"Here Comes Trouble" by Michael Moore

Here Comes Trouble - Stories From My Life

by Michael Moore

Most people already have an opinion on Michael Moore. For those on the right, he's a figure of hate, a polemicist of the worst kind. Many on the left agree with most of his politics, but doubt some of the methods he employs to get his point across. 

This book is unlikely to win over those who have no time for him now. It's not quite an autobiography - more a series of short stories based on times in his life. One has to assume some poetic licence is taken, as he is able to remember verbatim conversations he had when he was 8 years old. 

If we are to take all his stories at face value, Moore appears to have lived the worlds most liberal life. Getting lost in the US Senate as a child - he is rescued by Bobby Kennedy who helps him find his mother. His favourite teacher was a black woman, a close friend nearly died due to a back-street abortion, he did a dry run into Canada in case he needed to avoid the draft, and he was kicked out of seminary for 'asking too many questions'. 

Moore has undoubtedly lead a more interesting and exciting life than most. Aged 18 he became the youngest person in America elected to public office when he successfully ran for a school board governor position - successfully getting rid of a sadistic and violent vice-principal.  He set up and ran his own newspaper aged 20 - which ran for 6 years. He fell into documentary making when he helped some local film-makers blag their way into a neo-nazi rally, and he also blagged his way into a 3 day meeting in Mexico which was arranging the outsourcing of jobs from the US to Mexico. He's got balls, no doubt about it.

What is bothersome about this book and (for me) about Moore in general is his "aw shucks - who me?" shtick. He talks at length at the amount of hate mail and death threats he gets and acts surprised that there are people out there who feel that way. Who knew?? This faux-humble routine sees him name drop interactions with John Lennon, Richard Nixon, Ronald & Nancy Regan and countless others. He also appears to credit himself with ending institutional racism through writing an essay and is able to deliver powerful speeches on disability rights (School valedictorian speech) off the top of his head. Or maybe that's just how he remembers it.

Freddie Mercury - The Definite Biography: Lesley Ann Jones

Freddie Mercury - The Definitive Biography

by Lesley-Ann Jones

Doing a Queen or Freddie biography is a tricky thing. They were notoriously private - and Freddie was especially protective of his privacy and was conscious of protecting his friends and family from the media glare. There's also the fact that, y'know - Freddie has been dead for 20 years. How much new information can you come up with? In fact, since his death, there's been quite a number of Queen/Freddie biographies ( I know, because Jones references about 10 of them herself) and this book isn't the first to suggest it is the 'definitive' one. 

Having said that, I've never actually read any of the previous books - and I have been a Queen fan for most of my life. There's actually not much I know about Queen on a personal level, so I was very keen to give it a go. 

Lesley Ann Jones was the 'Rock Correspondent' for the Daily Mail back when newspapers actually paid people to be Rock Correspondents and back when working for the Daily Mail wasn't quite as embarrassing and reprehensible as it might be today. 

I think if you want to claim that your version is the definitive, you need to get hold of people who haven't spoken to biographers before, or to people who were very close to Queen and to Freddie. Jones only half succeeds here. She speaks at length to long time Queen manager: Jim Beach, 5th member of Queen: Spike Edney and various other producers, managers and lovers - including Barbara Valentin (one of the 2 women that Freddie was apparently sexually active with) and Jim Hutton who was his partner for the last 10 years of his life. Crucially though, she gets nothing new from May, Taylor or Deacon, nothing from Mary Austin - his long time companion/girlfriend and quotes from people like Elton John, George Michael and Bob Geldof are taken from books and magazines (can it really be that hard to get Bob Geldof to talk for 10 minutes?). Instead we get Rick Wakeman and Dave Clarke. 

In general, its a curious though mostly interesting book. It feels very uneven in terms of areas that she chooses to go into detail about, and those she doesn't. I guess you have to use the information you have. 

For example, there's very little at all about the creative process or studio work behind any of Queen's or Freddies albums. There's about 3 pages out of 350 covering the writing, making and releasing of "A Kind of Magic", "The Miracle" and "Innuendo", whereas Freddie's nightclubbing and partying antics in New York get acres of space. Obviously being a wild party animal was part of the attraction and interest in Freddie, but he was actually primarily a musician - something that seems to come a distant second in this book. 

One of the main themes in the book is Freddie's struggle with his sexuality. His families faith and culture were disapproving of homosexuality - and from a young age, he was dispatched off to boarding school - making him desperate for his parents love and therefore not wanting to shame them. For all of his adult life he seems to want to be heterosexual, but quite plainly isn't - finally becoming more comfortable with it in later life. There is a suggestion that because he had low self esteem and was ashamed of his sexuality, he was never really careful about who he slept with and never really had self-preservation in mind. 

For me, the most interesting part of the book is around Live Aid - undoubtedly Queen's finest moment. They were an extremely hard working and organised band - they were one of the few acts to rehearse their Live Aid performance, and once of the few to bring their own sound engineer to manage their 20 minute slot - this is the sort of info I could have done with more of.