Rock Reads: The Autobiography by Bill Bruford
by Kevin Wierzbicki
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After forty years in the business highly-regarded drummer Bill Bruford has announced his retirement and what better time than now to publish his memoirs. Obviously Bruford had been planning for this moment since this very extensive 300+ page book wasn't written overnight. It no doubt helped that the drummer had kept journals throughout his professional career; when he tells stories like how singer Jon Anderson fell asleep at the wheel and sent the members of Yes careening down a roadside embankment he has more to work with than just his distant memory. Bruford doesn't do any fawning over his time with Yes and instead recalls how all of the band members including himself had to learn a lot of things the hard way. Still Bruford paints himself as the only responsible member of the band and snarkily describes the rest as little better than a bunch of clowns. He doesn't pan the group's musicianship but says that he came up with the Yes album titles Close to the Edge and Fragile because the band was always on the brink of falling apart due to one usually stupid reason or the other. The uppity tone that Bruford takes throughout the book is in fact what makes it so much fun to read---if this same story had of been watered down through a biographer it probably would have been pretty dull. Instead the book mimics the thrill of the rollercoaster ride that Bruford went on through decades of pounding the skins with prog-rockers Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, U.K., Gong, National Health and most recently with his modern jazz group Earthworks. He also has a unique thing going on with how he tells the story. Instead of being strictly chronological each chapter has as its title a question like "Do You Like Doing Interviews?" or "Is it Different, Being in Jazz?" So while a chapter may be primarily about, say, King Crimson, Bruford jumps or regresses to any point in his career to make his point and answer the question. Bruford dedicates one chapter ("How Do You Get That Fantastic Sound?") specifically to drum issues but it is written with typical humor so non-percussionists will enjoy that segment too. There has never been a doubt that Bruford is a consummate musician; this book proves he's an extraordinary wordsmith as well.
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Rock Reads: The Autobiography by Bill Bruford
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