Gossip achieved global success with the release of their third album. Is the lead singer's life interesting enough to read about considering her still relative young age?
Who:
Beth Ditto with Michelle Tea
What:
Biography
Why:
The story of Beth Ditto from childhood to fame
When:
Published 2012
Where:
American singer/songwriter from Arkansas
Coal to Diamonds is a biography about Beth Ditto, front woman for the band Gossip. She charts her early childhood growing up in Arkansas; through to the break out success of Gossip and closing her story some time just after the release of the album Music for Men. Even though it was published in 2012 there is no mention of A Joyful Noise which was also released that year, which would suggest that this was written before, or sometime during, the recording of that record.
The writing style feels like you are sitting down listening to Ditto tell her story as she thinks of things to mention. There are many stories she talks about but in a very anecdotal kind of way.
When she discusses her early childhood and upbringing in Arkansas as part of a large family; you really get a sense of what it was like for her growing up in what can only be described as squalid conditions. She leaves you in no doubt that her whole family and the surrounding community were really nothing more than trailer trash.
It is a bit of a harrowing tale of a girl and her siblings being left to fend for themselves because their mother simply leaves them to it. This is not your normal family unit as her mother goes from one partner to another leaving the kids to basically raise one another. Ditto constantly moves from her home to stay with relatives; to try and get some sense of normality in a family that is anything but normal. Although the message comes across that for her and many in the neighbourhood this is exactly what normal is to them.
You also get the feeling that this sort of lifestyle is a vicious circle that will just keep on repeating itself for generations to come as there is next to no prospects for breaking the cycle. They are given very little support from the local authorities as she points out at times. For example she discusses the sex education classes given at school where there are single mothers attending the classes; it seems a case of too little too late.
These insights into an upbringing that is completely foreign to a good many were for me the highlight of the book. The fact that she had the courage to leave her hometown and try to make something of her life, even if her initial ambition at the time was not to become a rock star, was quite inspiring. It would have been so easy to stick with what she knew and get pregnant and continue in the same vein as many others around her.
Ditto is very honest and forthright when discussing her family and the way she was raised. Writing about the neglect that she and her siblings had from their mother must not have been an easy thing to do when you consider that her mother is still alive and would probably read this book. It must have felt very therapeutic to be able to air her thoughts in this manner.
You would think that being a larger lady and one in the spotlight; Ditto would be very conscious of her size as most people who are overweight are. However her positive outlook shines through and her "Take me as I am" attitude comes as a nice surprise when you consider some of the serious issues she has had to deal with throughout her life.
She is definitely a positive role model in some respects for having such strong feelings and opinion about her shape. Ditto's message is be comfortable with the person you are and not what people expect you to be. This is especially relevant to young girls who have so much pressure placed upon them by society to conform to a certain body image. For people who tip the wrong end of the scales; they can look at her and know that they can achieve their goals if they want too and that is definitely a good thing. There is a bit of a fault in the way she gets this message across but I will come to that in the case against.
Ditto talking about giving back to the community through rock workshops is also something that creates good feelings towards her. This is a girl who realises how hard it is to break away from the hardships of life and is trying to help other girls coming from similar situations as her own.
What also comes across is how bemused and a little overawed Ditto feels from gaining fame and popularity across the world. There is also a bit of anger coming through in the text; at the ignorance towards Gossip displayed from the American public. As the band explodes in many countries the indifference shown at home definitely is something that irks her.
Considering she has really only turned thirty at the time this book was written you can't expect her to finish with an anecdote of life's lessons. Instead she ends with a heartfelt appeal to people to go out in the world and do what they enjoy best, if that leaves a mark on the world then great, if not then you should be proud of whatever you achieve anyway because you have given it a shot. It is another sign of showing her positive happy nature.
Finding out about her youth and how the band members met and became really close friends is great and makes for interesting reading, but it isn't enough on its own to entertain you. Where this book really falls down is in not actually telling you much about Gossip being a band.
You get bits and pieces here and there when she mentions that they made one album or another - but therein lies the problem: she just mentions these events. There is no elaboration into the process or the actual recording; just anecdotes about these incidents taking place.
For any music fan when you read the biography of a musician you are expecting certain moments to appear. You want stories about late night recording sessions and working out the chorus of a particular hit song and finding out how special the process was for them. The only time Ditto ever gets near to doing this is when talking about the song that put them on the radar Standing in the Way of Control. But again she doesn't go into any great detail which is a real shame.
The other things that you would expect from most biographies are photos from the artist; whether that is of their childhood; or performing on stage; or hanging around with famous friends. It is something that is standard practice but we don't get one picture apart from the one gracing the cover. At a little over 150 pages; it is something that is seriously lacking and could have helped boost the page count by another dozen pages or so.
For such a short book you also would think it would be crammed with different adventures from her life and the band's tours. Instead there is an awful lot of repetition about hardships and going from one fast food service job to another as an example.
The way the book is written contributes greatly to Ditto covering the same ground. Because she is basically narrating things as they occurred but then also mentioning things as she thinks of them; it causes the novel to jump about all over the place. From one chapter to the next, and sometimes from paragraph to paragraph, you might be moving six months forward or backwards in her life or sometimes even a year or two.
It is really irritating trying to establish what the chronological order is for some of the things she is describing. This is especially true when she is discussing their albums or recordings and the actual release of the records which are given short shrift. It seems to me that the story of the band is really secondary to the story she wanted to tell; which is her early life and the friendships she forged with her band mates.
Speaking of the band; the narrative had me confused as to just exactly when in the timeline their drummer Kathy decided to leave the group. One minute it appears like she is exiting after their third release and the next it seems it is just before they went into the studio to record that particular album. It's another example of how frustrating the book can be when trying to establish some sort of chronological order of events.
I also think this was written to capitalise on the popularity of Gossip at that particular moment in time. Their most successful album Music For Men had been and gone. The fifth and final album, A Joyful Noise was released around the same time as this novel and I can't help thinking it was timed like that to help boost the sales of both.
That would be a cynical move but judging from the trajectory of their career and the way they were promoted by their label after the release of Standing in the Way of Control it would come as no surprise if they were both marketed that way. There was a definite shift by the record label to create publicity for Ditto as the band's spokesperson and some sort of new age feminist for girls to look up too.
As I have said her attitude to her own weight and being comfortable in your own skin is to be applauded. However it isn't as simple as that. She makes no bones about being overweight but considering what she explains as her dietary intake it is hardly surprising that she is a person who is in reality obese.
In a time when obesity is one of the major issues of our society, having a person talking about eating chips and chocolate and consuming large amounts of soft drink as if it was just normal, really made me feel angry. It is fair enough for Ditto to say she doesn't care what people think about her size but she should at least acknowledge her diet as a major contributing factor in reaching the weight that she is. Instead Ditto portrays the time circumstances meant living off a bit of rice and losing massive amounts of weight as a bad thing!
I have other issues with her too mainly in the blasé attitude she takes when discussing some of the mental problems or situations she has experienced during her life.
There is a level of acknowledgement that she has suffered from bouts of depression which contributed to her causing self-harm by cutting and at times contemplating suicide. What she doesn't do is elaborate on how she overcomes this depression and how she is able to move forward and stop the self-harm.
Admitting to being sexually abused as a teen cannot have been easy, but it isn't explored in great detail; merely spoken of as something that occurred. She suffers at one stage from a life threating eye disease and blatantly ignores the doctor's advice in regards to treatment which nearly results in her death. Ditto talks about how it was affecting her but doesn't explain what steps were taken to get her back to normal health.
All of these topics deserve longer chapters but are just mentioned in anecdotal form and brushed upon instead of going into the same level of depth she reserved for her early childhood memories.
It makes her life come across as one sob story to the next instead of celebrating the triumphs that she achieves from overcoming such obstacles.
I don't think this is deliberate but more a problem that comes back to her collaborator Michelle Tea and also the publisher. If she was given better advice on how to structure the narration and to elaborate more in certain parts then we would have had a much more fleshed out book that would have felt far more complete than what is on offer in the end product.
Verdict:
Beth Ditto deserves a far better book than this one to tell her life story. I am afraid she needs to serve twenty years and come back again in the future with a much better writer if anyone is still interested by then.
There aren't as many diamonds on offer as you would like; it is mainly filled with lumps of coal.
Evidence:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beth_Ditto
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