3.5
Holding the Note
ByPublisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and editor of The New Yorker gathers his writing on some of the essential musicians of our time—intimate portraits of Leonard Cohen, Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, and more.
The greatest popular songs, whether it’s Aretha Franklin singing “Respect” or Bob Dylan performing “Blind Willie McTell,” have a way of embedding themselves in our memories. You remember a time and a place and a feeling when you hear that song again. In Holding the Note, David Remnick writes about the lives and work of some of the greatest musicians, songwriters, and performers of the past fifty years.
He portrays a series of musical lives and their unique encounters with the passing of that essential element of music: time. From Cohen’s performing debut, when his stage fright was so debilitating he couldn’t get through “Suzanne,” to Franklin’s iconic mink-drop at the Kennedy Center, Holding the Note delivers a view of some of the greatest creative minds of our time written with a lifetime’s passionate attachment to music that has shaped us all.
The greatest popular songs, whether it’s Aretha Franklin singing “Respect” or Bob Dylan performing “Blind Willie McTell,” have a way of embedding themselves in our memories. You remember a time and a place and a feeling when you hear that song again. In Holding the Note, David Remnick writes about the lives and work of some of the greatest musicians, songwriters, and performers of the past fifty years.
He portrays a series of musical lives and their unique encounters with the passing of that essential element of music: time. From Cohen’s performing debut, when his stage fright was so debilitating he couldn’t get through “Suzanne,” to Franklin’s iconic mink-drop at the Kennedy Center, Holding the Note delivers a view of some of the greatest creative minds of our time written with a lifetime’s passionate attachment to music that has shaped us all.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities6 Reviews
3.5

Sofia Santos
Created 7 months agoShare
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“really well written book! I didn’t have the right expectations going in and didn’t realize it was going to be an anthology of profiles from the writer’s past but they were standalone very well done.
it didn’t capture me entirely but I don’t think that’s at the authors fault. It was more on the intellectual side and I was hoping for more ~ emotion led.”

Gary Wilson
Created 11 months agoShare
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Anita
Created about 1 year agoShare
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C
Created over 1 year agoShare
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“Felt like a poorly edited question and answer of musical luminaries. Wish it explored what I think could’ve been more interesting aspects of their lives. Some valuable tidbits.”

Rolf Straubhaar
Created over 1 year agoShare
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“A good intro bio to a lot of different artists, though each chapter could easily be stretched into its own book, some of which I’d want to read (esp. the Aretha Franklin, Buddy Guy, Bruce Springsteen, and Mavis Staples ones), and some of which I might not, feeling satiated with what I got from the chapters here.”
About David Remnick
DAVID REMNICK has been the editor of The New Yorker since 1998 and before that was a staff writer for the magazine for six years. He was previously The Washington Post’s correspondent in the Soviet Union. He is the author of several books, including King of the World, a biography of Muhammad Ali, named the top nonfiction book of the year by Time magazine in 1998, and Lenin’s Tomb, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
Other books by David Remnick
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