Review: 'George Harrison On George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters'

It's very tempting to begin a review of a 550-page book of George Harrison interviews with mocking cliches about how he was "The Quiet Beatle," yet that tired old label is actually somewhat relevant to what may be the main lesson of George Harrison On George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters. Perhaps it was George's refusal to play the game on his interviewers' terms that got him slapped with that label. Averse to cliches himself, Harrison had little patience for questions about how long The Beatles would last, why they were so great, his feelings about occasional antagonist Paul McCartney, and other well-worn inquiries. He'd answer those questions but not without making his exasperation with them clear. So, for journalists, "quiet" may be a coded synonym for "difficult."

However, when it came to topics he was genuinely invested in, Harrison was anything but quiet. A good deal of these 550 pages, and all of the ones set during the last four years of The Beatles' career, are devoted to Harrison's devotion to Hinduism. This can be wearying to any reader who isn't specifically interested in this topic, but it is key to conveying editor Ashley Kahn's main goal in assembling the interviews and speeches he selects: getting to know the least-knowable member of the best-known band that ever was. I have zero interest in religion, but learning how deeply into spirituality Harrison was, and how informed he was about his chosen one's history and practices, is interesting. It is also interesting to read about how cool he was with his wife getting together with his best friend, his disdain for the music business and stardom, his ventures in movies with his production company HandMade Films, how much he liked to get silly and quote The Rutles, how unfiltered he was when discussing his conflicts with everyone from Paul to Sean Penn and Madonna, how much love he had for Paul even when the media was reporting otherwise, and how much contempt he had for the media in general. Perhaps George would be better labeled as "The Most No-Bullshit Beatle."

Review: 'Can’t Slow Down: How 1984 Became Pop’s Blockbuster Year'

Judged solely on the quality of its music, 1984 wasn’t necessarily the best year of the eighties. It did have an unusually high number of blockbuster releases. While 1982 could claim Thriller, and 1983 had Synchronicity, An Innocent Man, and Pyromania, 1984 was the year of such single-spewing juggernauts as the Footloose soundtrack, Born in the U.S.A., Eliminator, Sports, Can’t Slow Down, Like a Virgin, Private Dancer, She’s So Unusual, Purple Rain, and yes, 1984. So you can’t fault Michaelangelo Matos for making the year the subject of his new book Can’t Slow Down: How 1984 Became Pop’s Blockbuster Year. 

Review: ‘The Encyclopedia of New Wave’

I’ve consumed my share of colorfully illustrated books on punk, but they’ve always seemed a little wrong to me. Cheerily eulogizing the musical equivalent of a stick of dynamite up the sphincter kind of misses the point. The overtly commercial, style conscious New Wave, however, is ripe for that kind of overview, and Daniel Bukszpan’s Encyclopedia of New Wave is a doozy. Or maybe I should say “it’s a totally tubular tube of awesomeness that doesn’t make me want to gag myself with a spoon” or something. However you word it, The Encyclopedia of New Wave is a supremely entertaining retro trip through a pop-culture movement that seemed retro while it was happening, even though it was supposed to be, like, totally futuristic.

Bukszpan trots out hundreds of profiles on megastars like Madonna, credible artists like Elvis Costello, obscurities like Q-Feel (seriously… who?), and—errr—Robert Palmer. The profiles are brief but fairly informative. Above all else: They. Are. Hilarious. Bukszpan is a really, really, really funny guy. Consider this quote from his piece on Bananarama:

“The follow-up, Bananarama (1984), was another success, featuring the song “Cruel Summer,” which would appear in the epic Pat Morita film The Karate Kid, which was the moving story of a man getting his car waxed by a teenage boy.”

His profiles on Alphaville and Animotion also made me laugh out loud. Bukszpan must have written his profiles in order, because some of the comic inspiration evaporates as the book moves from A to Z. That still leaves us with a fun look at a diverse menagerie of one-hit, multi-hit, and no-hit wonders. Bukszpan sometimes interrupts his artist profiles with tangents on New Wave fashion, heart throbs, T.V., videos, and movies delivered with the same thrilling irreverence as the rest of the book. And if all those pesky words are too much for your coke-addled, Simon Le Bon-obsessed brain, The Encyclopedia of New Wave will still captivate you with its abundant photos and a design so dazzlingly colorful and awesomely garish you may need your Ray-Bans to view it.