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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
save your cash, pop in and see denny, 26 Oct 2003
The best oral biographies take their characters to the stage. Shorn of the literary flab and single-voice subjectivity of traditional biographies, they are frank and immediate. The characters leap to their feet, they sing and dance and joke, they fight, spit bile, defend themselves, contradict themselves. At worst, though, these books are lazy money spinners. Tape a few interviews from some willing participants, snip a few out of some old magazines, paste them together into a fairly comprehensible whole. No arduous writing, just scissors and tape. 'Go Where You Wanna Go’ - the oral history of the mamas and the papas' begins by stumbling into the latter. From the start typos creep and crawl across the page. Then you get to the continuity, oh the continuity, the weird jumps in chronology. And, oh the repetition! "John is a great songwriter", "as a songwriter, John is great", "it's great, john's songwriting", "songwriting john, he's great!" We know! Why do you think we're reading the damn book! It feels like in order to boost a failing word count every last crumb of interview has been raked together. Consequently it feels like its falling apart in your hands. It's not all gloom though. It would take a mischievous genius to produce a book on a musical soap opera as fascinating as any in pop and then fail to entertain. When the four characters come together, then the sparks fly. It’s then it hits a rich vein of anecdotal debauchery, tomfoolery and studio session discussion. The remaining mama and papa Michelle Phillips and Denny Doherty are a delight. Denny, awash with wit and wisdom, tries to wrestle the book out of Greenwald’s paws. He should issue spoken word cassettes. Michelle, driven by a desire to set the record straight, is similarly mouthy, and she's lucid and very likeable. John’s interview snippets, though, are matter of fact, soulless. And it’s unfortunate however that without Cass Elliott and any of her close confidents, arguably the most interesting character stays in the shadows. That the fly leaf claims Cass contributes her point of view, via a rare never before seen extensive interview (sounds suspiciously like the one heard on the gathering of flowers album), reeks of untruth. Her contribution amounts to nothing more than a few snatches of, sometimes inappropriate, dialogue desperately pasted into the text for some credibility. Nevertheless as soon as the four characters come apart the bottom falls out. So it's flawed, it's ratty, you're paying a princely sum for a pretty meagre text but, well, there's not a lot else available on the subject around at the moment so I suppose I’d recommend this ramshackle tome. Although better still, save your cash, pop in and see Denny, he’s a pleasant chap, I’m sure he'd be happy to regale you with tales for a couple of afternoons.
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