Customer Reviews

Stu Who?: Forty Years of Navigating the Minefields of the Music Business

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Where I'm coming from: a part-time musician for around twenty years; did work for a record company for about 1 1/2 years and met my wife of 23 years there. Always fascinated with music careers. Well, I read Stu Who? because I actually did recognize the name from some old records. Rather than hash through his career points here, I'd just like to report that Stu Phillips has a gift for recounting his music career. He really humanizes what it is like to brush with fame, what it is like to get tremendously lucky, what it's like when the opposite of luck happens. He seems to be thinking and writing this book at the same time, which gives it an energy I could not resist. For some reason I carried it around with me everywhere until I was done, and I left the copy somewhere, wherever it was when I finished it. I guess that's the best recommendation you can give to a book, that it lives in your brain so strongly, you mislay the darn book itself. Good going Stu, and thanks for sharing your story.

"Stu Who?": Forty years Of Navigating The Minefields Of The Music Business by record producer, television and film composer Stu Phillips is the fascinating, informative, personal history of a life-long career in the music industry. Phillips shares heretofore unknown anecdotes about entertainment and music world personalities ranging from Sammy Davis, Jr.; Donna Reed; Librace; and Russ Meyer; to Shelley Fabares; James Darren; The Monkees; and Don Kirshner. From Phillips first professional job as a copyist for The Milton Berle Texaco Hour, to his work with Russ Meyer soft-porn movies, to his participation with cult classics such as Battlestar Galactica (where he was privileged to conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic), to his years in the recording business at Command, Colpix, Capitol, and Epic, to his work composing music from The Donna Reed Show, Gidget, as well as films like Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls, to his unsuccessful "dabbling" in film-making and screenwriting, "Stu Who" is an impressive autobiographical compendium that is enthusiastically recommended reading for anyone with an interest in the history and personalities of the music, television, and film industries.

A fascinating trip down memory lane which brings our childhood and adolescent heroes and icons to life and humanizes them. Stu is a gifter racounteur and his story is full of humor, pathos and interesting insights.

If ever there was a case of 'don't judge a book by it's cover' it's this one!! At first glance you might think you hold in your hands another dry, ordinary, boring, how-I-got-into-show-biz-and-how-great-I-am bio but this is NOT the case with this book! What a great read! Mr. Phillips' long, stellar and varied career in the music business is written with a lot of humor and I found myself laughing out loud through much of it. He also makes you feel not only for himself but for those 'characters', both ordinary and 'stars', that come and go in his life throughout the telling of his story. He makes then human. SOMEONE in Hollywood needs to pick up the rights to this book and make it into a movie!!! This book IS indeed hard to put down and I only found myself doing so after not being able to keep my eyes open any longer in the wee hours of the morning. Coming from someone who has been 'behind the scenes' for so long, it's nice to see him step out front and tell his story. I guarantee that if you've looked at a movie, watched television or listened to the radio or records and cds in the last 50 years, you've heard SOMETHING that had Mr. Phillips' name attached to it! Stop reading the review and click on the "Buy" button up top! You will not regret it! I promise!