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Soul Mining: A Musical Life (2010)

by Daniel Lanois(Favorite Author)

3.77 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1429962984 (ISBN13: 9781429962988)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Faber & Faber

review 1: I have loved Daniel Lanois as a producer and songwriter for decades - he's taken me from my core listening in 1980s modern rock (legendary records by U2, Peter Gabriel) into spooky dirges by Bob Dylan and the space-age country of Emmylou Harris's WRECKING BALL. I have more records that he's played on, written, sung, produced or engineered than anyone else on the planet. Needless to say I loved this book but I didn't always like it. You have to accept Lanois' voice - musical, yearning, frustrated, discursive - and value it rather than wishing the text was more structured or chronological. You have to grant that he's written the book as (to borrow from his collaborator Dylan) "a series of dreams," with stories jumping from his impoverished childhood in Quebec and broken fami... morely to recording with U2 in Dublin to the mountainsides of Oaxaca and cheap recording studios in Toronto. He jumps around and seemingly aspires more to evocative vignettes than chronological coherence. The reader will still get tremendous insight into Lanois' vision as a record producer, and lovely gossip into his collaborations. But gearheads will wonder if he could provide more detail on his recording philosophies and techniques. Music geeks like me will want more about the songwriting behind his own beautiful records. And fans of tell-all music biographies will want more about the boldface names that Lanois has worked with over the past decades. So everyone might be a bit disappointed but the overall reading experience is still eminently worthy. You just wish the book came with a CD or Spotify playlist to hear all the music he helped to make and describes in such vivid detail.
review 2: I read this memoir by Daniel Lanois while going through a bit of a Lanois binge (albums, concert, stage interview). Lanois' production elevates the music of some very talented artists (Peter Gabriel, the Neville Brothers, U2, Emmylou Harris, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Neil Young, et al), and his solo albums are filled with mood and atmosphere. So is his book. This isn't a tell-all autobiography. Some personal aspects of his life aren't discussed at all. It's a quilt of a memoir and the creation of music is the thread that holds the story elements together. Daniel has a very strong sense of place. His stories of growing up are thick with atmosphere. I loved his descriptions of turning a former theatre into a recording studio when he was making music for the movie Slingblade, and creating music in the rural outskirts of Oaxaca. Tavel is very much a theme in this book, both literally, as he's always on the move or riding motorcycles for pleasure, as well as personal voyage, as Daniel searches for new ways to move forward artistically. It lays on a little thick the 'wide-eyed Canadian kid plays in big leagues,' but I suspect that's how Daniel sees himself. Highly recommended if you like the music if Daniel Lanois or are interested in the process of making music -- or the creative process in general. less

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