TIM'S BOOK CLUB

From KM.com,

The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

I read this in the summer of 2009, while we were out on tour. I read quite a lot when we're touring, partly because I hate flying so much and I find reading on planes is quite a good distraction. I found the book really, really inspiring. I had a similar feeling when I read another Kerouac book, On The Road. There's something about his writing which really appeals to me. It's probably quite a male thing, actually, that yearning to jump on a flat-top train carriage and lie in the sun all the way from one coast of America to the other, or some sort of romantic dream.

The book is based very closely on Kerouac's life, with pretty much every character based on a real person. So there's a character called Ray Smith which is him and his friend in the book, Japhy Ryder, is based on a poet called Gary Snyder. Plus Allen Ginsberg makes an appearance and that sort of thing. They're all a bunch of poets and amateur Buddhists and they spend a lot of time reading poetry, getting drunk, talking about Buddhism, writing these crazy spiritual haiku and going on big walks up mountains. They're basically drifters, but poetic, philosophical drifters.

It's a very romantic story, I suppose, but it also has a lot of very interesting thoughts about the way we live our lives and what matters and what doesn't matter. All of the characters have different opinions on those things. So it's quite an intellectually stimulating book as well as being set against the backdrop of the great outdoors and Kerouac going on these directionless adventures. He goes on a couple of great train journeys and also hitchhikes back and forth across the States. And it ends with him going off to a fire lookout station on top of a mountain in Washington State. He has to stay in this little hut for several months, all on his own, thousands of feet up. He just sits there looking out for fires and thinking about the world.

I would say that my character and beliefs have been shaped by reading books like this. I'm not the kind of person who'll take anything that's been handed down to me and I don't really feel that I've adopted any sort of belief system directly. But I'm interested in people's philosophical approaches to life. I guess the only thing I really believe in is people and it's always interesting to experience the psychological studies of people that you get in a really good book. I find that definitely shapes the way I think about myself and the way I think about other people.

With the Dharma Bums, some of the Buddhist stuff is quite rambling and almost nonsensical, although some of it is very beautiful in its approach to worldly things. But I don't necessarily subscribe to it all. A lot of the book is about each of them thinking the other person's point of view is nonsense and that debate goes on throughout, which is interesting in its own right. But for me, personally, I was almost more interested in the characters of the drifters and what happened to them during their adventuring through the American badlands, the people they meet, and what it means to roam like that. It definitely awakened in me a sense of wanting to go somewhere. I don't know where. But just to go on an adventure, meet people and have no idea where you're heading.

Tim

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TIM'S BOOK CLUB

From KM.com,

Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles

I read a lot of music books. I've got a pile of them called things like Tips From Great Record Engineers, which will be endless stories of what microphone they used on the snare drum and stuff. They're specialist to say the least. I've been trying to get back into just reading for pleasure and I suppose also for inspiration, and not trying to get quite so hung up on the technical side of things.

But this book offers the best of both worlds. It's the autobiography of Geoff Emerick, the guy who engineered a lot of the Beatles' most important albums. Being a lifelong Beatles fan, I've read pretty much every book on them that there is. I don't think this one is massively well-known, but I've found it, as a musician, much more insightful, exciting and atmospheric than pretty much any of the others. It's got so much about the creative process of the Beatles. It was interesting to read about the way they spent their time in the studio. You always have this sort of image of the Beatles turning up in a chaotic mess, recording a masterpiece in about three hours, and then speeding off in an E-type Jag to some trendy club. But it really gives you an impression of how hard they worked and how much time they put into their writing and pre-production before they started recording stuff, working out harmonies and polishing up songs. For instance, he talks about sitting there with Paul McCartney all night working on a bassline note by note. I found it quite encouraging, because you always imagine that these guys had an almost supernatural talent to put down these amazing songs and productions without even thinking about it. It's kind of reassuring to know that they had to work really hard for it too.

It's a very, very interesting book if you're into learning about the actual creative process of a band. And this kind of book really does help you as a musician. I was actually reading it while I was writing songs for Perfect Symmetry, and I remember finding it very exciting and having that feeling of being in a room while great music is being made, which is definitely inspiring. It makes you think, "Oh, I could sit at a piano now and try and write a song like that." You get this surge of excitement and a feeling that you can do it too. And that's always a really, really great feeling.

Tim

(This book is not currently in print, but you should be able to find it on eBay or through Amazon sellers)

Tim's Book Club #1