less

Mother American Night is the autobiography of John Perry Barlow, a man who certainly did many things yet was also far more lucky than either talented or skilled.

He presents himself as larger than life and in his own mind he no doubt was just that. In reality, he was someone who, mostly by luck and being at the right places at the right times with no feeling of obligation to anything or anyone, took advantage of the many advantages he was presented. He was talented, not overly so. He was show more smart, not overly so. He was, however, a master at presenting himself as smarter and more talented than others. The false humility he presents here is both annoying and what makes the book a fun read. And make no mistake, this is a fun read.

I don't want to imply he lied when writing the book. The vast majority of the bare facts (places he was, people he met, etc) are verifiable as true. But in my opinion, and that is all it is is opinion, he stretched his importance and his role in many situations and instances, particularly in the early part of his life. By not having any responsibility and not caring about who is left behind he was able to do whatever he wanted on a whim. It would certainly make everyone's life easier to be able to drop everything every time something interesting and new popped up. But most of us feel an obligation and compassion for those we are already involved with to just up and run every time. Not Barlow, he just took whatever was offered and moved on. I question the extent to which he was as important to everyone he met in his youth, that was all part of building a persona that both enabled future adventures while excusing his flightiness.

It sounds like I didn't enjoy the book and that is not the case. I found it to be a wonderful read, primarily his early years. I just don't accept all of his embellishments as being 100% accurate. In fairness, most autobiographies tend toward such things so it is not unique to this one. That is why autobiographies are fun and somewhat accurate while biographies are often less fun to read but far more accurate. I highly recommend this to people who enjoy and understand autobiography, as well as people who enjoy tall tales spun by a wonderful storyteller, for if there is one true talent that resided in Barlow's person it was as a storyteller.

Reviewed from a copy made available through Goodreads First Reads. show less