Rate this book

Composed: A Memoir (2010)

by Rosanne Cash(Favorite Author)

3.68 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0670021962 (ISBN13: 9780670021963)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Viking Adult

review 1: This memoir by a well known singer and song writer has been a delightful surprise. I am not sure what I expected when I picked up this book after reading a favourable review, but I was certainly not expecting to find this thoughtful overflow of words. And I am not sure why not, after all she is an accomplished songwriter, so why would I not expect insightful and even elegant prose?? Well I must say I did find it. Roseanne invites us into her life beginning with her childhood days with her mother Vivian whose Catholic faith was an important part of her makeup and her famous dad Johnny Cash who was frequently absent from home on tour. She describes the wrenching effect of her parent’s divorce, the confusion of adjusting to newly created families, her search to find a pl... moreace in the creative arts outside the shadow of her father and her struggle to find her own niche as a singer/songwriter. Growing up, words had always fascinated Rosanne. She began writing poetry at a young age, later flirted with acting and finally decided on song writing as what she really wanted to do in life. After graduating from high school, her father took her on tour with him. During that period she learned to play guitar and began her romance with singing and song writing. A short stint in London provided the opportunity of a record contract with a limited release in Europe, a fact that allowed her to experiment with her music without overt comparisons to her father. She wrote her first song at the age of twenty in Munich Germany lying on the floor of a friend’s apartment, and that helped to start it all. After returning to the States, she continued writing music, recorded several albums and met a good measure of success. She always loved the song writing, driven by a deep love and obsession with language, poetry and melody. But she was less than enthusiastic about performing her songs, and absolutely hated the public life and her loss of privacy. She eventually grew to dislike her role in the Nashville community with its pressure to conform to its expectations, attend big events, start a fan club and act as if country music was some kind of religion. So she packed up and left, finding a more comfortable home in New York City where she lives to this day. Roseanne takes us down the paths of her self-education outside the bounds of formalized college courses. She learned the techniques of musical production and the skills required to achieve the sounds she wanted. She worked hard to refine the layered process of recording with basic tracks and overdubs, practicing so she could write, record and mix her own records. Regretfully, all this hand crafted work was put aside with the advent of digital recording, when the language and techniques changed completely. She tried learning how to express herself without words and sound through painting, and refined her singing skills by learning better breath control and improving her ability to sustain a note. She never stopped exploring her craft, trying to expand the subject matter of her songs, her choice of language and training her voice for better technique and increased stamina. Although she hated performing she worked hard at it, working out a lifetime of self doubt and musical vulnerability on the stage. And finally after a long struggle, she has come to embrace performing onstage as an enormous gift. As a songwriter she laments what has happened to country music, which she describes as “shiny, rich and shallow”, having lost all its ties to “ shared blood, history and family” and replaced it will its single theme of “sexual heat, pairing up and breaking up”. Like any working mother, Rosanne was confronted suddenly and unexpectedly by the need to find balance between motherhood and her singing career when her children were born. She speaks lovingly of each of them and the important role they have played in her life. She writes hauntingly of her respect and need for the comforting embrace of family----her parents, her siblings and the entire extended clan that has surrounded her since childhood. She describes the stress and strain of her father’s countless health issues as an exhausting drama of acute and sudden illness followed by near miraculous recoveries --- and how it is so difficult now, when she is reminded every day by his fans that he is gone. She is still coping with the grief of losing both her parents as well as many members of her close knit family in the recent past. This is not a “tell all” book. It is a wonderful memoir, written in easy to read prose about a daughter trying to make a life for herself and find a place in the world. A very good read, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
review 2: Had it not been for Cash appearing on the On Being podcast and showing herself not only to be intelligent, articulate and thoughtful, but also a bit of a geek, I would probably never have checked out this book. Bios and memoirs of musicians or actors (or, really, anyone still alive) just isn't my thing. I like her music well enough, but the interview with On Being downplayed the "famous family" angle and played up the angle of someone who is curious about everything from Jung to quantum physics and would much rather talk about those than about her fame. Rosann Cash is her own person, one who took a long time to figure that out for herself, and she's not into dishing the dirt on her famous family. She admits that she's a big fan of privacy and it took her years to figure out how to do what she loved (songwriting and signing) while minimizing her exposure to the public eye. I find this a plus; apparently, others find it a negative. Like I said, I'm not into fangirling anyone just because they happen to be famous. The book is deceptive. There are points where you think "OK, she's just recounting stuff she did -- sometimes in weirdly shallow-seeming detail -- not all that fascinating." Then, suddenly, she heads for deep water and you realize that all that extraneous description was to bring you into the scene before she goes into what's really on her mind: loss, love, grief, the creative process, owning up to the stupid things you thought were smart at the time and the smart things you thought were stupid at the time, how figuring out what we are isn't something that has a deadline, postcards from the future and voices from the past. There is no great point to the book, no ax to grind or self-congratulations to parade; it's more like a late night conversation with someone who can laugh at herself and be a little in awe of how things seem to fall into place in spite of all our fumbling and well-meaning mistakes. less

Download links for: Composed: A Memoir

Advertising