Tag: memoir

  • Britney Spears writes of abortion while dating Justin Timberlake in excerpts from upcoming memoir

    By Associated Press

    Britney Spears wrote that she had an abortion while dating Justin Timberlake more than 20 years ago, according to a peek inside her hotly anticipated memoir.

    “If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it,” she writes of the procedure, according to the excerpt from “The Woman in Me” published Tuesday in People magazine. “And yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father.”

    The pregnancy “was a surprise, but for me, it wasn’t a tragedy,” she wrote in the excerpt, saying that she had wanted to start a family with Timberlake — it was just earlier than expected.

    “But Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young,” she wrote. The couple broke up in 2002. It’s unclear when the pregnancy happened.

    Representatives for Spears declined to offer further comment. Representatives for Timberlake did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press. The AP has not been able to independently review a copy of the “The Woman in Me” yet.

    Spears, a prolific user of social media, has not posted to Instagram or X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, since the People stories were published.

    In the excerpt published in People, she characterized the abortion as “one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.”

    Spears’ long-awaited memoir will be published Oct. 24, just months after her divorce from Sam Asghari was announced and promising to shed light on the 41-year-old’s tumultuous decades in the spotlight.

    “NO ONE KNOWS WHAT I REALLY THOUGHT … UNTIL NOW,” reads a teaser for the book she posted Sunday. The audiobook will be narrated by actor Michelle Williams.

    Hailing from Kentwood, Louisiana, Spears rose to fame as a tween on “The Mickey Mouse Club,” alongside other future stars like Ryan Gosling and Timberlake — a trajectory chronicled in other excerpts published by People.

    Despite some further attempts at acting — in the People excerpts, she says the lead in “The Notebook” came down to her and Rachel McAdams and that she was relieved when 2002’s “Crossroads” was “was pretty much the beginning and end of my acting career” — she found indelible stardom with her music career, starting with 1999’s “…Baby One More Time.”

    She had two sons with Kevin Federline, but was placed under a court-ordered conservatorship — mostly under the supervision of her father — that controlled her life, money and voice after public breakdowns. That conservatorship would last nearly 14 years, ending in late 2021, after a swelling #FreeBritney movement that helped secure new limits on conservatorships in California.

    Many of Spears’ allegations against her father and others who operated the conservatorship are expected to be heard in a civil trial scheduled for next year.

    A 2021 documentary, “Framing Britney Spears,” included an old interview in which Timberlake spoke of sleeping with a former girlfriend and indicated he ridiculed her in his “Cry Me A River” music video.

    That sparked a backlash in which fans accused the former NSYNC member of contributing to Spears’ breakdown and also renewed ire about his role in Janet Jackson’s so-called wardrobe malfunction during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show. Subsequently, he apologized to Spears and Jackson “because I care for and respect these women and I know I failed.”

    A few months later, as Spears revealed long-guarded secrets about what she described as an “abusive” conservatorship in court, Timberlake tweeted his support.

    “After what we saw today, we should all be supporting Britney at this time,” he posted in June 2021. “Regardless of our past, good and bad, and no matter how long ago it was… what’s happening to her is just not right.” Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp

    Britney Spears wrote that she had an abortion while dating Justin Timberlake more than 20 years ago, according to a peek inside her hotly anticipated memoir.

    “If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it,” she writes of the procedure, according to the excerpt from “The Woman in Me” published Tuesday in People magazine. “And yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father.”

    The pregnancy “was a surprise, but for me, it wasn’t a tragedy,” she wrote in the excerpt, saying that she had wanted to start a family with Timberlake — it was just earlier than expected.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2′); });

    “But Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young,” she wrote. The couple broke up in 2002. It’s unclear when the pregnancy happened.

    Representatives for Spears declined to offer further comment. Representatives for Timberlake did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press. The AP has not been able to independently review a copy of the “The Woman in Me” yet.

    Spears, a prolific user of social media, has not posted to Instagram or X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, since the People stories were published.

    In the excerpt published in People, she characterized the abortion as “one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.”

    Spears’ long-awaited memoir will be published Oct. 24, just months after her divorce from Sam Asghari was announced and promising to shed light on the 41-year-old’s tumultuous decades in the spotlight.

    “NO ONE KNOWS WHAT I REALLY THOUGHT … UNTIL NOW,” reads a teaser for the book she posted Sunday. The audiobook will be narrated by actor Michelle Williams.

    Hailing from Kentwood, Louisiana, Spears rose to fame as a tween on “The Mickey Mouse Club,” alongside other future stars like Ryan Gosling and Timberlake — a trajectory chronicled in other excerpts published by People.

    Despite some further attempts at acting — in the People excerpts, she says the lead in “The Notebook” came down to her and Rachel McAdams and that she was relieved when 2002’s “Crossroads” was “was pretty much the beginning and end of my acting career” — she found indelible stardom with her music career, starting with 1999’s “…Baby One More Time.”

    She had two sons with Kevin Federline, but was placed under a court-ordered conservatorship — mostly under the supervision of her father — that controlled her life, money and voice after public breakdowns. That conservatorship would last nearly 14 years, ending in late 2021, after a swelling #FreeBritney movement that helped secure new limits on conservatorships in California.

    Many of Spears’ allegations against her father and others who operated the conservatorship are expected to be heard in a civil trial scheduled for next year.

    A 2021 documentary, “Framing Britney Spears,” included an old interview in which Timberlake spoke of sleeping with a former girlfriend and indicated he ridiculed her in his “Cry Me A River” music video.

    That sparked a backlash in which fans accused the former NSYNC member of contributing to Spears’ breakdown and also renewed ire about his role in Janet Jackson’s so-called wardrobe malfunction during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show. Subsequently, he apologized to Spears and Jackson “because I care for and respect these women and I know I failed.”

    A few months later, as Spears revealed long-guarded secrets about what she described as an “abusive” conservatorship in court, Timberlake tweeted his support.

    “After what we saw today, we should all be supporting Britney at this time,” he posted in June 2021. “Regardless of our past, good and bad, and no matter how long ago it was… what’s happening to her is just not right.” Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp

  • Bernie Taupin, Elton John’s lyricist, would like to have a word

    By Associated Press

    NEW YORK: If you’re thinking of checking out the new memoir by Elton John’s lyricist to learn more about the Rocket Man, you’re out of luck. This is Bernie Taupin’s song to sing.

    “Scattershot: Life, Music, Elton & Me” is a fascinating read for the pictures it paints of the music scene of the 1970s, ’80s and ‘90s but if John is what you seek, he writes, the singer-pianist is “in absentia for much of this narrative.”

    “What people don’t realize is that we were joined at the hip at the beginning. It was sort of me and him against the world,” Taupin said in a recent interview. “But I think once that we gained a modicum of success, it was natural that we would sort of separate and find our own lives.”

    “Scattershot” is the story of an Englishman bewitched by country music and the American West who grows up to supply lyrics to one of rock n ’roll’s all-time superstars and later in life embraces art and becomes a bona fide cowboy.

    “It was a great sort of psychological adventure, in a way,” he says. “It was like being on the couch and remembering things, being prodded by myself rather than a psychiatrist.”

    Readers will learn that “Bennie and the Jets” was inspired by Fritz Lang’s landmark film “Metropolis,” “Tiny Dancer” actually describes a handful of Los Angeles women, and “I’m Still Standing” was based on a breakup suffered by Taupin.

    They’ll learn he was buzzed and poolside in Barbados when John called him for lyrics to a new duet he was working on. Taupin threw something together that was “simplistic without being overly trite.” It became “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” their first U.K. No. 1 and winner of an Ivor Novello Award. “Not bad for 10 minutes of drunken scribbling,” he writes.

    Of meeting John the first time, he writes: “I like him tremendously because he’s not condescending. I sense a kindred spirit; we’re outsiders looking for a way in, and I’m willing to play along, Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote.” He also writes about gracefully declining an early pass from John, paving the way for 50 years of friendship.

    Taupin reveals he once punched John Belushi, ate a half block of opium on a flight from New York, split his pants at a reception at Kensington Palace and that Marilyn Monroe was not the initial choice to anchor “Candle in the Wind.”

    When he and John revisited the song to honor Diana, Princess of Wales, Taupin spent just half an hour and acknowledges in his memoir that “if you put a gun to my head right now and threatened to kill me if I didn’t recite the lyric, I’d be a dead man. I don’t remember a word of it.” It would become the highest selling single of all time.

    Taupin doesn’t avoid spilling tea. Of Andy Warhol, he writes: “Talking to Andy was like conversing with an 8-year-old girl” and he wasn’t a fan of Hugh Hefner: “He was the possessor of a perpetual, passive smirk that I found unsettling.”

    “I always find that people tend to tiptoe around in autobiographies. But you have to call people out,” he said in the interview. “I call out a few people, some more than others. But I also compliment the ones that deserve to be complimented.”

    He also isn’t shy about criticizing his own work. He and John’s first album, “Empty Sky,” was “an acceptable debut, but more importantly, a harbinger of growth and improvement.” Later, the album “Jump Up!” was “definitely subpar.”

    Ben Schafer, an executive editor at Hachette Books who worked with Taupin on the memoir and is thanked in the acknowledgements, said “Scattershot” benefits from a writer living in two worlds.

    “He got to live like a rock star, but he didn’t have to be one and that gives him a certain kind of clarity,” said Schafer, who has worked on books by Brian Wilson, Lou Reed and Buddy Guy. “He’s totally inside, but, in a way, he’s outside and can live something of a normal life in the way Elton John can’t.”

    Taupin rejected writing a linear memoir, instead taking a page from Bob Dylan’s “Chronicles” and collecting his thoughts in themes or locations. His feelings and encounters with the royal family get one chapter, as does his trips to Mexico.

    “Doing it in a linear fashion, I think would have bored me, basically. It’s like writing songs: You write what you feel like writing at any given time. And that’s how the book was.”

    There are unusual sections, like a chapter that compares the prominent surrealist artist Salvador Dali, who got on Taupin’s nerves, with Taupin’s driver, Ralphie, an unknown guy whose company he enjoyed.

    “The chapter was to say there are people that are there for a short time in our life that don’t leave a great legacy, but they do in your own mind,” said Taupin. “In my mind, Ralphie was every every bit as important to me as running and hanging with Salvador Dali.”

    The John-Taupin collaboration has created some of modern music’s most lasting hits, like “Your Song” and “Rocket Man.” But Taupin is not precious about the meaning of his lyrics.

    “I think it’s far more interesting to let people come up with their own conclusions as to what this song is about. I think it’s fascinating. It’s like looking at contemporary modern art or abstract art. ‘Now, what was he trying to say with this?’” he said.

    “I never take for granted that our songs have stood the test of time. I’m completely complimented by that. And I never take it for granted.”

    Though associated closely with John, Taupin has also co-written such hits as “We Built This City” by Starship,“These Dreams” by Heart and “Breakfast in Birmingham” by Tanya Tucker.

    “I like writing in a country vein and the Americana vein because it suits my sensibility better than anything else. So I’m just lucky to be able to find the people that are able to put my stories into the right framework,” he said.

    Later in life, he embraced making expressionist art and the sport of cutting, an equestrian competition in which a horse and rider are judged on their skill separating cows. It’s full circle for the boy who once played cowboy.

    The book comes out a few months before Taupin’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — almost 30 years after John got in and, to many, a long-overdue honor for the man who wrote “My gift is my song, and this one’s for you.”

    “I’m probably going to be the first lyricist that’s actually in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, because, quite honestly, there aren’t many others,” he said. “I think I only got considered when they realized that I actually wasn’t in there.”

    NEW YORK: If you’re thinking of checking out the new memoir by Elton John’s lyricist to learn more about the Rocket Man, you’re out of luck. This is Bernie Taupin’s song to sing.

    “Scattershot: Life, Music, Elton & Me” is a fascinating read for the pictures it paints of the music scene of the 1970s, ’80s and ‘90s but if John is what you seek, he writes, the singer-pianist is “in absentia for much of this narrative.”

    “What people don’t realize is that we were joined at the hip at the beginning. It was sort of me and him against the world,” Taupin said in a recent interview. “But I think once that we gained a modicum of success, it was natural that we would sort of separate and find our own lives.”googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); });

    “Scattershot” is the story of an Englishman bewitched by country music and the American West who grows up to supply lyrics to one of rock n ’roll’s all-time superstars and later in life embraces art and becomes a bona fide cowboy.

    “It was a great sort of psychological adventure, in a way,” he says. “It was like being on the couch and remembering things, being prodded by myself rather than a psychiatrist.”

    Readers will learn that “Bennie and the Jets” was inspired by Fritz Lang’s landmark film “Metropolis,” “Tiny Dancer” actually describes a handful of Los Angeles women, and “I’m Still Standing” was based on a breakup suffered by Taupin.

    They’ll learn he was buzzed and poolside in Barbados when John called him for lyrics to a new duet he was working on. Taupin threw something together that was “simplistic without being overly trite.” It became “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” their first U.K. No. 1 and winner of an Ivor Novello Award. “Not bad for 10 minutes of drunken scribbling,” he writes.

    Of meeting John the first time, he writes: “I like him tremendously because he’s not condescending. I sense a kindred spirit; we’re outsiders looking for a way in, and I’m willing to play along, Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote.” He also writes about gracefully declining an early pass from John, paving the way for 50 years of friendship.

    Taupin reveals he once punched John Belushi, ate a half block of opium on a flight from New York, split his pants at a reception at Kensington Palace and that Marilyn Monroe was not the initial choice to anchor “Candle in the Wind.”

    When he and John revisited the song to honor Diana, Princess of Wales, Taupin spent just half an hour and acknowledges in his memoir that “if you put a gun to my head right now and threatened to kill me if I didn’t recite the lyric, I’d be a dead man. I don’t remember a word of it.” It would become the highest selling single of all time.

    Taupin doesn’t avoid spilling tea. Of Andy Warhol, he writes: “Talking to Andy was like conversing with an 8-year-old girl” and he wasn’t a fan of Hugh Hefner: “He was the possessor of a perpetual, passive smirk that I found unsettling.”

    “I always find that people tend to tiptoe around in autobiographies. But you have to call people out,” he said in the interview. “I call out a few people, some more than others. But I also compliment the ones that deserve to be complimented.”

    He also isn’t shy about criticizing his own work. He and John’s first album, “Empty Sky,” was “an acceptable debut, but more importantly, a harbinger of growth and improvement.” Later, the album “Jump Up!” was “definitely subpar.”

    Ben Schafer, an executive editor at Hachette Books who worked with Taupin on the memoir and is thanked in the acknowledgements, said “Scattershot” benefits from a writer living in two worlds.

    “He got to live like a rock star, but he didn’t have to be one and that gives him a certain kind of clarity,” said Schafer, who has worked on books by Brian Wilson, Lou Reed and Buddy Guy. “He’s totally inside, but, in a way, he’s outside and can live something of a normal life in the way Elton John can’t.”

    Taupin rejected writing a linear memoir, instead taking a page from Bob Dylan’s “Chronicles” and collecting his thoughts in themes or locations. His feelings and encounters with the royal family get one chapter, as does his trips to Mexico.

    “Doing it in a linear fashion, I think would have bored me, basically. It’s like writing songs: You write what you feel like writing at any given time. And that’s how the book was.”

    There are unusual sections, like a chapter that compares the prominent surrealist artist Salvador Dali, who got on Taupin’s nerves, with Taupin’s driver, Ralphie, an unknown guy whose company he enjoyed.

    “The chapter was to say there are people that are there for a short time in our life that don’t leave a great legacy, but they do in your own mind,” said Taupin. “In my mind, Ralphie was every every bit as important to me as running and hanging with Salvador Dali.”

    The John-Taupin collaboration has created some of modern music’s most lasting hits, like “Your Song” and “Rocket Man.” But Taupin is not precious about the meaning of his lyrics.

    “I think it’s far more interesting to let people come up with their own conclusions as to what this song is about. I think it’s fascinating. It’s like looking at contemporary modern art or abstract art. ‘Now, what was he trying to say with this?’” he said.

    “I never take for granted that our songs have stood the test of time. I’m completely complimented by that. And I never take it for granted.”

    Though associated closely with John, Taupin has also co-written such hits as “We Built This City” by Starship,“These Dreams” by Heart and “Breakfast in Birmingham” by Tanya Tucker.

    “I like writing in a country vein and the Americana vein because it suits my sensibility better than anything else. So I’m just lucky to be able to find the people that are able to put my stories into the right framework,” he said.

    Later in life, he embraced making expressionist art and the sport of cutting, an equestrian competition in which a horse and rider are judged on their skill separating cows. It’s full circle for the boy who once played cowboy.

    The book comes out a few months before Taupin’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — almost 30 years after John got in and, to many, a long-overdue honor for the man who wrote “My gift is my song, and this one’s for you.”

    “I’m probably going to be the first lyricist that’s actually in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, because, quite honestly, there aren’t many others,” he said. “I think I only got considered when they realized that I actually wasn’t in there.”

  • K-pop superband BTS release their much-awaited memoir 

    By Online Desk

    The K-pop megastars BTS have released their much-anticipated memoir. “Beyond the Story: 10 Year Record of BTS”, was released to mark the 10th anniversary of the group. This is the group’s first official book and contains a chronological summary of their decade-long musical career.

    The septet which debuted in 2013, announced the book in May. Over the course of their 10-year-long career, the seven-member boyband has become a cultural phenomenon, selling out stadiums and dominating charts around the world. 

    In the last five years, the five-time Grammy-nominated artists raked in over 4 billion US dollars each year to the South Korean economy. While talking to AFP a fan of the group said, “Thank you for saving me when I needed it,”.

    “I wish I could say more, but I am going to cry now,” she added.   

    The book, which is also being released in the United States, is co-written by the South Korean journalist Kang Myeong-Seok and members of the band and has been translated into English by Anton Hur, in collaboration with Clare Richards and Slin Jung.

    Even before the release, the book shot to the top of the Amazon bestseller list in May with pre-orders.

    The members of the band including RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook are currently focusing on their solo activities while they finish their mandatory military service.

    All able-bodied men in South Korea must serve at least 18 months in the military and, after a years-long debate about whether BTS deserved an exemption, Jin, the oldest member of the group, enlisted last year.

    His bandmate J-Hope started his mandatory service in April, South Korean media reported at the time.

    Before the break, BTS bagged six No1 hits on the US Billboard Hot 100 and seven No1 on the Billboard 200 making them the only artists in history to do so. 

    The K-pop megastars BTS have released their much-anticipated memoir. “Beyond the Story: 10 Year Record of BTS”, was released to mark the 10th anniversary of the group. This is the group’s first official book and contains a chronological summary of their decade-long musical career.

    The septet which debuted in 2013, announced the book in May. Over the course of their 10-year-long career, the seven-member boyband has become a cultural phenomenon, selling out stadiums and dominating charts around the world. 

    In the last five years, the five-time Grammy-nominated artists raked in over 4 billion US dollars each year to the South Korean economy. While talking to AFP a fan of the group said, “Thank you for saving me when I needed it,”.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); });

    “I wish I could say more, but I am going to cry now,” she added.   

    The book, which is also being released in the United States, is co-written by the South Korean journalist Kang Myeong-Seok and members of the band and has been translated into English by Anton Hur, in collaboration with Clare Richards and Slin Jung.

    Even before the release, the book shot to the top of the Amazon bestseller list in May with pre-orders.

    The members of the band including RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook are currently focusing on their solo activities while they finish their mandatory military service.

    All able-bodied men in South Korea must serve at least 18 months in the military and, after a years-long debate about whether BTS deserved an exemption, Jin, the oldest member of the group, enlisted last year.

    His bandmate J-Hope started his mandatory service in April, South Korean media reported at the time.

    Before the break, BTS bagged six No1 hits on the US Billboard Hot 100 and seven No1 on the Billboard 200 making them the only artists in history to do so. 

  • At last: Streisand memoir ‘My Name is Barbra’ coming Nov. 7

    By Associated Press

    NEW YORK: Barbra Streisand’s very long-awaited memoir, a project she has talked about for years, is coming out this fall. Viking, a Penguin Random House imprint, will release “My Name is Barbra” on Nov. 7.

    “Dozens of books have been written about Streisand, and now in ‘My Name Is Barbra,’ she tells her story in her own words,” Viking announced Tuesday.

    “My Name Is Barbra” also is the title of a 1965 Streisand album and television special.

    Publishers have sought a Streisand memoir for decades, with the singer telling Jimmy Fallon in 2021 that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis asked her to write one in the early 1980s, when the former first lady was an editor at Doubleday. In 2009, while being interviewed by The Associated Press about a book she wrote about her house in Malibu, California, Streisand mentioned that she had been writing chapters about her life, in longhand.

    “I go back and forth,” Streisand said at the time. “Do I really want to write about my life? Do I really want to relive my life? I’m not sure.”

    The memoir was first announced in 2015, and scheduled for two years later, although it didn’t have a title at the time. A reference to it on her web site, posted in 2015, was later pulled.

    Financial terms for the memoir were not disclosed. Streisand was represented by Robert Barnett, the Washington attorney whose other clients have ranged from Barack Obama to Elton John.

    Streisand, 80, told Fallon that she had written more than 800 pages, and she surely has enough stories to fill them. She has met everyone from John F. Kennedy and Judy Garland to Celine Dion and Paul McCartney. Her films include “Funny Girl,” “The Way We Were” and “A Star Is Born” and worldwide sales of her records exceed 150 million copies.

    Streisand has long been wary of discussing her private life, including her relationships with actor Elliott Gould and producer Jon Peters. Since 1998, she has been married to actor James Brolin.

    NEW YORK: Barbra Streisand’s very long-awaited memoir, a project she has talked about for years, is coming out this fall. Viking, a Penguin Random House imprint, will release “My Name is Barbra” on Nov. 7.

    “Dozens of books have been written about Streisand, and now in ‘My Name Is Barbra,’ she tells her story in her own words,” Viking announced Tuesday.

    “My Name Is Barbra” also is the title of a 1965 Streisand album and television special.

    Publishers have sought a Streisand memoir for decades, with the singer telling Jimmy Fallon in 2021 that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis asked her to write one in the early 1980s, when the former first lady was an editor at Doubleday. In 2009, while being interviewed by The Associated Press about a book she wrote about her house in Malibu, California, Streisand mentioned that she had been writing chapters about her life, in longhand.

    “I go back and forth,” Streisand said at the time. “Do I really want to write about my life? Do I really want to relive my life? I’m not sure.”

    The memoir was first announced in 2015, and scheduled for two years later, although it didn’t have a title at the time. A reference to it on her web site, posted in 2015, was later pulled.

    Financial terms for the memoir were not disclosed. Streisand was represented by Robert Barnett, the Washington attorney whose other clients have ranged from Barack Obama to Elton John.

    Streisand, 80, told Fallon that she had written more than 800 pages, and she surely has enough stories to fill them. She has met everyone from John F. Kennedy and Judy Garland to Celine Dion and Paul McCartney. Her films include “Funny Girl,” “The Way We Were” and “A Star Is Born” and worldwide sales of her records exceed 150 million copies.

    Streisand has long been wary of discussing her private life, including her relationships with actor Elliott Gould and producer Jon Peters. Since 1998, she has been married to actor James Brolin.

  • U2 frontman Bono releases memoir ‘Surrender’

    By AFP

    NEW YORK:  U2’s Bono on Tuesday released his memoir “Surrender,” detailing the journey from his youth in Dublin to fronting one of the world’s most prominent rock bands.

    The introspective book is organized across 40 different U2 songs, including 40 original drawings.

    The 62-year-old artist born Paul David Hewson is a long-time humanitarian well-known for lending his voice to a variety of causes, including the fight against poverty and AIDS.

    In his more than 500-page book, Bono delves in to those ambitions but also his growth as a teenager struck by tragedy — his mother died suddenly when he was 14 — and an account of his heart operation in 2016.

    He also waxes on the perplexities and finer points of songwriting, and “the pseudo-religious part of being a rock star, how we put the messy in messianic.”

    “U2’s music was never really rock ‘n’ roll,” he writes in the book. “Under its contemporary skin it’s opera — a big music, big emotions unlocked in the pop music of the day.”

    The rocker is promoting the memoir with a 14-date book tour entitled “Stories of Surrender,” which kicks off in New York this week and includes stops in Chicago, London, Berlin, Paris, Madrid and, of course, Dublin.

    “When I started to write this book, I was hoping to draw in detail what I’d previously only sketched in songs,” Bono said in a statement when the book’s publication was announced earlier this year.

    “Surrender is a word freighted with meaning for me. Growing up in Ireland in the seventies with my fists up (musically speaking), it was not a natural concept,” he continued. “I am still grappling with this most humbling of commands. In the band, in my marriage, in my faith, in my life as an activist.”

    “Surrender is the story of one pilgrim’s lack of progress… With a fair amount of fun along the way.”

    NEW YORK:  U2’s Bono on Tuesday released his memoir “Surrender,” detailing the journey from his youth in Dublin to fronting one of the world’s most prominent rock bands.

    The introspective book is organized across 40 different U2 songs, including 40 original drawings.

    The 62-year-old artist born Paul David Hewson is a long-time humanitarian well-known for lending his voice to a variety of causes, including the fight against poverty and AIDS.

    In his more than 500-page book, Bono delves in to those ambitions but also his growth as a teenager struck by tragedy — his mother died suddenly when he was 14 — and an account of his heart operation in 2016.

    He also waxes on the perplexities and finer points of songwriting, and “the pseudo-religious part of being a rock star, how we put the messy in messianic.”

    “U2’s music was never really rock ‘n’ roll,” he writes in the book. “Under its contemporary skin it’s opera — a big music, big emotions unlocked in the pop music of the day.”

    The rocker is promoting the memoir with a 14-date book tour entitled “Stories of Surrender,” which kicks off in New York this week and includes stops in Chicago, London, Berlin, Paris, Madrid and, of course, Dublin.

    “When I started to write this book, I was hoping to draw in detail what I’d previously only sketched in songs,” Bono said in a statement when the book’s publication was announced earlier this year.

    “Surrender is a word freighted with meaning for me. Growing up in Ireland in the seventies with my fists up (musically speaking), it was not a natural concept,” he continued. “I am still grappling with this most humbling of commands. In the band, in my marriage, in my faith, in my life as an activist.”

    “Surrender is the story of one pilgrim’s lack of progress… With a fair amount of fun along the way.”

  • Nick Cave to narrate audiobook to accompany his upcoming memoir

    By Online Desk

    Australian rock musician Nick Cave is to narrate a new audiobook to accompany his upcoming memoir, ‘Faith, Hope And Carnage’, reports said.

    Arriving on September 20, ‘Faith, Hope And Carnage’ will be based on 40 hours of interviews between Nick Cave and Observer journalist Seán O’Hagan, Radio Nova reports.

    The audiobook itself will also be narrated by Cave and O’Hagan, while it will be coproduced by Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth. The pair had previously collaborated with Cave on the film, 20,000 Days On Earth, the report added.

    “Working with Nick over the years has had a fundamental impact on who we are, on how we are”, the pair said in a statement.

    “For this audiobook we wanted to give you a direct experience—a seat at the table with Nick and Seán – two incandescent minds trying to just figure things out. Intimate, adventurous, faltering and fearless, these conversations will open your mind and heal your heart”. 

    The audiobook was also recorded by Michael Pender and Adam Devenney at Red Apple Creative in London. The recording also includes Cave’s albums Carnage, Skeleton Trees and Ghosteen.

    Cave’s upcoming memoir will explore the singer’s personal life and perspective over the last 6 years, following his son Arthur’s tragic death in 2015.

    Nick Cave faced further tragedy earlier this, following the death of his son Jethro. Cave thanked fans for their support following this tragic news.

    Thanking one fan in particular for writing a heartfelt letter, showing their support, Cave wrote, “Dear Teresa. Thank you for your letter. Many others have written to me about Jethro, sending condolences and kind words. These letters are a great source of comfort and I’d like to thank all of you for your support”.

    Australian rock musician Nick Cave is to narrate a new audiobook to accompany his upcoming memoir, ‘Faith, Hope And Carnage’, reports said.

    Arriving on September 20, ‘Faith, Hope And Carnage’ will be based on 40 hours of interviews between Nick Cave and Observer journalist Seán O’Hagan, Radio Nova reports.

    The audiobook itself will also be narrated by Cave and O’Hagan, while it will be coproduced by Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth. The pair had previously collaborated with Cave on the film, 20,000 Days On Earth, the report added.

    “Working with Nick over the years has had a fundamental impact on who we are, on how we are”, the pair said in a statement.

    “For this audiobook we wanted to give you a direct experience—a seat at the table with Nick and Seán – two incandescent minds trying to just figure things out. Intimate, adventurous, faltering and fearless, these conversations will open your mind and heal your heart”. 

    The audiobook was also recorded by Michael Pender and Adam Devenney at Red Apple Creative in London. The recording also includes Cave’s albums Carnage, Skeleton Trees and Ghosteen.

    Cave’s upcoming memoir will explore the singer’s personal life and perspective over the last 6 years, following his son Arthur’s tragic death in 2015.

    Nick Cave faced further tragedy earlier this, following the death of his son Jethro. Cave thanked fans for their support following this tragic news.

    Thanking one fan in particular for writing a heartfelt letter, showing their support, Cave wrote, “Dear Teresa. Thank you for your letter. Many others have written to me about Jethro, sending condolences and kind words. These letters are a great source of comfort and I’d like to thank all of you for your support”.