[.ca] Lulu I Dont Want To Fight (ISBN 0751533718)

From Amazon.co.uk:
I Don't Want to Fight is Scottish pop diva Lulu's candid autobiography. It's the familiar but no less heartening "rags to riches" story of how a wee girl from the Glasgow slums became one of the world's most popular (and enduring) singing sensations. (After more than 30 years in the music business her last album, Together, earned her a gold disc.) Christened Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie, Lulu's upbringing in post-war Glasgow was more Rab C Nesbitt than The Broons. Her father, an offal dresser, was a hard drinker and her parents regularly fought. By the age of 12, Lulu was already performing on stage. At 13 she happened to catch the legendary rocker Alex Harvey (later of Sensational Band fame) performing a stirring Isley Brothers number in Scotland's answer to the Cavern. The song was called Shout. Two years later Lulu was singing it on Ready Steady Go!. Her record company, Decca, actually had to wait until she turned 15 before they could legally release the single. This still didn't prevent a school's inspector calling on her parents' six months later and demanding to know why she hadn't been attending school. Her mother, Lulu maintains, retorted; "Do ye nae read the papers or watch TV? She's a pop star." And indeed she was; and then a film star with a lead role in To Sir With Love and then a television personality with her own series Happening for Lulu and when, in 1969, Eurovision beckoned, Lulu did not shirk, notching up a rare, if tied, victory for Britain with the evergreen Boom Bang-a-Bang. In 1972, at the grand old age of 23, she was honoured by Eamonn Andrews who presented her with a big red book and boldly claimed: "This is Your Life". As this autobiography shows, he proved to be somewhat premature. The break-up of her marriage to Maurice Gibb, motherhood and collaborations with David Bowie, Elton John and Take That were all yet to come. --Travis Elborough

The ups and downs of Lulu's life:
Lulu's career in music has had its ups and downs, just like her life. The sixties were famous for love, drugs and rock'n'roll, but although Lulu enjoyed life back then, she was a late starter on the first, only sampled the second a couple of times, and her music deviated from the third fairly quickly. Nevertheless, Lulu's story is interesting in its own way. I read the whole book in one day and I never got bored. Each aspect of her life is covered in just enough detail so that I wasn't left thinking that I needed to know more. The book begins telling us about her parents and her childhood, explaining that they had more money than most of the families around them and why. Throughout the book, it is obvious that her parents, her sister and her two brothers are all very important to her. Lulu traces her career in music, television and on stage and screen, explaining how she was sometimes persuaded to do things against her better judgement. As I always suspected, she is much more interested in R+B than some of the fluffy pop music she was sometimes expected to record. Lulu describes some of the different records she made and the different people she worked with. Fans will be particularly interested to know about some of the music that is sitting in record company vaults, as yet unreleased. No specifics are given, but it's clear that there is some more music (apart from the tracks that were released) that Lulu did with David Bowie in the seventies, plus an album of new recordings that would have been released in 1997 but for record company personnel changes. Lulu also talks about her two failed marriages - the first to Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees and the second to a leading London hairdresser. It was this second marriage that yielded her only child, her son Jordan. It appears that Lulu still gets on well with both men despite their past problems. Apparently, Lulu nearly lost her life twice, once as a child when the rowing boat she was in drifted out to sea, and once in the eighties when she was in a head-on collision driving in thick fog. Later, she had a problem with her voice and at one time it seemed that she would never sing again. Fortunately, she made a full recovery. Lulu deliberately did not write her autobiography until both her parents had died, and it becomes clear early on why. If you have any interest in Lulu's music, there is enough packed into her life to make the book worth reading. This review is based on the UK edition which has a different cover.