She Walks In Beauty
By: Jim McCarty (Author), Dave Thompson (Author) - Lulu.com, $19.95
Description: My last book, Nobody Told Me, was the story of the best days of my life, and a musical career that took me from a holiday camp in the English west country to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland McCarty explains.
This book, on the other hand, begins on the very worst day of my life, June 7th, 2020 — with the death of my wife Elisabeth. Lizzie.
She Walks In Beauty (out now) is the tale of Yardbirds drummer Jim McCarty’s lifelong quest to unravel the mysteries of the world that exists beyond the world in which we live.
Verdict: With an introduction that tells it like it is (”All our lives, everything that we do is bound together by threads. There could be hundreds of them … some are so frail they are barely tangible. Others are strong, like torrents … all of them are invisible and we see them wherever we go”), McCarty opens the book (and his heart) by revealing a childhood fascination with the paranormal – one that only gathered strength as he grew older.
In She Walks in Beauty, he continues to explore the world hidden just out of reach, the shadows that are just out of sight and the certainty that there is an enduring connection between the living and the dead.
As with his opening introduction, woven in and around his career as a musician, McCarty reflects upon the books and films that signposted his course, and the myriad places to which his curiosity led him - from war-time bomb-sites to public seances, from suburban English healing centers to pilgrimages to India, China and the Himalayas.
In his prior book, Nobody Told Me, it’s true that McCarty had already talked a little about his interests in spirituality and the paranormal, but they were mere passing references to the deeper explored subjects on display here.
In this new book, he looks back at the songs he has written that chart that journey, beginning with the Yardbirds’ Happenings Ten Years Time Ago, through to his recent solo work. He recalls the friends and musicians who have joined him on his quest, including Yardbirds vocalist Keith Relf, and Renaissance/Stairway bassist Louis Cennamo.
And he tells stories, oh so many wondrous stories of his years in and out of music, of which he actually apologizes for in this new book - ”To the readers of the first book, I apologize for the stories that you might have read before, but I hope I compensate for that with ones you‘ll be hearing for the first time.”
Having seemingly been on an endless search for answers to the many questions he had - and, ultimately, perhaps possibly now having found them all - She Walks in Beauty is not the typical rock’n’roll autobiography. There again, Jim McCarty is not the typical rock’n’roller!
About the Author: Jim McCarty was a founder member of rock legends The Yardbirds (with whom he still plays today) and Renaissance. This is his second book.
Amazon Book Purchase Link
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