Holding the Note: Writing On Music (Paperback) - David Remnick

The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and editor of The New Yorker writes on some of the essential musicians of our time.

Essays on Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Leonard Cohen, Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples, Patti Smith

A Financial Times Book of the Year 2023

The greatest popular songs, whether it's Aretha Franklin singing 'Respect' or Bob Dylan performing 'Blind Willie McTell', have a way of embedding themselves in our memories. You remember a time and a place and a feeling when you hear that song again. In Holding the Note, David Remnick, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and editor of The New Yorker, writes about the lives and work of some of the greatest musicians, songwriters, and performers of the past fifty years.

He portrays a series of musical lives - Leonard Cohen, Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, and more - and their unique encounters with the passing of that essential element of music: time. These are intimate portraits of some of the greatest creative minds of our time written with a lifetime's passionate attachment to music that has shaped us all.

'This collection of articles by David Remnick can stand as literature . . . He treats the reader as an informed, intelligent equal' - New York Times

About the Author

David Remnick has been the editor of The New Yorker since 1998. He was a staff writer for the magazine from 1992 to 1998 and, previous to that, the Washington Post's correspondent in the Soviet Union. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for his book Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire. He lives in New York City with his wife and children.