By Andreas Kessaris for Curtains Up!
“No matter how lightly you travel, your baggage always comes with you…We can’t deny our own stories, no matter where we are.”
-Bruce Cockburn
Musician, singer, songwriter, activist, humanitarian, 13-time Juno winner and Officer of the Order of Canada; Bruce Cockburn has led a busy and fascinating life, having been almost everywhere and met just about everyone (including, in one of my favorite chapters of the book, Jimi Hendrix). And if you grew up in Canada in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s you no doubt heard his songs on the radio. But who is the man and what are the stories behind his esoteric lyrics? Those questions are finally answered in his new memoir Rumours of Glory.
Although essentially a story of a man and how he arrived at his beliefs, Rumours of Glory is not a simple, shallow show business biography, but rather like the man himself, deep and complex. The volume, which is well over 500 pages long, is more of a “life and times” piece that goes beyond typical behind-the-scenes anecdotes (although there are a number of those) and takes us on unexpected trips into the third world and various crisis states, (at times I felt like I was back in Mark Blaker’s Latin American Anthropology class at Dawson College in the late ‘80’s).
Cockburn is intelligent, articulate, thoughtful, honest and introspective (all of which bleeds out on the pages); he definitely has something to say and knows how to say it. He can skillfully structure a phrase and there are plenty of well-composed paragraphs and memorable lines and passages throughout. Rumours of Glory also contains numerous asides and heavily detailed digressions (most of which are captivating, others not so much).
For me the most interesting parts of the book are the sections where Cockburn relates a personal story or experience, and then gives us the lyrics to the song they inspired. (Perhaps the book should’ve come with a CD that could be played at those moments?)
While Cockburn’s opinions are rational and informed, they are not anything I haven’t heard before, (to be fair he never makes the claim that they are fresh and original). Anyone who has read something like Addicted to War by Joel Andreas (no relation, duh!) would know the same basic things.
Roger Ebert once said: “No good movie is too long, no bad movie is short enough.” I have always interpreted that statement as meaning that the moment you begin thinking a movie (or book) is too long a red flag goes up. More than once while I was reading Rumours of Glory I found myself skipping ahead to see when the chapter would end. Not a good sign. But despite its verbosity, I still feel the book does touch all the right emotional bases, works on many levels, and has a lot to offer a curious reader.
