book reviews, celebrities, music

Repost: Belinda Carlisle unzips her lips…

Here’s a repost of an Epinions book review I wrote in July 2010. It’s currently reposted on my music blog, Dungeon of the Past, but I’m giving some thought to discontinuing that blog soon. Since this repost has gotten good views on my other blog, I’m going to preserve it as/is here on this one.

Summer seems to be the time for celebrity memoirs. I happen to love a good celebrity tell all, so I’m always game for reading and reviewing them. I’ve just finished reading Belinda Carlisle’s Lips Unsealed: A Memoir (2010), having picked it up a couple of days ago, thinking I needed something more lightweight to read after the somber subject of my last book review. *Sigh* As it turned out, Ms. Carlisle’s memoir didn’t quite fit the bill for easy, breezy reading material.

Who is Belinda Carlisle?

Here’s an explantation for those of you who did not grow up in the 70s and 80s or did not listen to pop music back in that era. Belinda Carlisle is the lead singer of the 80s era punk/pop girl band The Go Gos. She’s also done quite a few solo albums over the years, though her hey day as a solo artist was in the late 1980s. Since that happened to be the time I was in high school, it made me part of Belinda Carlisle’s targeted group of fans. However, while I did like Belinda Carlisle when she was a Go Go, I never liked her as much as a solo artist.

So why did I read her book?

I read Belinda Carlisle’s book for several reasons. First off, while I wasn’t a big fan of Belinda’s music, I did always think she was kind of cute, likeable, and perky. I liked the Go Go’s; when they were popular, they were among very few all girl bands.  Reading Carlisle’s memoir opened my eyes to the host of personal problems she’s struggled with, apparently throughout her life.

Blame it on dad…

Belinda Carlisle grew up in southern California. She was her mother Joanne’s firstborn child out of a total of seven kids by two different men. Belinda was born when her mother was 18 years old. Her father, Harold Carlisle, who was Joanne’s first husband, was about twice his wife’s age.  He was out of the house a lot when Belinda was growing up, due to his work.  Harold and Joanne were terribly incompatible, yet they still managed to have two more kids before Harold Carlisle permanently left the home. Belinda was seven years old and very upset about the split. However, Joanne had been keeping company with a neighbor named Walt. He eventually moved in, married Belinda’s mom, and took over daddy duties, fathering four more kids.

As Belinda tells it, they were always very poor and her bio-dad wasn’t around at all. Apparently, he never paid child support or visited. And Belinda’s mother had encouraged her kids with Harold Carlisle to call Walt “Dad”. Belinda writes that she still calls him that and thinks of him in that way, even though Walt was abusive and an alcoholic.

As the oldest child, Belinda had to take on a lot of responsibilities around the house.  This was in part because her mother suffered from a mental illness and because with seven kids in the house, there was a lot to do. Belinda also had a very fragile self-esteem. Because her family was poor, she didn’t have a lot of cool clothes and she had a less than svelte body. Her classmates made fun of her.

As she came of age, Belinda Carlisle went from being an awkward, chubby kid to a wild teenager. She writes of hanging around her friends at concert venues in Los Angeles, drinking, doing drugs, and occasionally shoplifting. She developed an affinity for punk music and eventually ran into the other women who would help make up the Go Go’s.

Making music and getting laid and snorting cocaine and getting drunk… lather, rinse, repeat

Once the story progresses into Belinda Carlisle’s music career, an unpleasant image of her begins to emerge. She describes herself as a very troubled person, not particularly talented as a songwriter, not able to play any instruments, and not even the greatest singer. But she was the lead singer for the Go Gos, despite those shortcomings. Her status as a lead singer opened doors for her, created resentments for some of the other band members, and apparently made her feel very insecure.

As Carlisle writes it, she was constantly snorting cocaine and drinking because she didn’t like herself. She also didn’t like her bio dad, who, once Belinda became an adult and was famous, tried to reconnect with her. She writes of an incident in which he showed up at a concert with his second wife and their daughters, whom she claims he “replaced her with”. Belinda met them while extremely high on cocaine. She says he tried to explain his side of the story. She tuned him out, claiming that he was just blaming her mother– who no doubt was responsible for at least some of went wrong. Then she expressed bitterness that he would try to contact her “just because she was famous”. I daresay if she was that high on cocaine, her perceptions of what was actually said in that meeting are probably very skewed.

Later, bio dad and Belinda’s sisters from his side of the family tried to reconnect again. She refused to see them and eventually told her dad she didn’t want a relationship with him. And yet, throughout this book, it’s pretty clear to me that his unexplained departure when she was a little kid had left a huge void. As far as I can tell, that psychic wound is still very painful for her. Yet, as she proudly proclaims her sobriety and newfound sanity, this is an area she evidently still refuses to address.

A bizarre anti-drug PSA by Belinda Carlisle. She had cute hair, though.

I’ll admit…

My husband is one of those dads who left his children when they were young and no longer has a relationship with them thanks to extreme parental alienation. Because of that, I feel some empathy for Belinda Carlisle’s father. Granted, everybody’s situation is different. Harold Carlisle might very well be the jerk Belinda Carlisle makes him out to be. But, I do think it says something for him that he tried on several occasions to reunite with her. Yes, he did find her when she was famous, but this all occurred at a time before the Internet. Maybe that was the only way he could track her down.

I don’t get the comment Belinda Carlisle made about her dad “replacing her” with daughters from his second marriage. First off, it would be impossible for Belinda’s father (or any other parent) to replace one child with another. And secondly, clearly Harold Carlisle wasn’t all bad.  He did apparently stick around and raise his younger kids.  If he was a total bum, he would have left them, too.  Finally, Belinda’s mother had four kids with her second husband and she considers them her siblings. Why isn’t her father allowed to have a life post divorce? Clearly, her parents didn’t belong together, but Belinda makes it clear that neither of them were angels. Why heap all the blame on dad?

Like father like daughter…

Another issue Carlisle never seems to address is that for all her complaints about her father’s absence, she was apparently often absent from her son Duke’s life. She was using cocaine and alcohol frequently when Duke was a small child, traveling a lot, and partying a whole lot. Yes, she was still married to Duke’s father, but by her own admission she was not around much and was certainly no paragon of parenthood. I’m sure she’d blame that on her bio father, too.

Beyond Belinda’s daddy woes…

There’s an awful lot about drugs in this book. It seems that Belinda Carlisle spent about thirty years of her life high on cocaine. For that, she was rewarded with fame and fortune. She doesn’t make fame out to be as great as it seems, except when she starts name dropping all the celebrities she’s met over the years. Since this is a celebrity memoir and the nature of a celebrity’s work puts them in contact with other celebrities, that’s to be expected. But it does seem to me that Carlisle got more than her fair share of second and third chances. More often than not, she comes off as a bit self-absorbed and selfish.

Despite my griping…

I will admit that Lips Unsealed is well-written and interesting and, for that, I’m giving it four stars. Belinda Carlisle must have a guardian angel, since she found a husband that she describes as “saintly”. They’ve been married for over two decades and their son has apparently grown up healthy and functional. They live in Los Angeles and the South of France. They must be doing something right.

Overall

Belinda Carlisle’s memoir did annoy me on more than one occasion, but I think it’s worth reading if you’re a fan of hers or the Go Gos. She claims that now that she’s in her 50s, she’s clean and sober. I truly hope she is and has learned from her mistakes. Judging by this memoir, however, I think she’s still got a long way to travel on the road to recovery.

And here are the comments left on my Dungeon repost. One was from Belinda’s sister.

As an Amazon Associate, I get a small commission from Amazon on sales made through my site.

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nostalgia

Repost: Even philosophy professors have daddy issues sometimes…

This is a repost of an article I wrote for my original blog on September 1, 2015. I’m reposting it today because I plan to repost the book review that followed it and is referenced in this article. I’m mostly reposting it as it originally appeared almost five years ago.

I am going to preemptively issue a disclaimer.  Ordinarily, in a post like this, I wouldn’t name names.  Since this story has to do with a famous person, his famous offspring, and the book written by said offspring, I’m going to name names in this post.  Apologies to anyone who is offended, because I intend to be brutally honest.

The other day, I started a new Facebook group.  It’s called Random Bullshit.  I started it on a whim and at the suggestion of a local friend after we became disenfranchised from some of the local Facebook groups.  I decided to make the group fairly open to new members, even those who don’t live in Stuttgart, as long as they don’t mind oversharing and raunchy humor.  Right after I started the new group, the subject of philosophy professors came up after I put up a link to my post about how I discovered what enemas are.  One of my friends said he’d mailed an enema to a former philosophy professor at Ole Miss who had given him a poor grade.  I suddenly remembered my former philosophy professor at Longwood University, Dr. John Peale.

Dr. Peale’s philosophy course is, to date, the only one I have ever taken.  In fact, I took the class because I had to; it was called Ethics and everyone at my school had to pass it or something similar to it as part of our general education requirements.  If I recall correctly, the class didn’t meet for the entire semester and was only good for two credits.

With a course name like “Ethics”, I figured I would find the class stimulating.  I remember looking forward to it.  I thought it would be an interesting class, but I was mistaken.  In fact, the only two things I remember learning from Peale’s class are Immanuel Kant (as in, I know he existed and was a philosopher) and existentialism (as in, I know it’s a philosophical theory).  I don’t remember being very impressed by my professor, who came across as pompous, arrogant, angry, and overbearing.  I do remember getting a C in the course, but that was no big deal.  I got C’s in a whole lot of classes, including many of the ones I took for my major.  I never claimed to be a brilliant student.  I came away from Dr. Peale’s class not particularly interested in any further study of philosophy.  Other former students’ mileages may vary. 

One of my best friends in college temporarily had Dr. Peale as an advisor.  One day, he went to see the professor to plan for the next semester’s classes.  While he was sitting there talking to Dr. Peale, my friend noticed a bunch of books on the professor’s bookshelf written by Norman Vincent Peale.  Norman Vincent Peale, who died at a ripe old age on Christmas Eve in 1993, was a very famous minister and author.  He wrote The Power of Positive Thinking as well as many other well-received books.  He was also a founder of Guideposts, an uplifting little magazine that my grandmother used to keep conveniently stationed by her toilet.  I guess they made good reading material.

My friend, whose parents were big fans of Norman Vincent Peale’s books, asked Dr. Peale if he was related to the famous author and preacher.  The good professor said, teeth clenched and with a noticeable edge to his voice, “He is my father.”  Fortunately, my friend had the good sense not to press the issue further and got on with planning the next term’s courses. 

I had mostly forgotten about Dr. Peale until the other day, after bantering with my friend about enemas on Facebook.  That just goes to show you that I have a mind that can find a tangent with anything.  Anyway, as a result of that bantering session, I had a sudden flashback to Dr. Peale’s philosophy class and being publicly embarrassed when Peale yelled at me for an answer I gave that must have seemed stupid to him.  I don’t remember what I said or why Peale thought it was dumb, but I do remember how I felt.  Fortunately, the incident occurred toward the end of the class period and I was able to slink back to my dorm with relative ease. 

At the time, I had never heard of Norman Vincent Peale and had no idea that Dr. Peale was related to anyone important.  I didn’t know he had some personal issues that affected him deeply enough to write a book about his dad.  I just wanted to get through my Ethics class and was having a surprisingly difficult time of it.  It’s not a pleasant memory.  In Peale’s defense, I think he was going through some rather serious health issues at the time and that may have affected his demeanor.  He retired from teaching just a few years after I took his class.

I decided to search for Dr. Peale to see what he was up to these days.  I found a blog that he wrote a few years ago and that’s where I discovered the book he wrote about his difficult relationship with his father.  Because I am nosey and find human relationships fascinating, I decided to order the book, Just How Far from the Apple Tree?: A Son in Relation to His Famous Father.  I’m about halfway through it and will probably eventually post a review on this blog.  For now, I will comment that the book does shed some light on why Dr. Peale came across the way he did to me and my friend.  Despite growing up very privileged, well-traveled, and financially supported, according to his book, Dr. Peale never felt appreciated, regarded, or properly loved by his parents.  In particular, Peale felt neglected by his famous father, who was supposedly not “there” enough for him.

I don’t mean this to sound snarky because I can understand feeling bitter about having parents who don’t appreciate their offspring.  I have felt the same way sometimes about my own parents.  I think a lot of people have this problem and I know it’s a real issue.  On the other hand, the book also reveals a lot of what I observed when I had Peale as a teacher.  He is more than a bit impressed with himself.

After graduating from an excellent boarding school in Massachusetts, Peale studied at Washington & Lee University, a fine Virginia school in Lexington, located right next to Virginia Military Institute.  Virginia Military Institute and, to a lesser extent, W&L, are a part of my personal history.  My dad, an uncle, and quite a few cousins went to VMI.  Bill and I got married there.  A couple of my cousins are W&L grads, too.  In any case, I know for a fact that W&L is a very good private university in a beautiful town. 

Before he went to college, Dr. Peale went to Scotland to work.  He spent a gap year harvesting salmon with his friends, which he admits was a lot of fun.  He also got to travel to London and Paris after exploring the Scottish countryside.  While catching salmon swimming upstream was hard work, it sure wasn’t digging ditches, cleaning horse stalls, or flipping burgers.

Next, Dr. Peale went to Boston University, where he earned a master’s degree and met his wife, Lydia.  Boston University is yet another excellent and pricey university, though maybe it wasn’t so costly in Peale’s day.  Peale followed up by attending Union Theological Seminary in New York, a school he writes his father was against his attending, because Norman Vincent Peale thought it was too liberal.  John Peale’s choice apparently caused friction between father and son, though they were never actually estranged. 

Having later graduated from seminary, Dr. Peale was qualified to be a minister.  However, though he claims to be a “gifted” minister, Peale felt a calling toward academia, a choice that he claims upset his father.  So he went to the University of Chicago, where he studied, and taught courses at nearby Elmhurst College.  Then, he went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he earned a doctorate and taught courses.

Dr. Peale writes in his book that he enjoyed financial support from his parents, who helped him and his wife, Lydia, and their children live comfortably and travel extensively.  One time, his parents even attended one of his lectures; they sat in the back as he taught and weren’t obtrusive.  However, Norman Vincent Peale apparently didn’t show his son enough support for his choice to be a teacher over a preacher.  That lack of regard, apparently, really offended the younger Peale, which seems to be the whole basis for his book.  Peale writes that after his lecture, his father wasn’t effusive enough with praise, and that clearly seriously wounded Peale’s ego.

Peale repeatedly boasts about his successes as a teacher, awards he’s won, rewarding relationships he’s enjoyed with his students and colleagues, and his alleged talents as a musician and minister (and I only write “alleged” because I have never been in a position to see or hear for myself).  More than once, he writes about the great schools he attended and the many countries he’s visited, including China several times.  Peale is fascinated by China and was fortunate enough to be able to indulge his curiosity by engaging in in depth study.  Despite that, he’s unhappy enough to write a book about his father, the man he admits helped him to become who he is through financial assistance and genetics.  According to him, who John Peale is is pretty damned special and accomplished.  But based on what I’ve read so far, Peale is wickedly pissed because his famous dad never recognized him as being as great as Peale himself thinks he is.

Again… I don’t mean to sound too snarky about this.  I understand that feeling unappreciated by one’s parents is difficult.  A lot of other writers have written about this very thing: Pat Conroy and Frank Schaeffer are just two of my favorite writers who have had difficult relationships with their parents.  The struggle is real.

On the other hand, there are so many other things in life that are much more difficult than not being “appreciated enough” by a parent figure.  In fact, Peale has even experienced a couple of them himself.  This is a man who has battled cancer and alcoholism, two significant life challenges that can try a person’s mettle.  He doesn’t write much about those experiences, though; instead, he chooses to try to convince readers of how accomplished he is.  Moreover, besides being able to travel a lot, marry his sweetheart, have children, and study at some great schools, he’s had a career in a field where few are able to flourish.  How much in demand are philosophy professors these days?  How much in demand were they when Peale’s career got started?

Has Dr. Peale ever had to worry about the basics in life?  Has he ever gone hungry or wondered how he was going to pay the rent or keep the lights on in his home?  Has he ever lost a child to suicide or a tragic accident?  Besides his health issues, has Dr. Peale ever experienced any true adversity outside the ivory tower of academia?  Were his parents abusive or hateful to him, as Pat Conroy’s father was?  Did they neglect him?  Based on his book so far, I have my doubts.  But I’m not quite finished reading it, so I will revisit this topic again when I have.  Suffice to say, while I don’t remember learning a whole lot in the so-called “gifted professor’s” Ethics course, I am definitely learning something from his book. 

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Trump

Mutual feelings…

I got a funny comment on a link on my official OE FB page yesterday. Someone implied that I’m an idiot. I don’t even think she bothered to read the offending post that prompted her to insult me. I think she was reacting to the photo with the post, which was of a grey, long-sleeved, t-shirt that had a picture of an orange version of the poison control’s Mr. Yuk on it and a caption that read “tRump is an idiot. Stay away.”

She wrote, “The only idiot I see…”

Who? Moi? I wasn’t absolutely sure what she was saying, so I went looking on her Facebook page to clarify. Sure enough, she had a 2019 era link to a post about Donald Trump and a personal comment about how awful it is that so many people “hate” him. She writes that those of us who disdain Trump must be “miserable”, and she “prays” for us because we’re so negative. She actually referred to those who oppose Trump as “haters”. From that, I surmised that she supports Mr. Trump and doesn’t understand why so many of us dislike him so much. Her comment on the link she shared was pretty thoughtful and reasonable. I might be willing to have a discussion with someone who practices what she preaches. But then she came on my OE FB page yesterday and called me an “idiot”, even though we’ve never met and she didn’t even engage me in a meaningful conversation. So I’m not sure she’s innocent of being hateful herself.

The woman’s last name is Fletcher, so I was inspired to dedicate a song to her. She appeared to be old enough to get the reference. If you were around in the 1980s, you probably remember it, too.

“I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” I used to play this song on my radio show when I was in college, ages ago.

I’ve never seen Ms. Fletcher on my social media before, and I doubt I’ll see her again. I don’t even know how she found herself on my Overeducated Housewife Facebook page. It’s not a very busy page, and I’ve decided that’s the way I like it. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t write this blog for money or fame. It’s just a place for me to express my opinions and share travel and music adventures. I leave it open for those who enjoy it. Since I moved to WordPress, I get a lot less traffic and fewer mean comments. But this blog is starting to pick up steam, so I suspect I’ll start getting more nastygrams from strangers who don’t like what I have to say.

Being called an idiot isn’t a big deal. At least Ms. Fletcher didn’t call me a cunt, like ‘ol Bill did. I’ll even admit that sometimes I am legitimately an idiot. However, when it comes to my opinions about Donald Trump, I don’t think I’m an idiot at all. The man has always been shady and creepy. The fact that some people voted for him in red states and made him the president of the United States doesn’t change my opinions about him. He’s not worthy of being the president. Any man who openly brags about grabbing women by the pussy should NOT be involved in world leadership, as far as I’m concerned. Trump has done a whole lot more bad things besides making misogynistic comments, but the minute he started bragging about molesting women at will, he should have been knocked out of contention for the White House. In 2020, we don’t need a sexual predator running the United States.

As I am still an American citizen, and we are the “land of the free and the home of the brave”, I feel quite alright in sharing my opinions about him– the most public of public figures— with those who care. Isn’t freedom of expression still one of our greatest liberties in the United States? Of course, it looks to me like Mr. Trump would love to muzzle the press and opinionated people like me. He doesn’t like to be criticized.

About an hour after I left that cute parody song for Ms. Fletcher, I noticed a spike in hits on another post I wrote about Trump supporters. They almost all came from several communities in Tennessee, very close to the Alabama border. One link came from Texas. I figure someone must have shared the link on Facebook, or something, because I got lots of hits all of a sudden on that one post. I assume they were friends and neighbors from the same community; perhaps even people in a local Facebook group. I decided to look up the places from where the hits were coming. Interestingly enough, one hit came from Pulaski, Tennessee.

I come from Virginia, and we have a Pulaski there, too. I was curious, so I looked up Pulaski, Tennessee, and read about its racist history. Pulaski is where the Ku Klux Klan was founded back in 1866. Nearby Franklin, Tennessee is where the first lynching of a Jewish man ever took place in the United States. On August 15, 1868, Samuel Bierfield was fatally shot by a horde of masked men who were believed to be members of the Ku Klux Klan. Bierfield was born in Latvia and came to Toronto in the 1850s. His life’s journey brought him to Franklin, Tennessee in 1866, where he opened a store and hired a black man named Lawrence Bowman. The two men were attacked; Bierfield was shot four times in the head at point blank range. Bowman was badly wounded and later died of his injuries. No one was ever charged with a crime.

The other hits from Tennessee were also from around that same area, not far from the Alabama border. I got pings from Lawrenceville, Tennessee, Leoma, Tennessee, Franklin, Tennessee, Columbia, Tennessee, and Lewisburg, Tennessee, as well as a couple of hits from League City, Texas. Now… it’s possible that there are people in those towns who feel the same way about Donald Trump that I do, but somehow I doubt it. I come from a conservative Southern town in Virginia myself, and I have an inkling about what life is like in small town America where people tend to vote Republican. Moreover, it seems that Tennessee still embraces racism, where people celebrate Nathan Bedford Forrest Day. Nathan Bedford Forrest was a Confederate general and a Ku Klux Klan leader. Last year, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed a proclamation declaring July 13 Nathan Bedford Forrest Day, thanks to an obscure 1971 law requiring that the governor issue proclamations for six state holidays each year, including days for Nathan Bedford Forrest and Robert E. Lee.

Maybe the people from Tennessee reading my post about Trump supporters were reading because they feel the way I do about Trump, but I have a feeling that they don’t. I wonder why they’d want to know my thoughts about their dear leader. Why does it matter to them what I think? Why look to be offended by one woman’s thoughts on a little read blog? No one left me a comment, but I’ll bet they were discussing my article on Facebook. I wouldn’t be shocked if they were posting degrading things about me. But since I don’t look to be offended, I’m not going to try to find out what they think about me. I’d rather not know.

When you’re a woman in a military community and have the nerve to refer to yourself as an “overeducated housewife”, you get a good dose of the nasty attitudes some ignorant folks from small towns harbor toward “uppity women” who dare to share their views. Those types of people– most of whom are white, southern men– prefer their women to be pretty, petite, polite, obliging, and docile. If you’re a woman who isn’t naturally like that and you refuse to change, you can expect to be on the receiving end of abuse. I’ve been called all sorts of distasteful names by people, but it doesn’t really matter. People I have loved have said worse things to me, so why should I care what some random yahoo on the Internet thinks?

I was raised by a conservative, southern, white man who didn’t like me very much. The feeling was mutual, if I’m honest. My dad often verbally told me that he loved me, but he also let me know in no uncertain terms that he didn’t much like me. He often complained about my laugh, saying it was too loud and “cackle like”. He said I was too opinionated and obnoxious. He said I was too fat, and called me “bitchy”. He accused me of being arrogant, and when it turned out that I had inherited a nice singing voice from him, tried to compete with me, even going so far as hiring the same voice teacher.

My dad said I’d never make more than minimum wage or find anyone to love me. Fortunately, he was wrong on both counts. There have been times when I’ve been paid hourly as much as six times the federal minimum wage. Since I married Bill, who is himself a white, southern man, I don’t even have to worry about making money. At least for now, Bill makes enough to support us quite comfortably, and he doesn’t mind sharing his wealth with me. By the way, my husband was very much loved by my dad, who appreciated the fact that Bill had served his country in the Army. One thing my dad was proud of me for was that I served my country in the Peace Corps. But other than that, he didn’t seem too impressed with me as his last descendant. He was usually a lot more critical than complimentary when it came to his opinions about me.

One time, my dad said he thought I was “nice looking”. I laughed and said, “You’re my dad; you have to say that.” His retort was, “No, I don’t.”

When people had a problem with me, more often than not, my dad would take the other person’s position. Sometimes, when I would express a thought, my dad would say derisively, often in front of other people, “Nobody cares about your opinion.” When I was living with my parents and had a room with its own bathroom, my dad would sometimes go out of his way to use it. He wouldn’t flush after peeing, so I’d later find his stale urine in the toilet, just as if he was a dog marking his territory.

At my sister’s graduate school graduation in 2003, when I was 30 years old and married, my dad chastised and humiliated me loudly in front of a crowd of strangers. I wanted to strangle him right then and there, but we had to get through a celebratory lunch.

By the time my father died in 2014, our relationship had become quite complicated. I was the only one of his four daughters who didn’t care to help spread some of his ashes at Virginia Military Institute. I still harbor a lot of ill will toward him and, I’m afraid it sometimes comes out when I run into certain types of people on the Internet.

So yeah… I have heard a lot of bad things from men over the years, some of them in the form of mean-spirited comments from men I’ve actually loved. A lot of men have tried to put me in my place and shut me up through shaming, insults, bullying, threats, and intimidation. I’ve run into some women who are like that, too. Bullies come in all shapes, sexes, and sizes. It’s taken me a long time to decide to fight back against bullies with conviction, but now that I’ve started, I won’t ever go back to being a victim.

But, for all I know, the hits from last night were all from people like Ms. Fletcher, who evidently simply respects Trump because he’s the president, and thinks we all should, too, even if he doesn’t act like someone respectable. She called me an “idiot” in a roundabout kind of way, which I guess is her right. So she thinks I’m an idiot. The feeling is mutual. But the rest of those hits from the KKK hotbed in Tennessee make me suspicious. I’m glad I live in Germany, where people aren’t armed to the teeth and automatically brimming with hatred toward those who see things differently and dare to express themselves. Germans have a troubled history, but they are wise enough to have mostly learned from it. I have hope that more Americans will learn, too.

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book reviews

Sometimes daddy issues can lead to rock stardom…

Bill is away this week, so I’ve busied myself by watching movies, reading, and, as of yesterday, listening to my very first audiobook courtesy of Audible. Two of the works have really stuck with me, because they involve rock stars with “daddy issues”. The stars in question? Elton John and James Taylor– both claim they had fathers who were absent in some way. Both are major rock stars dating from the 1970s.

On Sunday night, I finally watched Rocketman, a movie musical loosely based on Elton John’s life. Yesterday, I listened to James Taylor’s brand new audiobook, Break Shot, which is his version of the story of the first 21 years of his life. “Break shot” refers to the first shot in a game of billiards, the one that breaks the balls and scatters them in different directions.

I was already somewhat familiar with both stories because I had read lengthy books about both James Taylor and Elton John. In Elton’s case, I read his recent book, Me, which was his autobiography about his life. In James’s case, it was an extremely long winded book by the late Timothy White called James Taylor: Long Ago and Far Away, published in 2003. I remember not enjoying White’s book very much because it was so long and exhaustive, and included a lot about Taylor’s genealogy, which wasn’t something I was interested in at the time. However, years later, I’m kind of glad I read it, because it gave me insight into one of my favorite performers that has stuck with me all these years.

One thing that struck me about both of these men’s stories is that they have a lot in common. Both are extraordinarily talented musicians whose talent became obvious during childhood. Both are recovering addicts; James to alcohol and heroin, and Elton to alcohol, cocaine, sex, and food. Both are now living sober lives. Both have suffered from depression, perhaps even to the point of being suicidal. And both had very difficult relationships with their fathers. While I would never say that one has to have a difficult childhood with an absentee father to become a famous musician, it was an aspect of both of their stories that really stuck out to me. Actually, it seems like they both had difficult relationships with both parents, although in both of their stories, it was their fathers who were painted more as “bad” and unsupportive. James Taylor goes as far as to say that fathers can be “replaced”, but mothers have to be “there”. I can’t say I agree with his comment on that, but maybe it’s a relic from the generation he grew up in.

Rocketman wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. I hadn’t read much about it before I sat down to watch it. I guess I thought it would be more like Bohemian Rhapsody, as in, more of a biographical tale about Elton’s life. It was kind of biographical, but it really appeared to be more of a set up for an eventual Broadway show. I enjoyed it, for the most part, although parts of the movie made me groan a bit.

I wouldn’t go to Rocketman to learn about Elton John’s life, although I did think parts of the film were very entertaining. Taron Egerton is very talented and he captured Elton’s essence in his performance on screen. Elton’s book was revelatory enough. He wrote about growing up in working class Pinner. His father was strict and cold to him. Later, when his parents divorced, Elton’s dad apparently left his life. Although they shared a love of music, according to Elton, his dad wasn’t particularly supportive of his son’s talent. Elton’s mother was apparently exploitative and short tempered, even though they mostly stayed in contact until she died. I have already reviewed Elton’s book, so you can read my thoughts on it here. Today, I’m going to focus on Break Shot.

James Taylor’s story is a bit different, in that unlike Elton John, he grew up in an upper class family. James’s father was Dr. Isaac Taylor– otherwise known as Ike– and there was plenty of money. His mother’s name was Gertrude– Trudy– and she was from Massachusetts. Ike moved the family to Chapel Hill, North Carolina when James was about four or five years old. James grew up in North Carolina, because his father was the dean of the medical school at Chapel Hill. Trudy didn’t like living in the South, and James sort of implied that she resented Ike for forcing her to live there, particularly since Ike was often gone. He spent two years in Antarctica with Navy Seabees when James was a young man, and by the time Ike came home, he had become a stranger to his family. Ike also came home with a terrible drinking problem.

Evidently, addiction is a scourge in the Taylor family. James says that drinking and drugs helped him take a break from himself. I was interested in hearing his thoughts on addiction, especially since alcoholism is a scourge in my own family. He made a comment that really surprised me– that addicts see their drug of choice as a “key” of sorts. Eventually the “key” changes and the substance becomes harmful. Ike’s alcoholism was bad enough that he experienced delirium tremens, which meant that his body had become physically hooked on alcohol to the point at which he needed it to be normal. Nevertheless, Ike Taylor was reportedly a very “functional” alcoholic, much like my father was.

James is one of five very musical siblings, although he also has three half-siblings from his father’s second marriage. He doesn’t speak about his other siblings, probably because he’s old enough to be their father and likely has little contact with them. As someone who grew up in a family with no divorce and no “steps” of “halfs”, it’s hard for me to fathom not having any relationship with my siblings. On the other hand, now that I’m a “stepmother” to adult children my husband hasn’t seen since 2004, I guess I understand it more now than I would have twenty years ago.

Trudy Taylor was very “left leaning” in her politics, which is another reason why North Carolina was probably a difficult place for her to live in the 1950s and 60s. Nevertheless, James says that she was a very involved mother, and she busied herself with raising the children and making a beautiful home on Morgan Creek for them. At the beginning of his audiobook, James mentions his siblings and says he won’t talk much about the ones who are still living: Livingston, Kate, and Hugh.

James’s brother, Alex, died on James’s 45th birthday in 1993. Since Alex is no longer living, James feels free to talk about him. According to James, Alex and their mother, Trudy, fought a lot. Alex had embraced being southern, even adopting a southern accent. James says Alex had a southern accent until he died. Alex was, like James, an addict. He was particularly hooked on alcohol, much as their father was. The night before he died, he’d polished off almost an entire of vodka by himself, which his brother, Livingston, said wasn’t a particularly large amount of booze for him. However, although Alex was never as famous as James or even Livingston was, he was regarded as every bit as talented.

Wow… what a blend… We have lots of musical people in my family, too.
The Taylor siblings perform together… some serious genetic talent here.

Meanwhile, Trudy did all she did to keep the children connected to the North. She’d take them to New York every couple of months and they’d spend summers at Martha’s Vineyard, where James met dear friends who would play major roles in his life. That’s where he met Carly Simon, his first wife and mother of his two oldest children, Ben and Sally, although she only gets a passing mention in Break Shot. James has more to say about his current wife, Kim, whom is apparently the great love of his life who got him back on the path he was destined to be on… back in Boston.

James went to high school at a boarding school in Massachusetts, where he was forced to go to church three times a week. He chose the Episcopalian service, since it was closest to his dorm. It was there that he was first exposed to hymns, since he grew up agnostic. Really, he describes it as agnosticism, but it sounds more like his family was atheist, which was no doubt even weirder for the Taylors in Chapel Hill. Ike was a man of science and had little use for God. The hymns resonated with James and influenced his songwriting, which was a great thing for us. But being in boarding school was depressing for James and he was soon legitimately mentally ill with major depression. He wound up going back to Chapel Hill for his junior year, but he hated being there, too. So in 1965, he started high school at McLean Hospital, a psychiatric facility where the likes of Sylvia Plath and Ray Charles and two of James’s siblings also sought inpatient treatment and finished their high school years. He said that was then he finally stopped feeling so much like he had to live up to expectations of others. Everyone else in his family had wound up being doctors or lawyers, but James and his siblings obviously took after their very creative mother, who had studied voice at the New England Conservatory of Music.

Depression continued to be a problem for James. At one point in the audiobook, James writes about times when Ike was “there” for him. He called home once, out of money and prospects and feeling desperate, and Ike could hear it in his son’s voice that he was feeling desperate. So he drove all the way from North Carolina to Massachusetts to get James and bring him home. That was where the song, “Jump Up Behind Me” came from, on James’s wonderful Hourglass album, which also has a beautiful eulogy to his brother, Alex, “Enough to Be On Your Way”.

Some time later, James was in marriage counseling and the therapist noticed that he seemed to have a lot of “daddy issues”. The therapist recommended that James have his father join one of their sessions. Much to my surprise, James says his dad cooperated, and during their session, Ike apparently talked a lot about how much he disliked his ex wife, Trudy. The therapist asked Ike why, if he hadn’t liked Trudy much, he’d had five children with her. Ike’s response, which James said was supposed to be kind of a sarcastic “fuck you” to the therapist, was something along the lines of “My mother died after giving birth to me, so I figured that was the best way to get rid of my wife.”

I won’t go into the whole story about Ike Taylor’s upbringing because I really think it’s better to listen to the audiobook for that. Suffice to say, I can kind of see where the issues stemmed from in Ike, and how they passed down to the Taylor children. In any case, as I listened to the audiobook, I was a bit shocked by a couple of revelations, at least at first. James clearly had a very complicated relationship with his parents, but especially his father. However, unlike Elton John, James does seem to have a basic level of respect and empathy for the man. It sounds, though, like that empathy was a long time coming, especially since James spent so many years dulling his pain with alcohol and opiates. He says that he’s a different person now, with his wife, Kim, and their twin sons, Rufus and Henry, although it sounded to me like he still aches over his relationship with his dad. He muses that here his father was this high level doctor, much renowned and admired by so many people. And yet, several of his children graduated high school while locked up in a mental hospital.

Having read Carly Simon’s book, Boys in the Trees, in which she wrote of the hurtful way he treated her during their marriage, I can see that there was a time when James was legitimately an asshole. However… I think he came by being an asshole honestly, because as much as he has to say about his father, he also says that he felt pressured and tried very hard to be a “good son” to his mother, especially when she was in a bad mood. It was as if he felt required to be the balance between Trudy and Alex. And he says that he now realizes that children should not be expected to take care of their parents, nor are they responsible for their parents’ problems. He’s definitely right about that.

While I was surprised by some of Taylor’s blunt comments, I also think they kind of made him seem more like a regular person, with foibles like everyone else’s. Throughout my life, I have been comforted by both Elton John and James Taylor as they sang their original, exquisitely crafted songs. I was similarly comforted by Pat Conroy, another famous artist whose work has always spoken to me on many levels… and another person who had some serious “daddy issues” that he parlayed into art. Taylor said that he feels like he’s written the same six or seven songs over and over again throughout his life, meaning that the same themes keep coming up. I can relate, although my work will never reach as many people as his has…

I think Pat Conroy basically wrote the same story repeatedly, too. I still relate on many levels, as do so many other people. So many of us have parental issues that follow us throughout life. It’s just that some people are lucky enough to turn those issues into something that soothes the souls of the masses. Being able to articulate and translate that pain into music, art, dance, drama, or the written and spoken word is a tremendous gift… although, as is the case for so many brilliant artists, that gift comes with a price. It seems that depression, anxiety, and addiction are the scourges that most often plague creative people. Those who are lucky enough find ways to work through the pain. The unlucky ones tend to die young.

Maybe the most surprising comment James had was that for much of his life, he was known as Ike Taylor’s son, James. Eventually, there came a time when Ike Taylor was known as James Taylor’s father. I’m sure that was quite the mindblowing experience for James Taylor, particularly the first time he realized it while sober. I definitely recommend listening to Break Shot, especially if you’re a James Taylor fan. And I liked Rocketman alright, too, although I learned a lot more from Elton John’s autobiography.

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