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Title details for Miles to Go by Chris Murphy - Available

Miles to Go

The Lost Years: An Intimate Memoir of Life on the Road with Miles Davis 1973-1983

by Chris Murphy
Patrick Lawlor
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available

Miles to Go is a frank and intimate exploration of Davis’s eccentric working life, drug habits, paranoia, depression, and subsequent recovery. Murphy explores Davis’s troubled relationship with his children and the controversial role Cicely Tyson played in his life. The book also delves into the dynamics that made Davis’s band work so well together, placing Davis’s work in a historic, literary, and musical framework.

Willie Nelson, Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, and a very unlikely Mother Teresa all have walk-on parts in this engaging, intelligent, and often hilarious narrative. Miles to Go takes us from the small seedy jazz clubs that Davis frequented to the world tours, and then finally to Davis’s triumphant return with his celebrated concerts at Lincoln Center in the early 1980s.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    January 1, 2006

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781481580793
      • File size: 237158 KB
      • Duration: 08:14:04

  • Languages

    • English

  • Levels

    • Text Difficulty: 9-12

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Through anecdotes and personal recollections, narrator Patrick Lawlor presents Chris Murphy's remembrances of jazz great Miles Davis. Lawlor's voice is friendly and inviting, sounding as excited and delighted as if he were Murphy, getting the chance to go on the adventure of a lifetime, as techie, roadie, and personal assistant to the trumpeter. As a white man allowed into the mercurial Davis's inner circle, Murphy's view presents a more humane, less intimidating vision of Davis, very personal and perhaps somewhat skewed (if other accounts are to be believed), but never dull. While Lawlor's narration makes Davis seem a bit too ingenuous, he reveals a man who was openhearted and generous as well as depressive and unpredictable, a man who had "something unearthly about him." S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      December 24, 2001
      In this thin memoir, an adoring fan and former assistant of Miles Davis makes a plea for the legendary musician's sainthood. Working as Miles's roadie and doting servant for two narrow stretches—1973–1976, and 1981–1983—the author recounts his sketchy memories and tales from the road in an effort to shine more light on the musician's later years. (In the mid-1970s, Miles quit playing music altogether and slid into a five-year depression, reemerging in the early '80s with a few inspired, if uneven, records.) Unfortunately, most of these fragmented anecdotes—like the one about Miles's pants repeatedly popping open on stage during a concert, or the "Spinal Tap" moment when he got himself wrapped up in the wires to his amp—tell readers little about the man. Murphy is also unconvincing in his attempts to correct Miles's own "self-hating autobiography." On Miles being a misogynist: "I never once saw him raise his hand against a woman"; a hater of whites: "No, he didn't." It all reads like vanity press and is likely to disappoint even the most obsessive Miles fans. They and newcomers will be better off with Miles: The Autobiography
      with Quincy Troupe, and Ian Carr's Miles Davis: The Definitive Biography.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Text Difficulty:9-12

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