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26 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointed In How Buck's Life Story Was Presented, July 14, 2010
This review is from: Buck Owens: The Biography (Hardcover)
As a Buck Owens fan fairly familiar with his life story already, I was disappointed in how this book chose to depict Alvis Edgar Owens, Jr.
As an unauthorized biography, it strives to measure up in two ways.
First, it attempts to chronicle Buck's life in a detailed, factual way -- sharing crazy inside stories about the evolution to fame and the long and winding road to get there.
Second, it attempts to deliver never-before-heard, brow-raising claims that define why many people feel unauthorized biographies border on tabloid journalism and are presented for only one reason.
Do I dare say they're setting new lows in trying to turn a Buck on this one?
To begin with, the book has neither a heart nor a soul. It mostly felt like an ax grinding.
Buck's life story is as good as they come -- better than most.
He was known to be a hard-nosed businessman and demanding boss. But he was also a dreamer and it was his heart that relentlessly drove him forward. He knew what he wanted -- and what he didn't want. Buck left a great lesson about getting something in your heart.
Buck also had a tremendous work ethic and an intuitive sense of business that he learned along the way. He did the very best he could with what he had to work with. Another great lesson.
To me the book seemed choppy and helter-skelter. Buck's life story should be a wild roller coaster ride, a beginning to end loop filled with highs and lows, crazy turns and all the emotions that come with the ticket.
Instead, the flow of this story made me feel more like I was in a pinball machine --never quite sure where the story was bouncing next. It's when I started to hear that ax grinding. Tilt.
Although I enjoyed learning about key figures in Buck's life, the book drops so many names from the recording industry that they clutter-up the story and become disruptive to its flow and continuity. I had to go back time and again to make sure I had my "who's-who" correct. I did so because I felt confused.
In addition, the never-ending documentation of "songs and years that Buck released them" seemed like meaningless fill. Buck had lots of hits and lots of key songs and they all needed to be in the story. Many of the other songs, again, seemed like clutter.
The book offers a variety of tales of Buck's wild and controversial side as well. The behind-the-scenes offerings include stories of sex, drugs, women, strained relations, business ethics and secret deals. Many of the tales are so one-sided and whispy with backup that real Buck fans will have a hard time not feeling offended.
There's no doubt that Buck Owens had his highs, and assuredly had his lows.
But this book seems to have chosen his lows as its theme and pathway to the bank. From the outset the tone is set when readers are teased with the line that Buck was "a very bad man who made very good music."
Considering from where he came, and to where he took himself in life, Buck's story is as All-American as they get -- including his lows. It's one that many might be inspired by, or be able to learn from. The unauthorized biography has chosen to offer a darker vision of what Buck did with his life.
To me, Alvis Edgar Owens, Jr. deserves better than this.
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14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A limited version of the story..., July 21, 2010
This review is from: Buck Owens: The Biography (Hardcover)
Sisk's book is a mostly a tabloid-style recounting of Buck's career, focusing primarily on his tawdry personal behaviors and his ruthless business practices. I'd already heard indirectly that Buck was an SOB while Don Rich was a decent and kind-hearted individual. This biography gives us all the gory details. It's valuable because it draws on first-hand interviews with key figures including Doyle Holly, Tom Brumley, Willie Cantu, other Buckaroos, wives, friends, and folks connected to Buck. Some of what is said is interesting and insightful. Other times it is just a run-on deluge of claims, tall tales, and axes being ground. The reader is left to sort it all out and draw his or her own conclusions.
What this volume really lacks is a solid analysis of the music. Record release dates are mentioned throughout the narrative and a decent discography is included, but there is no insight into what made the music of Buck and the Buckaroos so special. What did they do that influenced so many others, especially the country-rockers like John Fogerty, Gram Parsons, Chris Hillman, and Herb Pedersen? I got the sense that Sisk does not have a solid understanding of country music and its history. Anyone who refers to Charley Pride's singing of "Elijah" rather than "Kaw-Liga" just didn't pass Country Music 101. BTW - the "unknown fan" in one of the photographs is Rose Maddox.
This biography provides some insights, but overall it is a rather one-dimensional perspective. To get a more comprehensive and musical view, search out the bits and pieces that can be found in the Rich Kienzle writings for the Bear Family box sets, the articles in Guitar Player and Vintage Guitar magazines, the notes in the Sundazed releases, the CMF's Journal of Country Music, and books such as Nick Dawidoff's In the Country of Country.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Warts and All, December 25, 2010
This review is from: Buck Owens: The Biography (Hardcover)
Eileen Sisk attacks her subject with the ferocity of a truth-seeking investigative journalist. As a result, the Buck Owens she exposes is not pretty. It took years of exhaustive digging and countless hours of interviewing the dozens of satellites in Buck's universe. The man is summed up by a remark spoken on a Bakersfield club stage by a former Buckaroo: "Sorry I'm late, but I was out looking for someone who liked Buck Owens. I couldn't find anybody."
A penny-pinching philanderer, who used women, musicians, family members, and business partners, Owens rose to became one of the most successful and influential country music stars of all time. He clung ferociously to his signature Bakersfield Sound for decades before he finally succumbed to the Nashville studio machine. He claimed the legacy of a child of sharecroppers, a dirt farmer who clawed his way out of poverty to become rich and famous. Sisk's history, however, tells a very different story: of a boy who supported himself with his enormous musical gifts from his early teens in Arizona, and later in California's San Joachin Valley.
Sisk portrays Owens' key players with sympathy. The great Don Rich, who lived an equally debauched and much abbreviated life, gets a great deal of ink, as do several other contributors to Buck's musical legacy. The many put-upon women Owens swept into his vortex give their conflicting accounts, each one believing somehow that she was the one great love of Buck's life. He played them like the strings on his telecaster, somehow giving each of them a share of his sweet, passionate music. And, with all his fame and fortune and his harem of beautiful lovers, he passed on, still adored by some and resented by many, but completely unfulfilled.
Sisk's biography is jam packed with facts, much of which would only be of interest to the die-hard discophile. Titles, b-sides, release dates, session players, and peak chart positions are all tirelessly detailed. And, even with her unadorned, journalistic writing style, Sisk's language sometimes even rises to the level of classic literature. My favorite passage: "The allure of California's Central Valley to Dust Bowlers was undeniable. With its blue skies, temperate climate, fertile valleys, and vast petroleum reserves, the region beckoned like a beautiful, fecund woman, ripe with the promise that life could--and would--go on."
As a fellow writer, I tip my hat to Eileen Sisk for her enormous achievement. She left no stone unturned in her quest to re-introduce Buck Owens to the world, warts and all, and was unrestrained in her revelation of the truth about an American music icon.
Rand Bishop, author of Makin' Stuff Up, Grand Pop, and The Absolute Essentials of Songwriting Success.
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