Bodies: Life and Death in Music

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Bodies is unflinching with its harsh truths, and Winwood’s anecdotal approach to these flows with extreme merit. No other industry chews up its participants and spits them out in the way that the music industry does.

In Bodies, author Ian Winwood explores the music industry’s many failures, from addiction and mental health issues to its ongoing exploitation of artists. The must-read music book of the year, now with a brand new chapter covering the death of Taylor Hawkins and his massive Wembley memorial concert.Overall, a great book that held a mirror up to my own unfair assumptions of musicians and entertainers in general. But beneath the surface lies a frightening truth: for years the music industry has tolerated death, addiction and exploitation in the name of entertainment. Told in his relatable unpretentious northern tone, the book becomes a rock’n’roll version of James Grey’s slightly discredited A Million Little Pieces. he draws on his decades of interviewing bands in dressing rooms and tour buses - not to mention his own bracingly described drug hell - to examine why the industry attracts so many people vulnerable to addiction and mental health problems, and what happens to them once they are plugged into its dysfunctional amps. Ian Winwood’s brilliant, gripping, grim new book is about how the music business normalises, enables, maybe even encourages bad behaviour.

It was certainly the least to acknowledge that some idols (Bowie, Prince, Steven Tyler, Iggy Pop, Jimmy Page just off the top of my head) did some extremely shady (illegal? This discovery is the prism through which Ian examines a music industry that tolerates self-destructive behaviour and possesses an atmosphere far from conducive to good mental health – it’s hard to imagine, for instance, that the extremes of Ian’s behaviour wouldn’t have been more noticeable if he’d worked in another field. Winwood’s point with much of these brushes with history is to show the depths of depravity that goes beyond the drink and drugs that have allegedly stemmed creatives bursts with a unique intimacy only gained through the trust and interest of rockstars that still tour and take their chances with substances today. 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. From Nobel Laureates Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter to theatre greats Tom Stoppard and Alan Bennett to rising stars Polly Stenham and Florian Zeller, Faber Drama presents the very best theatre has to offer.That means longer periods living in an unreal environment where drink and drugs are ever-present, bad behaviour is indulged and where, at the lower end of the ladder, working conditions sound enough to make even the most level-headed musician consider rendering themselves insensible. 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.

It felt fragmented without an over-arching or connective narrative, and while I enjoyed it, I’m not sure I would have read it if I knew what it was actually going to be like. Ian speaks to Stuart Richardson, formerly of Lostprophets, about how the spiralling methamphetamine use and uncontrollable narcissism of Ian Watkins distracted everyone, including his bandmates, from discovering the true depravity that would result in the frontman being sentenced to 29 years in prison for sex crimes against children.I'm certainly more aware now of the huge pressures they face, I just wish they had been able to get support for their struggles.

I found this book disturbing, but ultimately positive as, for the author himself and bands still making music now there seems to be an improvement. Also not sure about his assertion that Brian Warner's (aka Marilyn Manson) career is over post allegations of abuse from multiple women. God bless anyone involved or thinking about working in such a arduous profession and have the temerity to actually want to be paid for their hard work and talent.

With Bodies, he gives the music industry mental health a degree of serious consideration that's clearly long overdue and does so in a way that's sometimes shocking and ultimately full of empathy and compassion. Still, if you are interested in the music business and rock music in particular, this is a book worth reading. 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.