October 2021: Ego

Books read this month: Unrequited Infatuations by Stevie Van Zandt (White Rabbit, 2021); Oasis Supersonic - The Complete Authorised and Uncut Interviews edited by Simon Halfon (Headline, 2021).

Ego: noun, a person's sense of self-esteem or self-importance. There's another, more psychoanalytic definition of the word, too: the part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and is responsible for reality testing and a sense of personal identity. There you go... that's what we're talking about. Ego is vital in music and writing. Hell, it's vital in art. But there's an oft-discussed fine line between ego and the determined, definite and demented self-obsessed fuel of personal belief and/or confidence artists carry beside them. Where does confidence stop and arrogance begin? It's the line that can't be defined... there's truth and there are consequences and that's that. When an artist crosses the invisible border between the two, there's no alarms or no surprises, just a dutiful shrug of recognition.

I volunteered a few dutiful shrugs of recognition reading the honest, hilarious and hitherto 'Unrequited Infatuations' of Stevie Van Zandt. Full disclaimer: I'm a longtime fan of the E Street Band, The Sopranos and Stevie's soulful solo career. When The Sopranos dropped 'Inside Of Me' into its soundtrack or made one of their (many) Springsteen nods and winks, I loved it like the geek I am. Stevie's a geek, too, but he'd never admit it. Growing up 'a freak' in suburban New Jersey, Van Zandt wore his outsider badges with pride and made all the discoveries he'd ever need along the way: sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll came to Stevie like austerity came to the Jersey shore in the seventies. His best friend Bruce Springsteen's book tells a different story of unwanted attention, alienation and walking afraid through small town prejudices and daily scares. The truth, lost in the mists of time, may rest in the space between the two. Stevie meets Bruce while they're still teenagers and the book's warmest moments belong to Van Zandt detailing their many hits, misses and maybes. The longer the book goes, the bigger Bruce's hits become... the rub? Van Zandt is gone. After being discarded early on, brought back into the band, infiltrating the production team and gaining his confidant's confidence, the consigliere decides to go his own way just as 'Born In The USA' is released. It might seem a bad move, but this blues brother (and soul, rock 'n' roll, outlaw country and hip-hop aficionado) was born under a bad sign (bad meaning good, you dig?) and manages to find himself in his lost decade. Van Zandt is always honest when talking about the amount of ears his music reached, but he's got a dollar on the amount of seismic cultural shifts his eighties enabled. His work with the E Street Band, 'Sun City', 'The Sopranos', modern-format radio and charitable causes is undeniably catalytic and a huge success. But did he really get Nelson Mandela out of jail? In all this book's righteous reckonings of rock 'n' roll, we never find out whether Stevie preferred The Faces to Humble Pie... read it and make up your own mind.

Oasis always made their own minds up. Well, Liam and Noel Gallagher did. Armed with the confidence of second generation immigrants growing up talking the same way as the people around them, the brothers made for good copy from the day they first opened their gobs. The rub? They were never talking 'good copy', just being themselves. 'Oasis Supersonic - The Complete Authorised and Uncut Interviews' is a coffee table book with a difference: it's brimful of words. Sure there's pictures from the start right up to Knebworth (the interviews for the recent film provide the words here), but it's the undiluted utterances of Liam, Noel and those around them that dominate. Good quotes? How long have you got?! There's gold, frank and mirth on each and every page as Oasis come of age in the end days of huge record sales, mainstream interest in music and mad for it fans. Early chapters tell the tale chronologically from the backstreets of Burnage, to the menace of Moss Side and Maine Road, through boring and bawdy nights rehearing under Manchester's Boardwalk, before a day trip to Glasgow (that really is all it was intended to be) turned into the first day of the rest of their lives. From there, the book moves with the pace and precision of a Paul Lake cross as chaos and Creation take over and move Oasis from playing in the toilets of the UK to sniffing in the bathrooms of the ballrooms of the US and beyond. Hilarity ensues as the band and their entourage (read: mates from Manchester) shag, marry or confront everything in their path as debut singles, recording albums and award-show haranguing come and go. There's one thing that often gets overlooked with Oasis however, (blame Noel and Liam's fascination with the Union Flag, a dig at their dad, perhaps?) and that's the fact the band were Irish. All of them. It comes across in the melancholic ache every one of Noel's greatest melodies drip with as they reach for the furthest star, and it comes across here in the fun and fraught of all the things that frighten and thrill them at the same time. As guitarist Paul 'Bonehead' Arthurs says: "We were that blinkered we couldn't stop and notice our mate wasn't feeling right." Talking about first bass player Paul 'Guigsy' McGuigan's breakdown in 1996, Noel and Liam also reveal regret at the all-consuming advance of the Oasis machine and it's ability to never stop and look back for castaways. The book ends at Knebworth as the primary sources again try to rewrite history and ignore the band's lumbering first decade of the new Millennium - but that tells you everything else you need to know, Oasis Supersonic - The Complete Authorised and Uncut Interviews tells us all we need to know instead. Put Noel's interviews on YouTube away and pick up this book... it's better when you can only hear these voices in your head. Where were you while they were getting high? If you were right there with them, you'll be mad for this book. Thanks for reading. Roll with it :) Al x