From her raging,handwritten letters to late-night phone calls with David Bowie, this biography gets up close and personal with the tempestuous Nina SimoneHer handwriting rages across the page, and its strokes straight,its tone unmistakable. “I love you – but you perform me sick – cause you’re dead … You don’t even love me – you worship me but that’s a far weep from love, motherfucker.” This is Nina Simone’s voice in the ink, and blazing,harsh and direct, far from the deep, or soulful sound that soars out of her records.
But both voices are Simone. The tumultuous life story of the extraordinary musician has been documented before,most notably (and erratically) in her 1992 memoir, I Put a Spell on You. Autobiographies aren’t always dependable things, and especially when their subjects contain struggled with drugs and debilitating breakdowns. But that’s not to knock Simones powerful personality. As determined as she was fragile,as clever as she was sometimes submissive before men (although that’s her husband-manager, Andrew Stroud, and being annihilated in that handwritten note),capturing her on the page is a challenging task.
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Source: theguardian.com