Holding the Note

‘Always up close and personal, always tenacious and informed by deep background, and always vivid and veracious’ The TimesThe 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 – Leonard Cohen, Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, and more – and their unique encounters with the passing of that essential element of music: time. These are intimate portraits of some of the greatest creative minds of our time written with a lifetime’s passionate attachment to music that has shaped us all.

Remarkable, not just for the essays' expertise and vividness, but for the aeons he spends talking to his subjects and those around them, This collection of articles by David Remnick can stand as literature. ... He treats the reader as an informed, intelligent equal, Always up close and personal, always tenacious and informed by deep background, and always vivid and veracious, [A] standout collection of pieces . . . What’s most remarkable is [Remnick's] ability to give due at once to the artists’ larger-than-life musical legacies and their all too human fallibilities, Written over the past three decades, these are keenly observed, deeply felt, and judiciously detailed encounters of genuine communion mixing interviews, biography, and analysis, all lyrically and radiantly composed . . . There is acuity here, bemusement, tenderness, and gratitude

David Remnick has been the editor of The New Yorker since 1998. He was a staff writer for the magazine from 1992 to 1998 and, previous to that, the Washington Post’s correspondent in the Soviet Union. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for his book Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire. He lives in New York City with his wife and children.