Match the Music Star with Their Memoir (pt 6) Quiz

Answer: Yo-Yo Ma

Yo-Yo Ma's "Beginner's Mind" is an Audible Original audiobook, narrated by Yo-Yo Ma himself, and is part of Audible Original's "Words + Music" series (Vol. 13), and has a running time of about 1 hour and 30 minutes. The title "Beginner's Mind" refers to the Zen concept of "Shoshin", meaning having an open, eager mind without forming preconceptions.

The heart of the book is Yo-Yo Ma's understanding that he had to learn the cello to become a musician, and it was only through many years of exploration that he came to a realization of his responsibility as a human being.

The audiobook features many examples of his cello playing, offering meditations on how curiosity, creativity, and collaboration all direct us to forming human connections as we seek to build a better future.

Answer: Fat Joe

"The Book of José: A Memoir", published November 15, 2022 is Fat Joe's (Joseph Cartagena) autobiography, written with music journalist Shaheem Reid. It describes Fat Joe's life from childhood in a Puerto Rican-Cuban family in the South Bronx to becoming the rapper and Terror Squad leader known as Fat Joe.

It isn't a glossy, glamorous memoir as much as it is a narrative of surviving through violent environs, hustling, depression, and how hip-hop was his road to a better life.

Answer: James Taylor

"Break Shot: My First 21 Years" is also an audio-only memoir, released by Audible on January 31, 2020, with James Taylor narrating. The title uses the billiard break shot that sends the tightly back balls in all directions, as a metaphor for the fractured breakup of Taylor's childhood family. What was initially a close-knit family gradually became broken, in no small part due to his father's alcoholism and parents' failing marriage.

He identifies his move from boarding school to McLean Hospital for nine months dealing with teenage depression as an important turning point in his life, along with his heroin addiction. Eventually he became the first non-British artist signed to Apple Records, and his self-titled debut album appeared in 1968, when he was only 20.

Answer: Lucinda Williams

Published on April 25, 2023, "Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You: A Memoir" is Lucinda Williams' autobiographical account of her childhood, and the hard times of family life and then struggling as a musician, and struggling with relationships. She lived in 12 different places by the time she was 18, and her mother suffered from severe mental illness and alcoholism.

She started playing guitar at age 12, and her academician father home-schooled her. A late bloomer in an industry that reveres youth and expects artists to make their breakthrough much earlier, she didn't release her first commercial album until she was approximately 35, and didn't really become a major star until 1998, when "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" was released when she was about 45 years old.

Answer: Debbie Harry

Debbie Harry's 2019 memoir "Face It" covers her 1970s downtown New York pop/punk/new wave stardom, addiction, and artistic reinvention. She was adopted as a child, and when she came onto the music scene years later as the frontwoman for the band Blondie, she became one of the most indelible faces of the era with hits like "Heart of Glass", and "Call Me".

She does get into her heroin addiction, and the near-death illness of her partner and bandmate Chris Stein, her facing bankruptcy, and the band's breakup.

But she does arc all the tough situations toward the band's triumphant 1999 reunion. The book is also heavy on visual presentation, loaded with photographs, illustrations, and fan art installations. She also narrated the audiobook version herself.

Answer: Rick Wakeman

"Further Adventures of a Grumpy Old Rock Star" is the second collection of autobiographical anecdotes, by Rick Wakeman, the keyboardist and composer best known as a longtime member of the progressive rock band Yes. Wakeman is the raconteur of this second volume of show-business disasters, absurd business ventures, health scares, travel mishaps, and bizarre encounters, strung together not necessarily chronologically but by anecdotal escalation. Amongst the crazy stories are:
Being left in a Costa Rican jungle after a bout of flatulence.
Attempts to buy an Australian brewery simply so he could get beer.
Owning twenty-two cars, an American soccer team, and a Swiss mail-order pornography company.
Violinists falling out of trees, being mauled by a German shepherd on live television, golfing with kangaroos, and playing a concert for one dog.

Answer: Don Felder

Published in 2007, Don Felder's "Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles (1974-2001)" is his autobiography, offering a view of one of music's most successful and conflicted bands in history. It was the first autobiography from any member of the Eagles. Felder's journey begins with an impoverished childhood in Gainesville, Florida.

He joined the Eagles in 1974, co-wrote the music for their signature hit, "Hotel California", and he was fired in 2001 after questioning certain financial arrangements, which led to a lawsuit settled out of court. He is very critical of the band's leaders Don Henley and Glenn Frey, referring to them repeatedly as "The Gods".

He writes in detail about the culture of drugs, greed, and acrimony in the band.

Answer: Carole King

Carole King was a music-obsessed Brooklyn teenager, who became a Brill Building hitmaker, writing songs for many other recording artists. "A Natural Woman: A Memoir" is her 2012 autobiography as the singer-songwriter behind the mega album "Tapestry", while also describing her life as a mother, partner, survivor, and environmental activist.

The title refers to "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman", the 1967 Aretha Franklin hit King co-wrote with her husband at the time, Gerry Goffin. Some of that duo's hits included "Will You Love Me Tomorrow", "The Loco-Motion", "Up on the Roof", and "One Fine Day". Carole King shifted after moving to Los Angeles, and the 1971 album "Tapestry" was the turning point.

Answer: Joe Perry

Co-written with David Ritz, Joe Perry's "Rocks: My Life in and Out of Aerosmith" is the 2014 biography of the lead guitarist and co-founder of Aerosmith. It describes Aerosmith's turbulent history of enormous success, substance abuse, internal conflicts, breakups, reunions, and the complicated friendship/rivalry between Perry and singer Steven Tyler, who became known as the "Toxic Twins".

The book follows the band's formation in Boston in 1970, through its rise and collapse, and its extraordinary comeback. Perry's book devotes attention to the actual mechanics of being in a rock band, including the rehearsals, songwriting, recording, touring, equipment and the gradual development of Aerosmith's sound.

Answer: Artie Shaw

"The Trouble with Cinderella: An Outline of Identity" is his 1952 autobiographical novel/memoir - later reissued in 1992. It relates the inner life of a great but famously dissatisfied swing-era star clarinet player on such hits as "Begin the Beguine", and my personal favorite, "Frenesi".

At the time he wrote the book, he had mixed feelings about celebrity, commercial success, and the public's perception of him. The "Cinderella" idea is tied to the idea of his becoming famous - the glitter exterior over his own dissatisfaction or uncertainty about who he is at the core, and the difference between artistic identity and commercial identity.