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Best known for his song “Super Freak,” hitmaker, singer, innovator, producer, award-winning pioneer in the fusion of funk groove and rock, the late Rick James collaborated with music biographer David Ritz in this posthumously published, wildly entertaining, and profound expression of a rock star’s life and soul.
He was the nephew of Temptations singer Melvin Franklin; a boy who watched and listened, mesmerized from underneath cocktail tables at the shows of Etta James and Miles Davis. He was a vagrant hippie who wandered to Toronto, where he ended up playing with Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, and he became a household name in the 1980s with his hit song “Super Freak.” Later in life, he was a bad boy who got caught up in drug smuggling and ended up in prison. But since his passing in August 2004, Rick James has remained a legendary icon whose name is nearly synonymous with funk music—and who popularized the genre, creating a lasting influence on pop artists from Prince to Jay-Z to Snoop Dogg, among countless others.
In Glow, Rick James and acclaimed music biographer David Ritz collaborated to write a no-holds-barred memoir about the boy and the man who became a music superstar in America’s disco age. It tells of James’s upbringing and how his mother introduced him to musical geniuses of the time. And it reveals details on many universally revered artists, from Marvin Gaye and Prince to Nash, Teena Marie, and Berry Gordy. James himself said, “My journey has taken me through hell and back. It’s all in my music—the parties, the pain, the oversized ego, the insane obsessions.” But despite his bad boy behavior, James was a tremendous talent and a unique, unforgettable human being. His “glow” was an overriding quality that one of his mentors saw in him—and one that will stay with this legendary figure who left an indelible mark on American popular music.
- Sales Rank: #379805 in Books
- Published on: 2015-12-29
- Released on: 2015-12-29
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.37" h x 1.00" w x 5.50" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 368 pages
Review
“A raw and authentic accounting of Rick James' life and times.” (USA Today)
“Intriguing as a pipe-filled motel-room breakdown.” (Rolling Stone)
“A fast-paced memoir recounting his sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll exploits.” (Publishers Weekly)
Unflinching . . . . manages to temporarily separate the story of the monster from the story of Rick James, the way Marvel Comics occasionally pulls apart Bruce Banner and the Hulk. (Alex Pappademas, Grantland)
“An engrossing portrait of his life and career.” (Vulture.com)
“As close as we’ll ever get to the real thing.” (Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News)
About the Author
Rick James was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer, best known for popularizing funk music in the late 1970s and early 1980s thanks to million-selling hits.
David Ritz is the only four-time winner of the Gleason Music Book Award.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Glow LOCKED UP
I’m having these crazy dreams in jail. The dreams are so vivid—so wildly creative—that I know God is in charge of my imagination. I couldn’t dream up this shit without God. God has to be the author of my dreams. In one dream, I’m with Miles Davis. We’re dressed like African princes. Our robes are blue and gold. Miles is singing and I’m playing trumpet. Black angels are surrounding us. We’re bathed in sunlight. We’re on top of the Empire State Building and everyone in the city of New York can hear us. The people are assembled on the street; they’re hanging out their windows and waving flags from office buildings. Helicopters are flying over us, but our music is so powerful that we drown out all noise. Our music is some symphony that has the angels dancing in the sky.
“Didn’t know you could play jazz so good,” Miles says to me.
“Didn’t know you could sing so funky,” I say to him.
The music is so beautiful I start crying through Miles’s horn.
Someone says, “The hospitals are clearing out. The patients are healed.”
Someone else says, “The churches are clearing. The congregations are in the streets.”
“I told you,” says Miles. “I told you we could do it.”
When I put the trumpet to my lips again, the horn turns into a megaphone. When I start to speak, I hear the voice of my mother.
“My son has the answer,” she says. “Miles gave him the answer. Listen to my son.”
I turn to Miles, who rarely smiles, and see that he is smiling.
When I wake up from this dream, I am smiling.
But I’m still in jail.
This long stay in jail is the first time I’m remembering my dreams. I’m not even sure I had dreams before they put my ass behind bars. My mind was clogged up with cocaine—not just any cocaine, but cocaine strong enough to fuel jet engines. I was a jet engine that got dislodged from the plane of my brain. I crashed to the ground and broke into a million pieces. When the pieces magically came back together, the engine could work again. But the fuel was no longer cocaine. The fuel was something I hadn’t used since I was a little boy. I’d call it natural energy and natural drive. It’s a natural restlessness to see and explore and learn. Couldn’t do any of that exploring when I was ripping and running through the world of intoxicants. Didn’t wanna explore. Just wanted to stay high.
So ain’t this a bitch? My highs are my dreams. My dreams are my escape. And my imagination is my way out of prison. If you break down the word “imagination,” I guess it means manufacturing images. Dreaming is the purest form of that process—so, for as long as I’m locked up, I’m gonna write down my dreams.
I’m also gonna write down my life.
I’ve always wanted to write my own life story. But outside of prison I could never sit down and be quiet. My energy was scattered. I was always going in a dozen different directions at once. But now I got no choice. Got nowhere to go and nothing to do. I’m forced to read. And in reading—especially about the lives of people I relate to—I get excited. I read about Charlie Parker, Nat King Cole, Bob Marley, and Malcolm X, and I understand exactly why their lives went the way they did. I see their fuckups as my fuckups; I see their talents as my talents. Sometimes talent is so big it takes you to places that you don’t understand. Super talent doesn’t take you to the Land of Peace; it takes you to Crazyland. And if you ain’t emotionally grounded in something rock-solid, you gonna get annihilated.
I got annihilated. Now I’m getting healed. And part of the healing is dreaming, remembering, and writing.
I can write in peace because I don’t have access to my lethal vices. Being a celebrity in jail also means I have protectors who keep the bad cats away from me. They see I’m serious about writing and form a shield around me.
In prison, I’ve gravitated toward the bookish brothas. I’ve met Muslims who have taken me deep into the Koran. I love and respect Islam. I was raised Catholic but never really studied the Bible till late in life. The Christian brothas in prison have given me a new way to look at the Word. A Jewish man has been talking about Kabbalah, mysticism with wisdom of its own.
Don’t worry. I ain’t gonna shove no religion down your throat. I’m not using this book to win converts. I’m just using the book to manufacture images from my past. I just wanna look at old pictures, lay ’em out there, and, like a jigsaw puzzle, see if I can make the pieces fit. See if I can make sense of a life of nonsense and understand how I got to be caged up like an animal.
I am an animal, a fuckin’ wild animal. I lost my human soul. I lost my human mind. But in this animal cage, my intention is to win back my humanity. Animals can’t write.
I can.
I will.
Here goes . . .
Most helpful customer reviews
53 of 53 people found the following review helpful.
Not a bad book, but I thought this was another Rick ...
By T. Daniels
Not a bad book, but I thought this was another Rick James autobiography. I thought that he covered everything in The Confessions of Rick James: Memoirs of a Super Freak and there was no way he had wrote another before his passing and this was the case. This book is simply an edited version of Memoirs of a Super Freak. If you read the other years ago, there is no need to read this one. Great book written in Rick's words, but it's more tame and doesn't go into every little detail. There was no need for me to finish reading this book, because I read the other. You can't go wrong with either one of them though.
--EDIT
Upon further review, I give the book a 3 out of 5. The book is good, but the problem I have with it is that i compared this with my copy of Memoirs of a Super Freak and David Ritz destroyed a good book. Memoirs was raw and pulled no punches. This book seems to tone it down as if Ritz did not want to hurt anyone's feelings. In the original book, Rick James really let Prince have it. He even uses the "f word" that refers to gays when he talks about why Eddie Murphy didn't want prince to produce his next album. The sequence of events with Anita Baker is missing and details as small as the song he said he sang in prison to the racist guards is edited. Ritz turned a rated r book into a pg-13 book. Glow is still a great read, but having so many of Rick's words deleted was not good.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
The Unforgettable Rick James
By Montoya_Mayan
Rick James was the king of Punk Funk, a musical innovator and free thinking individual who lived a life of unbridled excess which killed him when he was only 56 years old in August of 2004. An egomaniacal narcissist, he had a real way with words and a great sense of humor. His life was like his music--original and like no one else. He talks about his many run-ins with the law and stints in prison for various offenses, including draft-dodging, and when he was later caught and arrested, escaping jail and being caught again, meaning more jail time. He was convinced that the rules didn't apply to him, and many times they actually didn't. Although he had obvious intelligence, Rick was his own worst enemy in a way similar to Marvin Gaye--he was a rebel and a know-it-all who couldn't be controlled or told what to do. Rick lived the life of an over-the-top rock star long before he actually was one and it's all here. The drug binges. The orgies. Celebrity romances with the likes of Linda Blair, Catherine Bach (Daisy Duke of The Dukes of Hazzard fame), and Teena Marie are covered, as well as his friendships with luminaries like Neil Young and Marvin Gaye (whose ex-wife Rick also romanced). But Rick's life of excess eventually caught up with him, confusing and tormenting his spirit, destroying his relationships and eventually landing him in prison--again. When Rick's addictions to sex, drugs, and rock n' roll began to take their toll, Rick turned to religion. He became a born-again Christian and describes the experience beautifully. But it didn't last and he was soon back to freebasing cocaine. He flirted with Islam as well, but Rick's addictions and his outsized ego never really left him (he has conversations, throughout the book with a character called Brother Guru who calls Rick's ego the Me Monster). Despite his problems, though, Rick had a larger-than-life view of himself and his place in the musical lexicon. One of the most humorous aspects of the book is Rick's over-the-top hatred of music icon Prince, who he was convinced stole his whole persona. Their alleged altercations, as recounted by Rick, are the funniest things I found in the book. Beyond that, the story of Rick James is a tragedy. A man with so much talent, intelligence, and potential willingly entertained his demons until they swallowed him whole, leaving him in poor health and, ultimately, gone before his time.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Rick James Wrote Great Songs Not Surprisingly He Also Wrote a Great Autobiography
By HuntleyMC
"Glow: The Autobiography of Rick James" is a ride like no other. I will just start off by letting potential readers know that if you're put off by cursing, frank discussions of sex and, this should be no surprise, a lot of descriptive unashamed drug use this book will not be for you. It is safe to say that James holds nothing back in this book since he mentions on a number of occasions that the songs he wrote were primarily autobiographical.
I don't know if James kept some type of journal but how he remembered all these stories from his past with the amount of drugs he claims to have ingested during his career is amazing. Co-Author, David Ritz, does mention in his introduction that James started writing this book during his two year stay in prison. There is another inmate that James calls Brother Guru who has conversations throughout the book with James. He helps James think through some of the decisions and thoughts that James made during his life. At first I took it as it was truly another inmate but the more I read about it I was wondering if Brother Guru wasn't just another side of James trying to make heads and tails of the decisions he made during his life.
I appreciated that James was honest about his feelings about other artists such as Prince, The Doors and many more. He does not always speak flattering about the artists or their talent but too many musicians' autobiographies turn into "lovefests" when they discuss other artists. He gives respect to the artists who helped him get a foot hold in the business.
My only complaint, besides numerous editing errors in the Kindle edition, would be that the timeline seems to be nonexistent. James hops around at the beginning with his stories and the timeline of events seems very confusing. As much as this adds to confusion it does not take away from any of the stories.
I would recommend this book to any music fan that especially like the Punk Funk era that James ruled. This book is a really quick read because the stories are so interesting that it becomes a page turner. A great end of summer weekend read.
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