Bodies: Life and Death in Music

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Winwood contemplates why creative people are drawn to such a lifestyle, and the ways in which creativity often comes with vulnerability. My Chemical Romance, the original Misfits (performing Walk Among Us in full) and Nine Inch Nails will top the bill at this year’s long-awaited Riot Fest. In Bodies, Ian Winwood explores the industry's reluctance to confront its many failures in a far-reaching story which features first-hand access to artists such as Foo Fighters, Green Day, Trent Reznor, Biffy Clyro, Kings of Leon, Chris Cornell, Mark Lanegan, Pearl Jam.

Finished the book feeling very strongly that Lennon was right about the men in suits who take the bulk of the money generated from the sales of the music made by creative but naive people.Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's daily session limit. With classics such as Ted Hughes's The Iron Man and award-winners including Emma Carroll's Letters from the Lighthouse, Faber Children's Books brings you the best in picture books, young reads and classics. Overall, a great book that held a mirror up to my own unfair assumptions of musicians and entertainers in general.

I would highly recommend this book to any fan of music in general, as it's such an important book that lifts the lid on the often glamourised life of being a rockstar. Behind this preposterously romantic, transgressive image lurks personal horror and tragedy, which Winwood recounts unsparingly, but with authentic empathy: the story of his own drink-and-drug fuelled collapse, which results in several stays in psychiatric hospitals, is woven through the book.The book has opened up a much-needed debate about the nature of the music industry as an insatiable meat grinder for creative souls with an instinct for self-destruction. The book struggled to stick to the topic, and it didn't answer questions, only reaching one conclusion as the possible cause of addiction and death in music business. Much more than a touchline re- porter, Winwood also tells the tale of his own mental-health collapse following the shocking death of his father. Instead, it's a memoir with heart and purpose, delivered by a correspondent seemingly at war with himself, from the frontlines of the music industry. A good read but maybe for all the wrong reasons - It’s a warts and all account which might take the edge of how you view the music industry going forward.

Bodies: Life and Death in Music is as harsh and unremitting a piece as it is deeply moving and warm. In Bodies, author Ian Winwood explores the music industry’s many failures, from addiction and mental health issues to its ongoing exploitation of artists. But life and death in music are much more than the febrile motions of drink and drugs, it is also the legal wranglings, the unspoken traditions and tribulations of bands trying to create and then survive.Bodies relates a number of incidents where an artist is pushed or feels impelled to work despite being clearly unwell, sometimes with terrible consequences. Bodies is an unflinching examination that contextualises that glacial place rather than excusing it, while being unsparing in its criticism. The pain in these pages isn't all historical, a revealing interview with Creeper bringing us up to the modern day. This interview is generally considered to be fiction of the journalist and to have never actually occurred. But for Winwood, it’s also a telling story: Watkins’s bandmates and management were aware that he had problems, and had attempted to help, but had no idea how bad things actually were, because the problems they thought Watkins had were so commonplace within the music industry, where drug addiction and “gruelling and maddeningly dysfunctional behaviour” are normalised.

Anyone familiar with Ian Winwood's writing knows that he's more than capable of bringing broadsheet-quality appraisal to genres of rock music beloved by millions but considered beneath serious consideration by much of the mainstream media. The lead singer became an egotistical liability, developing a drug problem that made him unreliable, alienated him from his bandmates and caused his teeth to start falling out. A real peek behind the curtain at the music industry, I had to keep stopping and starting this book as it took me to some dark places and was a little triggering.The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's pageview limit. But beneath the surface lies a frightening truth: for years the music industry has tolerated death, addiction and exploitation in the name of entertainment. It blends this with a genuine insight into mental health issues that can plague any of us, regardless of ages, sex or perceived success.