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    Composed: A Memoir
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    Composed: A Memoir
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    Composed: A Memoir
    Audiobook7 hours

    Composed: A Memoir

    Written by Rosanne Cash

    Narrated by Rosanne Cash

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    A candid and moving memoir from the critically acclaimed singer and songwriterFor thirty years as a musician, Rosanne Cash has enjoyed both critical and commercial success, releasing a series of albums that are as notable for their lyrical intelligence as for their musical excellence. Now, in her memoir, Cash writes compellingly about her upbringing in Southern California as the child of country legend Johnny Cash, and of her relationships with her mother and her famous stepmother, June Carter Cash. In her account of her development as an artist she shares memories of a hilarious stint as a twenty-year-old working for Columbia Records in London, recording her own first album on a German label, working her way to success, her marriage to Rodney Crowell, a union that made them Nashville's premier couple, her relationship with the country music establishment, taking a new direction in her music and leaving Nashville to move to New York. As well as motherhood, dealing with the deaths of her parents, in part through music, the process of songwriting, and the fulfillment she has found with her current husband and musical collaborator, John Leventhal. Cash has written an unconventional and compelling memoir that, in the tradition of M. F. K. Fisher's The Gastronomical Me and Frank Conroy's Stop-Time, is a series of linked pieces that combine to form a luminous and brilliant whole.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateAug 10, 2010
    ISBN9781101457429
    Unavailable
    Composed: A Memoir
    Author

    Rosanne Cash

    ROSANNE CASH has recorded fourteen albums charting twenty-one Top 40 country singles, 11 of which made it to # 1, and two gold records. She has received ten Grammy nominations—winning in 1985—and was nominated this year for “Sea of Heartbreak,” a duet with Bruce Springsteen on her current CD, The List. Cash achieved the highest chart position of her career with the debut of The List. The album, which Vanity Fair called “superb,” debuted in the Top 5 on the Country Chart, and entered The Billboard 200 at No. 22. Cash is the author of Bodies of Water and the children’s book Penelope Jane: A Fairy’s Tale. Her essays and fiction have been published in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and New York magazine. She lives in New York City with her husband and children.

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    Reviews for Composed

    4/5

    81 ratings10 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Rosanne is a bit of a navel gazer. But that that intense self-examination is part of the creation of her self and music and has always been so it seems. Her songs are very introspective creations - I like her music quite a bit but some of it does have a dark side and inhabits places that I don't always need or want to go to. This memoir published in 2010 gives us the first 55 years of Rosanne's life. Cash's songs never lacked for angst, and neither do many of the stories within this book.There are a few parts in here that are very good. Some subjects she will touch on deeply, and others get a soft touch. Pieces of the story seem to be missing, but overall there is a lot to see here as an artist tries to figure out who she is and where life takes her and her family. The latter part of the book dealing with the deaths of family, 9/11 and her own rather major health crises has some intensely personal things.
    • 3/5
      Not a lot to say about Cash's book. I am a fan of her music, and that of the Rodney Crowell. Johnny Cash, and to a lesser extent the Carter Family. It's an interesting road Cash has taken, and I was pleased to hear about her formative experiences as a musician, and about the dynamic of this well known family. I somehow came away from this wanting more information about all of it. Her family, her time in England, her marriage to Crowell. Though she is very up front about what happened in her life, there is not a lot about repercussions for her or her family (other than the death of her father, she is frank about the fallout from that.) I am no stalker, I don't like tell-alls, but there was an emotional remove to this that made it hard to love. So this was good, and recommended, but ultimately not as satisfying as I had hoped.
    • 3/5
      She's a good writer (songs and prose); a series of vignettes from her life more than an autobiography, which is just fine. Makes listening to "The List" that much better.
    • 5/5
      I ripped through this fascinating little memoir in just a couple of sitting. Often when I read a memoir I really enjoy, I'll finish it wishing there were more. Not this one. I think Rosanne Cash's COMPOSED is just about perfect just as it is. This is a woman who is not just a singer/songwriter. She is a Writer with a capital 'W.'I'll admit I have been a fan of Cash's music for over thirty years, at least since "Seven-Year Ache." And her music - and songwriting skills - has just gotten better over the years. And now we have the stories behind so many of those songs and albums. And for fans of her famous father (and yeah, I'm one of those too), there is plenty here about her dad, and her not-famous mom, who, thankfully, did find happiness after that volatile divorce. Their daughter, who experienced a failed marriage herself, has learned to appreciate what her parents went through. She's got plenty to say about the price of fame, particularly in her father's case, but her own fame too. She feels empathy now for her parents, who dove "headlong into parenthood when they were barely out of adolescence, but devoted and hopeful ..."I can't believe Rosanne Cash has been making music for over 35 years now. Where'd da time go, eh? And her dad's been gone for ten years already. I can still remember rocking and singing as kid to his very first pop hit, "Ballad of a Teenage Queen." And now his little girl is closing in on sixty. Many of her revelations about her family and her life will make you want to weep. Being born into a famous family does not, of course, bring happiness, and Rosanne Cash has had plenty of bumps along the way - drugs, affairs, that failed marriage, some downturns in her musical career, brain surgery. But the parts that will choke you up are about the losses - a baby, her parents and many friends and extended family. She puts it succinctly: "Loss is the great unifier, the terrible club to which we all eventually belong." Her accounts of those losses will break your heart.A dozen years or more ago I read Rosanne Cash's short story collection, BODIES OF WATER, a book which didn't make much of a splash, but I thought it excellent. Those writing skills are still working for her. I wonder if there might be a novel in her yet. I hope so. But for now, COMPOSED is a memoir that should stick around for a long time. The closing line give me hope: "More to come." I will recommend this book highly.
    • 4/5
      If I've learned anything from blogging, it's how deceptively difficult it is to write in a clear, casual, voice without falling into being chatty or dry. It's hard work, finding the right tone, and it takes a light touch. Rosanne Cash does a nice job, managing to stay interesting and accessible on topics like family, loss, growing up, the artistic process -- things that can either glaze your eyes over permanently or engage you. A few days ago I had lunch with a friend who saw the book cover and said, "Oh, she's one of us." And I think that's Cash's great achievement here -- she's a very simpatico character, familiar despite any privilege or pedigree to anyone who's worked hard to take charge of their creative spark and grow into some kind of accountability. It works as a biography not so much because of what she's done as because who she is -- there's an honesty and friendliness to this book that I liked. And I appreciated the care she took in finding that tone. I have no patience for the spoiled, and Cash manages to come across as honestly down-to-earth and pleasant. I don't need to feel like I could sit down to coffee with the subject of every memoir I read, but once in a while it's nice.
    • 5/5
      Wow. Even if you are not a fan of Roseanne (although I can't quite imagine that), this is a wonderfully profound book. It is personal, but more than that and ever so much more thoughtful than a lot of what passes for writing these days. On a par with the best of Annie Dillard.
    • 4/5
      I have a strange sort of (one-way) relationship with the musical Cash family. The first album I ever bought with my own money was Johnny Cash's Thing Called Love when I was 10 years old. The first concert I ever attended was a free concert in 1974 by Johnny Cash and the Carter Family, at the baseball stadium in Davenport, Iowa. The first album I ever checked out at the library was Rosanne Cash's Seven Year Ache in 1981. The first concert I ever reviewed professionally was Johnny Cash again, this time in 1987 at the Masonic Temple in Davenport. Four years later, the Man in Black was one of the first celebrities I ever interviewed in person.So what I'm saying is that I'm a big fan of both Johnny and his supremely talented daughter. For that reason, I was eager to read Rosanne's memoir, Composed. I knew from listening to her songs that she is an intelligent, thoughtful writer, perhaps not the stereotype most people have of a country singer-songwriter. In that sense, Composed did not disappoint. Cash is candid without being indiscreet; you won't read any dirt about her first husband, singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell, or get the nitty-gritty on the collapse of their marriage. But while she is respectful of other people's privacy, she does not hesitate to share her own actions and reactions. In particular, the chapter where she chronicles all of the losses she experienced over the course of a year — her mother, her stepsister, her stepmother June Carter Cash, and of course her father — is a harrowing portrait of grief.It's not surprising that a writer like Rosanne Cash would write such an emotionally open memoir, but Composed is also a first-rate look at her musical career and the stories behind each of her albums, and some of her most well-known songs. The combination added up to a fascinating portrait of an artist throughout her life.
    • 5/5
      I found myself constantly crying as I read Composed due to how Cash was able to capture emotions in her words. This isn't a memoir that's written fully linearly instead Cash went with where the story of her life made sense to tell and its an amazing story. She grew up in California and was constantly connected and later a part of the music world and the family of country music. Throughout the memoir, she honestly looks at what it meant to be the daughter of Johnny Cash and what choices she has made in her life. I recommend this book to everyone as her voice is one of the finest I've read. My only regret as I was reading it was that I didn't have a CD of her collected songs to key up the right song at the right moment.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this autobiography even though I have never been a fan of Cash or her father's, though certainly I've heard his songs here and there. I picked it up from the discount table at the bookstore (it had some minor knife damaged to the cover) so it was worth the risk. I'd heard her interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air, so I knew she was interesting and articulate. Cash's world of music, not just country/folk, is one with which I am generally not interested, so the one downside of this book for me were all the references to the music industry and various musicians--natural enough and to be expected, but not of much interest to me. But I enjoyed her story and her writing. I thought the blurb was more than a little hyperbolic, as the book, while interesting and expressive is not, in fact, deeply moving or transcendent.
    • 4/5
      Acclaimed songwriter and recording star Rosanne Cash, is a reluctant celebrity at best. She never wanted a public life, always preferring to maintain her privacy rather than to share the details of her life via the numerous lowbrow celebrity-worship outlets so common today. Over the years, her fans have come to understand that choice, and to respect it. Those same fans now will be pleasantly surprised at the depth to which Cash willingly shares the details of her life in "Composed: A Memoir."Rosanne Cash’s father, of course, is none other than Johnny Cash, a man for whom the word “legend” is insufficient to describe his place in music history. Cash grew up in her father’s shadow, sensing early on that her achievements would be forever judged in comparison to his - a pressure-filled, no-win situation she wanted to avoid. She witnessed the performer lifestyle first hand and knew it to be harder work, and much less glamorous, than outsiders could ever imagine. She was certain she wanted no part of it. And, because she had always been good with words, even to believing that some day she would make her living as an author, Cash decided that songwriting offered her the best chance to work in the “family business” and still maintain the privacy she desired.Rosanne Cash’s life has always been about music and journeys. As she puts it, “I have learned more from songs than I ever did from any teacher in school. They are interwoven and have flowed through the most important relationships in my life – with my parents, my husband, and my children…For me music has always involved journeys, both literal and metaphoric.” In "Composed: A Memoir," she shares some of those journeys with her readers. Cash, the oldest of her father’s children, starts at the beginning, recalling what it was like to grow up in Southern California at a time her father’s road habits were destroying his marriage and her mother’s health. She discusses her attempts to distance herself from her father’s style of music, including the London sojourn during which she served as a gofer at a London record label for several months (a job arranged by her father). She beautifully recounts her journey toward becoming a recording star and successful songwriter, and how proud her father was of her success. Along the way, she revisits her marriage to Rodney Crowell, a marriage that filled her home with daughters, and describes her relationship with John Leventhal, the man to whom she has been married for the past fifteen years, the father of her only son. Beyond a doubt, first and foremost, Rosanne Cash is a writer. Her prose is at its best when she describes the devastating series of deaths she and her family endured beginning in early 2003 and the unusual brain surgery she herself suffered in late 2007. On May 15, 2003, June Carter Cash died and John followed her on September 12. Just six weeks later, her stepsister Rosie would die of carbon monoxide poisoning, and in May 2005 she would lose her mother, Vivian, to lung cancer. Cash spoke at the funerals of her parents and June Carter Cash; "Composed" includes each of their eulogies. Indeed, Rosanne Cash is good at words. I suspect her father would be very proud of his daughter’s story.Rated at: 4.0