Bodies: Life and Death in Music

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To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Part autobiography, part insight into the horrific world of the music industry, Bodies shines a light on the disgusting way record companies treat the source of their riches - the musicians themselves. Bodies is unflinching with its harsh truths, and Winwood’s anecdotal approach to these flows with extreme merit.

Despite those horrors, Winwood appears hopeful, and it is the credit of great writing that a reader does not feel that same despair and fear so brutally explained by Winwood's personalised account. The conversation about mental health has become more public in recent years, although Winwood notes sharply that the music industry’s willingness to have that conversation seems “contingent on it not interfering with the workings of an unjust business model”.I really wanted to love this book, the subject matter is something I work in and have experienced personally. A peek behind the curtains at the mental health struggles so many people in the music industry suffer from. The writing style sometimes got to me — at times too formal/archaic in tone and every now and then unnecessarily paraphrasing a lyric at the end of a paragraph.

But beneath the surface lies a frightening truth: for years the music industry has tolerated death, addiction and exploitation in the name of entertainment. It’s a situation compounded by a noticeable lack of duty of care on the part of management and record companies. It is also a book that touches on relationships between fathers and sons in a way that seems pleasantly tangential. This book is full of cautionary accounts ( he's not afraid to mention names) and stories about the pitfalls /downside of the lives of many musicians and those working in music business , and of course Ian's own personal experiences of addiction and mental health issues.

The book has opened up a much-needed debate about the nature of the music industry as an insatiable meat grinder for creative souls with an instinct for self-destruction. The author comes across as another one of those self obsessed and odious individuals that plague the music industry. The question of what the music industry does next is one it’s started to answer incrementally, concludes a three-years sober Ian, though it’s happened all too slowly. Seven years stooped in darkness, inhaling coal dust, gave this sweet and modest man license to provide his music journalist son, Ian, with some lessons in perspective. Finally tipped over the edge, one British band’s drummer attempts to stab their guitarist during an argument over a spilled beer.