Category: Books

Beach Boys’ Mike Love Writing a Memoir

Mike Love, a founding member of the Beach Boys and lead singer on such hits as “Surfin’ U.S.A.” and “Little Deuce Coupe,” has a book deal.

Love has an agreement with Blue Rider Press for Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy. Blue Rider, an imprint of Penguin Random House, told The Associated Press on Wednesday (Nov. 19) that the memoir is scheduled for a 2016 release. It will come out, appropriately, during the summer.

According to Blue Rider, the 73-year-old Love will open up about the band and his “complex” relationship with Brian Wilson, Love’s cousin and the Beach Boys’ leader during their peak years in the 1960s. Love and Wilson have fought over songwriting credits and creative control of the group.

Beastie Boys Sign Deal to Write Memoir

Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz will pen an atypical memoir — being described as a “multidimensional experience” — via a deal with Random House imprint Spiegel & Grau.

The Beastie Boys are ready to write their memoir — just don’t expect it to be your typical celebrity tell-all.

Michael Diamond (aka Mike D) and Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock) — who along with Adam Yauch (MCA), who died last year of cancer, comprise the hip-hop group — have signed a deal with Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, for an as-yet-untitled book planned for a fall 2015 release, The New York Times reports.

The Beastie Boys are “interested in challenging the form and making the book a multidimensional experience,” Spiegel & Grau publisher Julie Grau tells The Times. “There is a kaleidoscopic frame of reference, and it asks a reader to keep up.”

The book will be edited by hip-hop journalist Sacha Jenkins and will be “loosely structured as an oral history” with a “strong visual component” as well as contributions from other writers, according to The Times.

Grau and Luke Janklow, the group’s agent, compared it to Grand Royal, the Beastie Boys’ short-lived magazine published in the 1990s.

“The first words out of Mike’s mouth were, ‘I don’t want to do a straight memoir,’ ” Janklow says.

Spiegel & Grau also published Jay-Z’s 2010 book Decoded. The Boys’ memoir will follow on the heels of memoirs from musicians including Keith Richards, Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend.

Billy Crystal to write comedic memoir

NEW YORK – Billy Crystal will share his comedic views on life and aging in a new memoir to be published on his 65th birthday, Henry Holt and Co said on Thursday.

The actor and comedian will reflect on his life, career and aspects of aging including forgetfulness, insomnia, endless doctor’s appointments as well as humorous thoughts on looking at himself naked, the publisher said in a statement. It will be published in March 2013.

“While I still can remember my life, I thought I should get it down on paper,” the “When Harry Met Sally” star said in a statement. “Turning sixty-five is something to celebrate and have fun with but also to write about all the great and tough times that got me here.”

Crystal, who hosted the Oscars for the 9th time last February, published his first autobiography, “Absolutely Mahvelous,” in 1986 as well as several children’s books. His 2005 Tony-winning Broadway show, “700 Sundays,” which reflected upon memories of his father, was also translated into a book.

Courtney Love memoir to ‘set the record straight’

NEW YORK (AP) — Courtney Love is ready to spill.

The hard-living rock star and actress known for her band Hole and for her brief marriage to Kurt Cobain has a book deal with William Morrow.

Morrow is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. It announced Thursday that Love will “set the record straight.”

Her memoir will address life with Cobain, the Nirvana leader who died in 1994, her drug problems and her Hollywood career.

The memoir is currently untitled and is scheduled to come out next fall.

She’s among several musicians who recently agreed to write memoirs. Those include Neil Young, Pete Townshend, Carole King and Gregg Allman.

Twain still smarting from split
Country music star Shania Twain has spoken out about the devastating end of her marriage to producer Mutt Lange, revealing she opened up about her worst fears to his mistress.
Unknown to the singer, her best friend and assistant, Marie-Anne Thiebaud, was romancing Lange behind her back.
Opening up about the betrayal for her upcoming TV special, Why Not?, Twain recalls turning to her pal when she first started suspecting something was wrong.
She says, “She was my confidante, somebody who understood.
“I said, ‘Marie-Anne, don’t you think that my husband is acting strange?’ and she said, ‘No, I don’t see anything strange… He’s fine.’ All Marie-Anne did through the whole thing was comfort me, telling me, ‘Everything’s fine’ – and I believed her and I accepted it as being genuine.”
Thiebaud’s husband, Frederic, who became Twain’s spouse on New Year’s Day, admits he uncovered the affair shortly after Lange filed for divorce from the singer – and decided to tell the star that her husband had been cheating on her with his wife.
He says, “I had to tell her… She was really heartbroken.”
Twain recalls, “It really hurt. First I found out my marriage was over and then the next day I found out about the affair. My own friend, who I had confided in. I still can’t get my head around that.”
Appearing on the Oprah Winfrey Show on Tuesday, Twain revealed she wanted to kill herself as the drama unfolded: “I just wanted to go to bed and never get up.”
And in her new memoir, From This Moment On, Twain reveals the heartbreak left her with the shivers.
Reading from the book on Oprah, she said, “I was freezing cold all the time and my only relief came when I’d strip off my clothes and climb into a steaming hot bath… five times a day… I’d be shivering most of the time, shaking uncontrollably… I couldn’t get rid of the chills.”

Tina Fey Is Pregnant!
Jane Krakowski isn’t the only 30 Rock star with a baby on board.
Tina Fey, 40, is pregnant with her second child, her rep confirms to UsMagazine.com. Fey announced the news herself during a taping of The Oprah Winfrey Show on Wednesday. (The episode is scheduled to air April 12.)
The Saturday Night Live alum is five months along. She and her husband, composer Jeff Richmond, also have a 5-year-old daughter, Alice.
In her new memoir Bossypants (out now), Fey wrestled with the idea of having another child.
“I thought that raising an only child would be the norm in Manhattan, but my daughter is the only child in her class without a sibling,” Fey wrote. “Most kids have at least two.”
“Who will be my daughter’s family when my husband and I are dead from stress-induced cankers?” she cracked. “She must have a sibling.”

Ashley Judd shares ‘Bitter & Sweet’ in memoir
NEW YORK ó Ashley Judd is braced for heavy loads. She totes an overflowing eggplant-colored Birkin bag ó filled with water, her ever-present iPhone and a bag of jewelry she has brought along for a photo shoot.
And the actress turned activist, who is in New York to speak at a women’s conference, tackles some heavy topics in her memoir, All That Is Bitter & Sweet, out Tuesday (Ballantine Books, $26).
Writing the book was cathartic for Judd.
“My job was to stay continually willing and to remember that it’s none of my business how it turns out or what the outcome may be. I’m just asked to be in the moment and share my truth. When I stay in that space, things are generally pretty easy,” she says. “There’s a flow. I had trouble with the family narrative because I have so many memory blackouts. I had to learn to write ‘I don’t know.’ That was, without a doubt, the most frustrating part. But the diaries were there. I had so much material.”
Judd, 42, is passionate and articulate. She’s vividly in tune with her emotions, saying she’d had a “purifying cry” this morning before speaking on a panel about the child sex trade as part of Tina Brown’s Women in the World summit.
Her memoir is equally frank. It deals both with Judd’s troubled upbringing and her present-day humanitarian work on behalf of women.
Judd reveals that she felt lonely and dislocated growing up, changing schools throughout her childhood and being left behind as her mother, Naomi, and sister Wynonna cemented their “pathological attachment” to each other and pursued country stardom as The Judds.
She writes that she used to play with her mother’s gun, pondering whether “it would be worth it to shoot myself.” She recalls that during early adolescence, she was molested by the husband of a family member she does not name. And she says that although she was a cheerleader and went to the prom with a football player, she was, in reality, “living a double life, keeping my loneliness and my deepening depression to myself.”
Judd says her family was on board with her decision to dig deep. “My mother has read the book. I certainly gave it to my sister. I don’t know if she’s read it yet, but she absolutely supports what I’ve done. I gave everyone ample opportunity to be familiar with the text.”
She finally dealt with a lifetime of emotional issues by checking into the Shades of Hope treatment center in Texas in February 2006. The experience realigned her life.
“I sat there, literally, for forty-two days, everything out of my control, so I could feel the emotions I had worked so very, very hard all my life to avoid and, if that wasn’t possible, control,” Judd writes.
Today, she says, the change in her is palpable. “I have improved self-esteem. I have healthier boundaries. I know that no means no. No is a complete sentence. I’m able to stand autonomously now with the god of my understanding.”
And she has another college degree. Last May, Judd, who believes in ongoing self-improvement, earned a Mid-Career Master in Public Administration degree from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
“I loved school. It was a very meaningful experience,” Judd says, adding that the degree has fringe benefits. “My mother-in-law has always loved me. She has a new level of respect. She’s a recent graduate of the University of Edinburgh. She just got her master’s in law. So we’re a little smug at the dinner table.” (Judd is married to race car driver Dario Franchitti.)
Book learning aside, Judd says she’s now ready to go back to work.
“I don’t know that I ever worked emotionally sober before recovery, so I’m really looking forward to having that really grueling, intensive acting experience while importing all of my new skills,” she says.
Later this year, she’s starring in the ABC series Missing. “My main objective in the series is to make it really fun. I’m going to suit up and show up and see what happens,” she says. In September, she stars with Morgan Freeman in the family movie Dolphin Tale.
Judd spends most of her time on the Tennessee farmhouse she shares with Franchitti. They romp with their dogs. They hike. She likes to “poke around” her house and garden. And on truly rowdy nights, she and her husband play charades.
Can she imagine quitting her charity work and living the glam Hollywood life?
“There are more ways to die than simply stopping breathing,” she says. “For me it would be a death.”

OMG! Online abbreviations make Oxford dictionary
LONDON ñ OMG! LOL! The venerable Oxford English Dictionary approves of the three-letter, Internet-inspired expressions you use for “Oh, my God!” and “Laughing out loud.”
It is adding them to the authoritative reference book’s latest online update.
You can now text the news to your BFF. That’s “best friends forever.”
All three expressions ó and IMHO, or “in my humble opinion” ó are among 900 new words included this week. Cracking the dictionary, however, is no easy task.
“The OED is quite cautious,” said Graeme Diamond, OED’s principal editor for new words.
Terms made popular online are only included among the dictionary’s 300,000 entries when they have crossed over into everyday use, Diamond said.
Although the new abbreviations are associated with modern electronic communications, some are surprisingly old. The first confirmed use of OMG was in a 1917 letter by a British admiral.
“Things people think are new words normally have a longer history,” Diamond said.
Editors publish updates to the online Oxford every three months.
The OED’s Internet version was launched in 2000 and gets 2 million hits a month from subscribers. It may replace the mammoth 20-volume printed edition, last published in 1989.
The new update also includes:
ï “muffin top,” “a protuberance of flesh above the waistband of a tight pair of trousers.”
ï wag, “wives and girlfriends.” It was first used in 2002 to describe the female partners of members of the England soccer team. Now it denotes the glamorous and extravagant female partners of male celebrities.
“By our standards, wag is a real rocket of a word,” Diamond said. “To go from being coined in 2002 to being included in 2011 is quite unusual.”
ï “heart” as a verb, a casual equivalent of “to love” that is represented with a symbol, as seen on millions of souvenirs proclaiming “I (heart) New York.”
It may be the first English usage to come from T-shirts and bumper stickers. “At some point, people started to vocalize what the symbol was rather than what the symbol stood for,” said Fiona McPherson, another editor. “People now talk about hearting things left, right and center.”
Well, the latest update hearts the Road Runner cartoon character. The word “meep” ó a short high-pitched sound ó made the cut.
There are other new terms from the online world, including ego-surfing (the practice of searching for your own name on the Internet) and dot-bomb (a failed Internet company).
Diamond said the Internet has revolutionized the way lexicographers work, giving them a huge amount of new evidence of word use.
Which brings us to another new online-inspired word: TMI, “too much information.”

Sammy Hagar fills in ‘Red’ with his colorful life story
Talk about the best of both worlds: Sammy Hagar has managed to enjoy the outrageous spoils afforded members of rock’s pantheon without paying dues such as ravaged hearing and repeated trips to rehab.
So let the Red Rocker crow.
“I feel like I’ve always been misunderstood in rock, especially during my Van Halen years where people liked to take sides against me,” says Hagar, 63. “But no one’s had a better time, so I guess I just wanted to set the record straight and blow my own horn a bit.”
That’s the unabashed mission of the new “Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock”. In breezy first-person fashion, Hagar mixes tales from his journey in rock with digressions about life-long fascinations with numerology and UFOs.
But what stands out most are stories of the singer’s rough beginnings in the fertile fields outside Fontana, Calif., a pit stop between Los Angeles and Palm Springs. His father, Bobby, was a boxer and a drinker. His nurturing mother, Gladys, fought to keep four children fed and clothed. Hagar got tough fast.
“All you need to know about Sam is that his father holds the record for the most times a fighter has been knocked down in one fight ó 20,” says Joel Selvin, a San Francisco rock critic who helped Hagar shape the book. “Sam’s always had diligence and persistence.”
A commitment to never again experience poverty fueled Hagar as he rose through a series of forgettable bands and landed as the David Bowie-meets-Robert Plant frontman of Montrose in 1973. Hagar never looked back, scoring solo success before joining Van Halen in 1985.
His departure from that mega-band ó Hagar says he was fired, and the band has maintained he left ó remains a sore subject.
“After the breakup (in 1996), some of the things the (Van Halen) brothers said were just flat-out wrong, like me not wanting to work hard,” says Hagar, who in Red describes the metamorphosis of a once-sweet Eddie Van Halen into a belligerent autocrat who pushed Hagar out the door by reconnecting with original singer David Lee Roth.
“I just hope Eddie’s doing better,” says Hagar, referencing Van Halen’s bouts with booze and cancer. “I see he got married. Maybe his wife has him on a tighter leash. We all need that, otherwise we’d all be crazy, including me.”
(Van Halen isn’t commenting, says Eddie’s wife/band publicist Janie Van Halen.)
Hagar had his moments, particularly during his drawn-out estrangement from his first wife, Betsy. In Red, he describes finally cutting loose on 1991’s For Unlawful Carnal Knowledgetour, which involved each member of Van Halen having a tent beneath the stage. They were not for naps.
But on that same tour, Hagar met his wife, Kari Karte. When she rebuffed his advances because she had to take her grandmother to a wedding, Hagar was smitten. The couple has two daughters and lives north of San Francisco.
It was Kari who planted a seed when she pointed out how Jimmy Buffett had created an empire out of his island life. “She took me to a show of his, and I was blown away,” Hagar says. “Jimmy is now the godfather to me. I kiss his ring whenever I see him.”
Hagar’s own beachy persona infuses his Cabo Wabo Cantina chain as well as his Cabo Wabo tequila, 80% of which the singer famously sold to Gruppo Campari in 2007 for $80 million. The poverty of Fontana clearly is in this Ferrari-collecting maniac’s rearview mirror.
“I feel like I’m at a turning point,” Hagar says. “I play music still because I love it (with both the supergroup Chickenfoot ó busy recording its second album ó and his longtime band the Wabos). But I’m now focusing on giving back through my Hagar Family Foundation. I’ve also got a restaurant I’m doing (in Mill Valley, Calif.) with (Food Network chef) Tyler Florence. So, I’m busy.”
Despite Hagar’s adult success ó the homes in Hawaii and Mexico, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction with Van Halen, the big bank account and personal bliss ó he does flash back to some hot childhood days and smile.
“I’ve had an awesome life, but I’ve never had so much fun as when I’d go out picking fruit with my mom in order to make enough money for new jeans for school,” says Hagar, who dedicated the book to his mother. “I guess hardships are nothing if you’re happy.”