You would be forgiven, after reading In the Jingle Jangle Jungle by Joel Gion, to never ever want to even entertain the idea of being in a band. In a book that makes James Young's Nico:Songs They Never Play on the Radio seem like a jolly boys outing, the Brian Jonestown Massacre percussionist reveals the dark side of the entertainment business, the dark side of drugs and the dark side of the dream.
First of all, I think it's important to state early on that this is an incredibly well written memoir and brimming with the potential to be a cult classic. The book skips in a distinctly Kerouacian rhythm (if Jack was into Slowdive) and is chock full of down to earth/up in the sky anecdotes that land somewhere between the gutter and the stars. It's all hip wordplay and raw honesty delivered in shoulder shrugging innocence and has the air of a daydream just starting to crystallise and solidify, only as a reader you're never sure if the dream will ever come true.
Most of us (except the uber-hip) will first have known Gion from Dig!, a documentary by Ondi and David Timoner recording the then up and coming West Coast bands The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. Both starting up (Gion's writing on their initial kinship is genuinely touching) as an influence to each other as co-conspirators in the revolution, the inter band relationship sours however, as head Dandy Courtney Taylor accidentally steers his band into being the next big thing in Europe via a mobile phone advert whilst chief BJM Anton Newcombe steers his band into heroin addiction and almost accidentally makes five of the most interesting and brilliant records of a generation.
The film production is hell bent in beaming out in fifty letters that Taylor is the pretentious middle class art school wanker (in fairness a situation he really doesn't help in some of his quotes and mannerisms. Even the way he runs is laudable) while talking heads trip over themselves to tell us what a genius Newcombe is as the footage tries it's best to display what a smacked up dangerous violent clown he is (one of the many fights captured is described by producer Muddy Dutton as 'a three ring circus' and, really he's not wrong) and in honesty the footage is both wrong and right. But imagine a film crew following you for four years. How many examples of you being a prick could it fit into 120 minutes?
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So the question many punters will be faced with is, is the book worth reading if you've not seen Dig! Or heard of BJM, and in my opinion the book has enough to stand on it's own two feet. Gion skips the usual memoir 'I was born and raised in..' blah blah blah (and lets be honest, that's usually the bit we speed read) and takes us almost instantly to San Francisco and a world of drugs, sleeping on floors and working in record shops. The latter provides our hero with wizard scheme of dropping a card into the record bag of any passing British (and the band are massive Anglophiles. Listen to the relish as they say the words 'pub' or 'fish and chips' in interviews. Gion was just as massively into the UK shoegaze scene as we were, only wearing hip 60's gear instead of a the standard issue long sleeve t-shirt and floppy fringe) touring musicians with the promise of a drug hook up, thus ensuring free gig entry and back stage passes. Ironically this is probably the most wide eyed and innocent portion of the book and provides us with it's two funniest anecdotes, one involving The Mary Chains Jim Reid and the other about accidentally permanently nobbling the career of young Manchester hopefuls Oasis.
That said, there is a lot for the BJM and/or Dig! fan to feast on here. It's a delight to see Gion coming across and real person and not just a one dimensional character in a documentary. All of the band members are beautifully fleshed out in print. Matt Hollywood, for example, slides from being an even bigger dick than the film suggests into being a genuine comrade and confidante. Newcombe is both represented both as a cool guy trying to make great art and as a human fucking horror show. And really it's to credit that he's not glossed over Newcombe's terrible traits and let us make up our own minds based on the evidence. Dean and manager Dave D come across as decent guys and you'll want to take Jeff home and wrap him in a blanket.
But for all of my 'hey the literature's great man' there is a definite rush when on page 111 you recognise the opening scene of Dig! and it's a kin to walking into a TV set and it's fun recognising that he's describing some of the incidents that you have seen in the film. And despite the knowing winks to the Dig!fan, (“he pulls out the unbroken of the two sitars from the van”) it's the humble yet raw honesty that is the star of the show here. People who think have seen him hitting a tambourine wearing Bruce Lee shades and concluded he has the coolest job in the world should read this book.
The dark parts are genuinely and at times disturbingly dark. From FBI drug bust near misses to being homeless, penniless and starving, it does not paint a pretty portrait of band life. You question (and this is very possibly the point of the book) whether it's worth all this pain and suffering just to make great art. It's amazing how all of the bad things, the dumpster diving, the Christmas day spent drunk angry and alone, the claustrophobia of the tour van and the petty fucking squabbles are forgotten once he gets the call to pick up your tambourine because we are making a record. But your heart breaks at Gion's realisation that he's wasted three years of his life. Or has he?
Ultimately I think, both Taylor and Newcombe got their wish. Taylor got to be a huge pop start whilst clinging onto a bohemian facade and Newcombe got to be the great outsider artist still releasing BJM records on an independent label, still touring globally to preach the good word, and occasionally, still getting into an onstage fist fight.
As for Gion, it's ironic that for all of Courtney Taylor's literary pretensions, name dropping of Harper Lee and Umberto Eco and naming an album after a Kurt Vonnegut novel, it's Joel, the gutter boy, the tambourine man, who has written an indisputably brilliant and evocative page turner of a memoir and a bible for the new Beats.
Potential book of the year? Yeah baby!
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