Nonfiction: Stories To Tell

Stories To Tell

By Richard Marx

Copyright 2021

Audio Version

(320 pages print version)

I listened to Richard Marx read his memoir last week. I haven't been reviewing books for a while, but I am going for more nonfiction this year so I hope to write those up. We'll see how it goes.

Anyway, Marx read the book with nice inflection, and sometimes he even sang when he was talking about his song writing work.

For those who don't know, Richard Marx has sold more than 30 million albums. "He is the only male artist whose first seven singles reached the Top 5 on the Billboard charts, and he has written on a number one single in each of the last four decades—an accolade previously only reached by Michael Jackson. He won a 2004 Song of the Year Grammy and has scored fourteen number-one singles, both as a performer and as a songwriter/producer. He is also a committed philanthropist, supporting charitable causes such as the American Cancer Society and the Ronald McDonald House Charities, Mercy For Animals, ASPCA, Humane Society, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and the charity closest to his heart, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. He lives in Malibu, California, with his wife, Daisy Fuentes."

That paragraph comes from Amazon. Marx did not mention his philanthropy efforts, or if he did it went right by me, so that part actually comes as a surprise. Considering I just finished his memoir, I don't think it should have.

At any rate, if you're into name dropping, this is the book for you. Marx mentions ever star he ever met and worked with, from Elton John to Barbra Streisand to Whitney Houston, etc. He wrote a lot of songs and he has a strong work ethic.

He also came from a home of great privilege, and this seems to have eluded him for the most part. He seems to think everyone grew up with a grand piano in the basement and went to a private school. His father was an advertising business jingle writer as well as a renown jazz pianist in Chicago. He had advantages that most of us only dream of. I doubt he ever wanted for a thing in his life. He writes about love and loss because that's universal.

Marx is the same age as I am. He's had both hips replaced (he said that was from jumping from piano during concerts). He also has been experiencing some kind of fever thing that is not Covid but sounds like something that he picked up in South America (which was where he said he'd last been before he became ill). He said he'd been tested for everything, but I wondered if it was a parasite.

The book could have used a better editor. It was published by Simon & Schuster and I would have thought they'd have had someone tell Marx that he repeated himself in various places and used certain phrases ("to this day") too much. As an editor and writer myself, I found those types of things aggravating. I'm surprised he didn't hear it himself as he read his memoir out loud.

Marx hit it big during a period when I wasn't really paying attention to new music. I was too busy having multiple surgeries and trying to finish college and work a part-time job all at the same time to give music much thought from about 1987 to 1993. So that's on me.

If anyone had asked me who Richard Marx was before I read this memoir, I'd have said he was a singer in the late 1980s. I couldn't have named one song.

I can now name one song: Hazard. I remember hearing that one on the radio and liking it. As for the others, they went in and out of my head quickly. Good pop songs, but not memorable. Should've Known Better might be his top song. I went to look for a list of his song and that was the only one I recognized. So, I am afraid my answer to the question of who Richard Marx is would be about the same.

Trashing Richard Marx is not the point of this post. Obviously, he's a multimillionaire with talent and I'm just a tiny little blogger living in the backwoods of Appalachia. It was interesting to listen to his writing process - he hears the music first and then the words - and he seemed puzzled by those who did in other ways (words first, for example). 

I have written songs usually by doing words and music in tandem.

However, I do feel like Marx missed a growth opportunity with his memoir. I'd have liked a little more soul searching and a little less name dropping.

Oh, and maybe a little acknowledgement that women are more than simply pretty legs or 2-D walking automatons that get his motor running.