Book Review: Dead People I Have Known, Shayne Carter
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Dead People I have Known.
First of all; great title, it’s got drama, disaster, and due to context, a whole lot of pretty musician’s corpses in their coffins by the age of 27, evoking images of death. But if you’re after a rock star memoir that glories in the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ rock, this is not that.
Being that Shayne Carter is still young, he’s known more than his fair share of the dead and the way he writes about them is at once lyrical and poetic, but also unflinching. Facing the full glare of any circumstances no matter how bleak, which is beautiful and brave in its own way.
It can be quietly contemplative, with no particular attachment to pride, posing or pretension. He admits to liking Donny Osmond for Christ’s sake. It contains a distinct lack of shame or regret.
It’s not an admission that he didn’t fight back at school, that he was victimised, it’s just reported as a journalist would-emotionless. All non-fiction narrators are relying on memory and are therefore unreliable, but the way Carter drops stark reality at your feet is like a cat does a dead mouse... inviting you to the feast.
There’s an unavoidable violence about the book. The anticipation of it, the relentless and obviousness of it, the constant and lurking threat of it, the boredom of it, the inevitability of it; it’s all-pervasive. Loud and in your face.
The writing is not raw, it’s wrought, but Shayne is a natural. He has a way with words that cannot be denied and I wouldn’t try. I expected it to be melodic, and it is. He is a rock star after all. But a writer? Yes, as it turns out. My respect is not grudging. There’s solid original metaphors, beautiful poetic devices, alliteration, assonance, words that are exquisite, desolate and quietly delightful. He lays bare more than most would dare.
Is he detached, dissociative, or simply self-reflective? There is an irony to his comment “while I was and still am capable of expressing my thoughts, I usually keep the dark ones to myself.” Leading this reader to wonder, how much darker does it get in there?
Still, there are good stories in the darkness. The tension between dark and light. This one is told in linear anecdotes. About bands, that if you’re my age, are all incredibly familiar. Suddenly the spectator’s view from the audience changes to that of the performer on stage and the insider behind the scenes.
Quintessentially kiwi, the scenes take place on the streets of Wellington, in the flats of Dunedin, and the venues of Auckland. I’ve been in houses he describes, and maybe you have too. We already know the people, the places and the songs, but now we get the glorious gossip, the intricacies of the dynamics, and the brutality of the deaths.
At least one of which is also familiar. I remember my father turning white as he turned off a certain episode of The Young Ones, after one of the lads has an accident on a train. That particular scene wasn’t funny to many New Zealanders in the music industry. Carter gives us a first-hand account that is harsh and graphic, but neither sensationalises nor sanitises. The loss is cruel, but bereft of nostalgia.
This unwillingness to shy away from the worst angels of our nature extends to every topic he explores. Mental illness, domestic violence, alcoholism, the petty and the pretty receive the same intense gaze, getting to the heart of the matter in fact. Carter observes, but rejects pity, leaving the reader with clear imagery, but no villains or victims. He pens gorgeous phrases that don’t disguise the bruises.
His words are also self-depreciating and understated, the way kiwis often are. Whether he’s writing about a famous musician, or a relative in an asylum, Shayne reveals what he wants to focus on. There’s no concession to how things are generally done. This is no boastful bombastic auto-bio. The theme continues throughout. He’s self-taught, left-handed and speaks of various band members bluntly. One imagines his style of collaboration to be almost combative; certainly the reader is left with conflicting views of Carter.
My task seems like a fool’s errand, to categorise or evaluate this book, filled as it is with quiet contradictions. While there’s no judgement, almost impossible in the context of self-reflection, for the record he does review, critiquing music, bands, and even audiences considering his admission of abusing them.
It’s a pet theory of mine that the surges forward in music are not brought to us by those that get along with each other and play nice. Legends may achieve a lot, but they can be difficult to live with. There’s a certain backbone and bloody mindedness required to push the boundaries back, fight the weight of public opinion, and forge a path into unknown territory. Shayne does that, making us uncomfortable at times, but all the richer for it.
On a different note, it’s a love song to other musicians. He admires guitarists that inspire him, and no doubt, there are those, like feedback frequencies, who are in turn inspired by him.
Shayne spends as much time reviewing other bands as he does writing about his own. It’s like he’s so into the music that he can’t concentrate on the other things humans do, and maybe fans want to read.
He flirts with addiction and violence and women (the ones he makes love to are anonymous, the ones he makes music with are named), another way of telling that, strikingly and loud, this book is dedicated to his true love, music, and is overwhelmingly about sound.
When Carter describes John Lennon’s first solo album “…with its baseness and its soft and loud brutalities,” he could just as easily be describing his own first foray into writing a book. His assessment of Graeme Downes (The Verlaines) is that he has “unpredictable shifts” and “complex dynamics.” and the same is true of Carter himself.
But Carter is better at summing himself up than I am. By writing his own reviews of earlier albums, then disclosing what they were trying to achieve, and the mood of the album, he makes you want to get out all the old ones and have a listen. In his writing he twists and moves, with a complexity that invites confusion. He’s hard to pin down.
He is also undeniably confrontational. The book may not mug you but it will shove a bleeding body in your face, front and centre, and shine a light on it. A beautiful damaged child on display.
Here is Dead People I Have Known, Shayne Carter’s beautiful damaged child.
Both quiet and loud.
Love it.