Bøger af Jim O'Donnell

Jim O'Donnell sets off from his childhood home in Pueblo, Colorado exploring the history, ecology, and commodification of Fountain Creek--challenging us to reexamine how we relate to the world around us and how we might break free to a brighter future. What is a river? Who owns history? Who decides the future? Over the past two hundred years, society has taken what was once a near-holy relationship with water and morphed rivers into trashed, overused commodities. Now, the rivers humans depend may no longer be up to the task. So, now what? Fountain Creek is a waterway that lived through the worst of human interaction. It has been dammed, diverted, poisoned, reduced, and much more and yet, it endured. The Fountain looks both to the past and the future for guidance asks humans to rethink the relationship with the brooks, streams, creeks, and rivers that give us life.

Five newly discovered, never-before-published interviews with Les Paul, inventor of the solidbody electric guitar and multi-track recording. Imagine if you had run into guitar legend Les Paul and asked him the following questions: "Les Paul, what is your favorite Les Paul?" "If you were talking to someone looking to break into the music business, or just starting to play guitar, what would you say to him or her?" "When Leo Fender was planning to come out with his solidbody electric guitar, did he ask you to join him to produce a 'Fender Les Paul" guitar?" "You've had so many setbacks in your life, yet you keep bouncing back. How do you do it?" Those are the exact questions--among many, many others--that music writer Jim O'Donnell puts to the late Les Paul in the course of five deeply engrossing conversations. The world class musician-inventor doesn't disappoint in his candid, humorous, often surprising responses. See how the mind of a genius works. Don't miss a word of these revealing question-and-answer sessions that bring Les Paul the person to the printed page. There are also four helpful appendices: a Les Paul discography, filmography, webography, and bibliography. As a special bonus, a Les Paul profile by Jim O'Donnell is included--a story that the guitarist enjoyed so much he had it hanging directly behind him onstage for two years. // LES PAUL: GUITARIST, GENIUS, GOOD GUY: Guitar players from Jimi Hendrix to Jimmy Page, from Andrés Segovia to B.B. King, have acknowledged the genius of Les Paul, inventor of the solidbody electric guitar and multi-track recording. A virtuoso guitar player in his own right, Les Paul won five Grammy Awards and is a member of the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. "The history of popular music without Les Paul," writes music journalist and author Jim O'Donnell, "would be as diminished as the history of the Beatles less Paul." The guitarist's many contributions to the world of popular music are well-known. What's not so well-known is the struggle he has had to endure to achieve his stunning success. From quintuple bypass heart surgery to four operations on his inner ear to encroaching arthritis in his hands, the guitar legend had to battle every inch of the way to the top. Along with critical health issues, his career in music was also a battle. "Just about everything that I ever thought of," he says, "it seemed as though there was someone put on this earth to just stick his foot out and trip me." In the course of his five interviews with Jim O'Donnell, Les Paul tells why he never quit, despite all the battles. The guitar great also talks about helping Jimi Hendrix build his recording studio; what it takes to make it in the music business; how to buy a guitar; creating the first solidbody electric guitar; how he developed the distinctive Les Paul sound; and a wide variety of other fascinating topics. What finally emerges is an authentic portrait of Les Paul the person-a person who turns out to be even bigger than the guitarist, the genius, or the guitar. // ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jim O'Donnell is a longtime music writer whose work is in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame library in Cleveland. He received his first professional newspaper byline for a sports story in 1969. Since that time, his features, profiles, columns and essays have focused mostly on rock 'n' roll. O'Donnell has written several books, including Queen Magic: Freddie Mercury Tribute and Brian May Interview and The Day John Met Paul, which was published by Penguin in several languages. He holds a Master's Degree from St. Peter's College and studied journalism under New Journalism pioneer Richard Goldstein at New York University. According to Michael Lydon, a Founding Editor of ROLLING STONE: "Jim O'Donnell has a reporter's curiosity, a rock 'n' roller's heart, and he writes like a lyrical Irish poet."

QUEEN GETS ROYAL TREATMENT! The English rock band Queen gets the royal treatment from the English language in a book called QUEEN MAGIC. The world class group is brought to life through amazingly vivid detail in two pieces of writing from longtime rock music author Jim O'Donnell. The first piece is O'Donnell's landmark review of 1992's Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert at Wembley Stadium, London, watched on TV by an estimated billion people. In the process of telling the story of the show, the piece tells the story of Queen in language fit for a king. Written in a lively style with many comic touches, the review steps far beyond center-stage and into the realm of fresh insight. The second piece is a deeply felt interview with Queen guitarist Brian May that O'Donnell conducted shortly after Freddie Mercury's death in 1991. The interview is a genuine, personal glimpse of the guitarist's feelings about his lead-singer and his band. All in all, QUEEN MAGIC uses the written word to discover and reveal the essence of this legendary band. FROM THE LATE RAY COLEMAN, FORMER EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF MELODY MAKER: "Jim O'Donnell's extraordinary piece on the Mercury farewell concert is the best writing I've ever seen on Freddie or, for that matter, on Queen." EXCERPTS FROM QUEEN MAGIC: On a post-concert interview: "After the concert, I had to pick my way through a courtly gathering of rock royalty backstage. It had been a long evening of deep feeling and I wondered what this lead-singer had on the tip of his tongue about the lead-singer who was missing. In a voice thick with emotion, the Who's Roger Daltrey told me: 'When we lost Freddie, we not only lost a great personality, a man with a great sense of humor, a true showman, but we lost probably the best, the really, the best virtuoso rock 'n' roll singer of all time. He could sing anything in any style. He could change his style from line to line and, God, that's an art. And he was brilliant at it.'" On Freddie Mercury's legend: "Mercury, the element, may be Number 80 on the Periodic Table, but Mercury, the musician, is closer to Number 8-probably higher-on the table of all-time great rock 'n' roll singers." On Freddie Mercury's vocal range: "He sang every form in the business-rock, pop, blues, country, soul, disco, opera-without disgracing any of them. Music loves to dance in the voice of a great singer and Mercury had a superlative voice. It was as if he didn't really 'hit' notes: he would more or less sweep them. As rock 'n' roll landmarks go, the Mercury voice had the range of the Matterhorn and the complexity of the Eiffel Tower." On the latter half of the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert: "Twilight began to settle on England. The evening sun dappled the stadium with flecks of zodiacal light as the three bandmates kicked the concert into warp-drive. Admirably as they played, the trio seemed jangled to be performing without their missing friend." FROM MICHAEL LYDON, A FOUNDING EDITOR OF ROLLING STONE: "Jim O'Donnell has a reporter's curiosity, a rock 'n' roller's heart, and he writes like a lyrical Irish poet."

JOHN LENNON'S LAST MOMENTS The title piece in this 10-story book tackles the question of whether former Beatle John Lennon died a swift death in seconds when he was shot in 1980, or an appallingly slow death over several excruciating minutes. Urban legend has it that Lennon was actually able to speak within minutes after being shot. But through many interviews with police officers and doctors, and a thorough look at various reports, author Jim O'Donnell dislodges this urban legend about a legend. Although some of the details about Lennon's death are graphic, they serve to show that Lennon most likely died a fast death, not a slow, tormented one. For example, there were two officers first on the scene where Lennon was shot. One of them told O'Donnell: "His [Lennon's] face was right into the floor, actually, face down. He wasn't turned left or right. His arms were spread out in front of his head, almost like you were taking a dive. He was actually turning white at that point." The remaining pieces in the book present the stories of nine other deceased people from the world of rock, including six rock stars, a DJ, a TV host, and a writer. CONTENTS 1. John Lennon Did Not Die A Slow Death 2. Jim Morrison: Rock's Wildest Celebrant 3. Elvis Presley (Occupation: Pop Singer) 4. And the Wind Cries Jimi 5. Janis Joplin: Lone Star 6. Getting Zapped by Zappa 7. Bill Haley: Rock's William the Conqueror 8. The Freed Kingdom 9. A Dick Clark Special 10. Ray Coleman: Author, Journalist, Mentor Excerpts On John Lennon: "It is time to put to rest the story that after being shot John Lennon was living, talking, conscious. Actually, he was dying, moaning, unconscious. This man who lived a fast life died a fast death, not a slow, tormented one." On Jim Morrison: "No singer before or since has had such a gift for embodying and dramatizing the search for self. He ate up every deep, dark aggression in the room, and sent it back in the emotional colors of his art. He was a natural. All Jim Morrison did for stardom, claimed Jim Morrison, was stop getting haircuts." On Elvis Presley: "It is the face that sailed a thousand hips. Twentieth-Century man-and woman, especially-knows the first name better than any other two names that ever graced the lips of humankind-Charlie Chaplain and Beethoven, Walter Cronkite and Sandy Koufax, Jane Fonda and Harry Truman, notwithstanding." On Jimi Hendrix: "He raised the performance level of rock 'n' roll in one blazing fell swoop. He was virtuosity AND flash. And once you saw him put the two together, the image was harder to shake than dandruff. You couldn't help demanding more from every performer you saw thereafter." On Janis Joplin: "Some performers let off steam on a stage. Janis Joplin let off lava. She was so volcanic, her back-up bands functioned mainly as rumbling blue clouds harboring her lightning bolts." On Frank Zappa: "Ugliness objectively correlates Zappa's thoroughly anarchic notion that acting and thinking strictly within society's unwritten rules prevents you from being fully and freely you. (Whew! What a long way of saying nicety is the mother of prevention.)" On Bill Haley: "Bill Haley was a smuggler: he smuggled rock 'n' roll past adult customs and into teen toyland. He had a diamond in his shoe-though he didn't really know it, or intend to break any laws. It was just that the commodity he offered was as freakoid to his public as fifty years earlier the horseless carriage that Barnum and Bailey Circus offered was to their public." On Alan Freed: "He is the reason the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame is in Cleveland-not in Memphis or Liverpool. He gave rock 'n' roll its name by using rock to do what it's supposed to do: free the spirit. And he freed many."

Presents an hour-by-hour account of the fateful day the two founding Beatles met in July 1957. This book tells the story of how fate brought together two men who would radically change the face of popular music, from its look and feel to its sound.