Wall Street Journal Review of 'The Ego Trip'
By Dave Shiflett
The path to enlightenment can be long and twisted. It can sometimes lead to diverse and awe-inspiring practices, including snake handling, prolonged fasting or, like the fifth-century Christian ascetic Simeon Stylites, living atop a series of pillars for 36 years—putting him closer to the Almighty and farther away from insufferable humanity.
Those seeking a less arduous route to illumination may find guidance in Kimon de Greef’s “The Ego Trip,” an engaging study of toad smoking and its psychedelic effects. Readers who are unaware that the secretions from some toads (including the Sonoran Desert toad, also known as the Colorado River toad) can be smoked and may serve as portals to the divine, or at least a psychedelic variation on that theme, are in for some significant revelations.
Mr. de Greef, a South Africa-based writer with a reverence for thoroughness, reminds us that smoking toads is not to be confused with licking them, a phenomenon once demonstrated and expertly analyzed by the MTV cultural commentators Beavis and Butthead. (“Tastes like chicken,” Beavis explained.) Licking toads can result in poisoning, whereas smoking might lead to bliss (and in some cases, psychosis).
The first modern incident of toad toking, according to Mr. de Greef, probably occurred in 1983, when a Texan and his girlfriend, having read about the possibility of psychedelic toads, tracked one down in the Arizona desert, drained its glands (a process known as milking), dried the milk on a car windshield (a Chevy Sport) and smoked the flaky substance. What followed was a collapse of the ego and, the Texan later wrote, the “loss of the space-time continuum,” thanks to the active ingredient in some toad milk, 5-MeO-DMT, otherwise known as the God molecule. The trip might have been somewhat strange and intense but it was not long, lasting only about half an hour.
Octavio Rettig Hinojosa, a practiced drug abuser with a medical degree, first smoked toad in 2006 and over the next few years developed a “neo-shamanic” persona as he became the face of the movement, according to Mr. de Greef. Like Elvis, he went by his first name and could be theatrical during “ceremonies,” when he would dose typically small groups of initiates with the magic molecule—despite the fact that 5-MeO-DMT has been illegal in the U.S. since January 2011. He insisted that toad smoking had saved him from crack addiction and that it was once an ancient Mesoamerican ritual (a claim not firmly supported by the historical record nor by contemporary native people). His ministry received a boost in 2013 when he caught the attention of a TEDx organizer, who booked him for a speech. An appearance at Burning Man that year also helped establish him as a “psychedelic superstar.”
Mr. de Greef describes the effects of 5-MeO-DMT in such glowing terms that a foot-washing Baptist might be tempted to give it a shot. He quotes Octavio, who says the molecule brought him “inner peace, calmness, and love.” James Oroc, an extreme-sports journalist and “hardened atheist,” emerged from his initial trip, Mr. de Greef tells us, with an “unwavering faith…in a transcendent spiritual reality.” Ralph Metzner, a German psychologist and associate of Timothy Leary, the LSD guru, described his first encounter as “a shattering annihilation” of the ego resulting in a “sparkling sense of awe-inspiring beauty.” Hunter Biden credits it with keeping him off cocaine for a year; Mike Tyson reports “it’s almost like dying and being reborn.”
But the story also takes a dark turn. Like J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendary ring, Mr. de Greef writes, the drug is “too powerful to be wielded without cost.” Some participants experienced “psychosis and physical injury,” while others later died by suicide, according to the author, though exact numbers are not available. Other calamities ensued. In 2018 a “sociable housewife” who toked up at an Octavio ceremony stopped breathing and died. All told, Mr. de Greef writes, Octavio and other “opportunistic and even delusional figures” who got into the game have “left a trail of harm while evangelizing the transcendent effects of the God molecule.”
The toads come away looking far better. These humble vessels of the God molecule live underground for up to nine months a year, during which time they neither eat nor move. Their pleasant mating call, Mr. de Greef writes, sounds like “a distant ferryboat whistle.” Females lay ribbons of eggs that can stretch for an impressive 20 feet. To no one’s surprise, the growing interest in toad tripping has put pressure on the toad population, though worldwide demand by 2019 was estimated at less than 45 pounds, which would fit into a suitcase. By comparison, cocaine production that same year exceeded 7.7 million pounds, or hundreds of thousands of suitcases.
Meanwhile the easily synthesized (and still illegal) 5-MeO-DMT molecule shows promise in clinical trials for treating drug addicts and sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder. It has also attracted less-controversial evangelists, including one initially anonymous Silicon Valley superstar who gave away 1,000 or so dose-metered vape pens accompanied by an alluring pitch: “One sometimes experiences becoming an eternal spiritual being having a temporary experience in a physical human body on Planet Earth.” After this temporary terrestrial’s Earthly visa expired in 2025, his identity was revealed to be Bill Atkinson, an early designer at Apple.
Why would people want to flee their egos? Why would they risk instant psychosis from inhaling illegal toad milk? According to one of Mr. de Greef’s sources, some might be lonely; others polarized, sick or spiritually undernourished. Traditional religion might not have worked out, or perhaps users are feeling oppressed by the Almighty Algorithm.
It’s also possible that some simply want to experience what one enthusiast called taking “a rocket ship into the void,” with toad as their co-pilot. A strange trip, but perhaps no stranger than living atop a pillar for 36 years.
Mr. Shiflett posts his original music and writing at Daveshiflett.com.
Wall Street Journal Column on America's 250th Birthday
Here’s a different perspective: America is only about 2½ times as old as my mother. That’s it. In August, Mom will turn 98—almost a century. She has lived through a significant chunk of American history, including a world war, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights movement, and the unfortunate advent of pickleball. She predates “The Wizard of Oz.” Her uncle was partially raised by a slave.
Mom—more widely known as Peggy—recently attended a family gathering that included an 8-month-old great-grandson named Charlie and Charlie’s other great-grandmother Jody. Both grandmas reminded me how young America is and how much it has changed, mostly for the better.
Using Mom’s lifespan as a yardstick puts things in perspective. Go back 98 years from her birth in 1928 and you’re at 1830, a mere 54 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed and 31 years before the start of the Civil War, during which her grandfather would serve in Robert E. Lee’s signal corps. Go back one more lifespan and it’s 1732, the year George Washington was born.
Her life, like America’s, has been rich in challenges. Her father deserted the family early on, leaving her mother to raise two daughters at a time when women were at a significant disadvantage in the job market. They never owned a car and for a time had to cook their meals on a hot plate. “We were poor,” Mom is fond of saying, “but we didn’t know we were poor.” She and her sister later went to college on scholarships and lived out their own American Dreams. Her sister, who went to work for NASA, had a daughter who became a plastic surgeon and a son who became a doctor. Mom’s kids did well too, save for the son who became a hack writer.
Jody’s story is a variation on the same theme. One lifespan of 92 years before her birth, Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd and Francisco Lopez made the first documented discovery of gold in California. Jody grew up on a New Mexico cattle ranch and eventually married Vern, whose farming family included six children. He and a brother slept on bedrolls under the kitchen table in their two-room house because there were no beds available. Life got better but not overnight.
After serving in a front-line artillery unit in Korea, Vern tried his hand at dry farming, which depends entirely on rain. It didn’t rain for a year. Vern then “reinvented” himself (as they never said back then) by learning engineering on the G.I. Bill, which led to a job with General Electric. Five children also entered the mix. Meantime Jody’s brother-in-law Al joined the Army and eventually served as one of Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo’s jailers at Sugamo Prison, where Al taught the old general a little English before Tojo ascended the gallows steps. Al ended up a vice president of Chevron.
Both grandmothers also saw and sometimes participated in significant cultural changes. Mom and Dad worked hard and eventually joined a country club—unimaginable when they were young—whose anti-Jewish membership policy they helped overturn. Mom also taught in predominantly black public schools after integration began in Virginia, not an entirely welcome development to some of the old folks back home in Appomattox.
The great-grandmothers now face new challenges, including strokes and dementia, and will eventually rest with their husbands (Mom in Arlington, Jody in Quantico). I have never heard them engage in a “quality of life” discussion and am certain they cherish every breath they take. Perhaps there’s a lesson in that for their descendants. As birthday advice to America, they would no doubt endorse the words of famed American philosopher Clint Eastwood: “Improvise, adapt, and overcome.” Jody might throw in a maxim long framed on her bathroom wall: “Quityerbellyachin.”
Review – Hannibal Lecter bio and Steven King
Those of us who avoid spooky books and movies are nonetheless aware of Dr.
Hannibal Lecter, who first appeared in Thomas Harris’s 1981 novel “Red Dragon,”
and is now, perhaps, the world’s best-known cannibal. Brilliant, elusive and
charming when he wants to be, Hannibal may have come closer than any other cultural
icon to humanizing this tribe of dietary renegades.
Hannibal, a psychiatrist whose murderous skill set includes the ability to convince a man
to kill himself by swallowing his own tongue, enlivens the pages of Brian Raftery’s
“Hannibal Lecter: A Life.” Mr. Raftery, a journalist and the author of “Best. Movie. Year.
Ever.” (2019), starts out by reminding us that while Hannibal is a literary character he
has “many fathers”—several of whom were real people.
Mr. Harris grew up in a small town in Mississippi, in a milieu rich with gruesome
stories. One was the tale of a 1930s drifter known as James H. Coyner, who murdered
a woman, whose body he allegedly “salted and cured.” Mr. Harris, who began his career
writing for the Associated Press and Argosy magazine, developed a journalistic interest
in similar fiends, including a prison inmate (also a doctor) who had tranquilized a gay
lover, slit his throat and cut him into eight pieces.
Sensing literary opportunity in such horrors, Mr. Harris wove them into “Red Dragon,”
a thriller that was promptly hailed by Stephen King as “probably the best popular novel
to be published in America since ‘The Godfather.’ ” While Hannibal is something of a
secondary character in “Red Dragon,” he took center stage in subsequent books,
including “The Silence of the Lambs” (1988), “Hannibal” (1999) and “Hannibal Rising”
(2006).
In the mid-1980s Mr. Harris attended FBI seminars on criminal psychology and
forensic investigation, gathering details he used to set readers’ teeth to
chattering. Harris’s character Buffalo Bill, who fashions a “suit” from his victims’
skin, practiced the macabre arts of three real-world killers, including Ted Bundy.
Not all of Mr. Raftery’s information involves brains and blood. He relates how, on one
writing day, Mr. Harris—still without a suitable title for Hannibal’s second
appearance—“looked down at the last five words of the book his and saw the perfect
title staring back at him: ‘The Silence of the Lambs.’ ” There are stories from Anthony
Hopkins, who brought Hannibal to cinematic life in Jonathan Demme’s 1991 film
adaptation of that book. Mr. Hopkins shot most of his scenes for the movie in less
than a month, and while he initially said he had “no idea” why Hannibal was such a
popular figure, he came to believe that “we feel murderous things in our lives, and
anyone who denies it is a liar.”
The popularity of Mr. Harris’s later novels featuring Hannibal faded: “Hannibal” was
dismissed by Martin Amis as being, “on all levels, a snorting, rooting, oinking porker.”
Peter Webber, who directed the 2007 film adaptation of “Hannibal Rising,” reported that
Mr. Harris was unpleasantly “shocked” by the movie. Yet his creation continues to burrow
into public consciousness, perhaps too deep to be dislodged by anything less
than a scalpel—or a spoon.
While Mr. Harris dreamed up a singular literary terror, Stephen King has countless
nightmares to his name. His writing regimen is the focus of Caroline Bicks’s “Monsters
in the Archives.” Even if you have a hard time getting through Mr. King’s tombstone-
thick books, you might come away with admiration for his work ethic.
Ms. Bicks, a Shakespeare scholar and an avid student of Mr. King’s work, spent a year
comparing the drafts of four of his epics—“Carrie” (1974), “ ’Salem’s Lot” (1975), “The
Shining” (1977) and “Pet Sematary” (1983)—plus the stories in his 1978 collection,
“Night Shift.” From his earliest days Mr. King wrote—and rewrote—a great deal, and it
seems few of his pages escaped Ms. Bicks’s perusal.
She includes photocopies of typewritten manuscript pages, heavy with margin notes
and marked-through lines. Minor changes, she argues, were often critical.
Switching the setting of “Carrie” from suburban Boston to down-home Maine might have
helped convince readers that the novel’s mayhem “could happen in any high school
across the country.” Ms. Bicks reminds us that copy editors can be very picky. One sent
along a query after the initial mention of two buckets of pig blood (that are unleashed at
a pivotal moment): “Any lids on pails to keep from spilling?”
Film versions of Mr. King’s stories brought changes made by other hands. In Stanley
Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation of the “The Shining,” Jack Nicholson smashes through a
bathroom door with an ax and sticks his head through the hole. In the book Mr. King
specifies that the instrument of destruction is a short roque mallet. Nor does the
book’s character, Jack Torrance, announce “Here’s Johnny!”—possibly the
movie’s best-known line.
Mr. King wasn’t crazy about the film and eventually paid Kubrick $1.5 million for the
screen rights so that he could write his own 1997 TV miniseries adaptation. Devoted
fans of the novel may be happy to learn that Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel, the
mountain resort in Colorado that was Mr. King’s inspiration for the setting, is
available for booking.
The publication of “Carrie,” the tale of a superpowered misfit who gets destructive
revenge on her bullies, brought comfort and joy to Mr. King and his family, who were
living in a trailer during its creation. Mr. King initially believed the story was going
nowhere, though his wife urged him to persevere. Doubleday accepted the book in
1973, and paperback rights went for $400,000 (equivalent to nearly $3 million today).
In the process Mr. King softened Carrie’s character, cutting depictions of her as “a
remorseless scourge” and removing a scene in which she destroys a Boeing 747. She
does, however, use her telekinetic talents to roast her cruel classmates with apparent
glee. We might easily imagine Hannibal Lecter cheering her on: “You go, girl.”
Mr. Shiflett posts his original music and writing at Daveshiflett.com.
Obit for Manuela Hoelterhoff
By Dave Shiflett
In the course of every hack writer's life, with any luck, a great editor will appear. In my fortunate case that editor was Manuela Hoelterhoff, who died May 6 from cancer. She was 77.
We were entirely different people. She was born in Hamburg just after World War II (or 11, as our better public intellectuals might put it). Her father was one of 5,000 or so German survivors of the Battle of Stalingrad, where hundreds of thousands of fellow soldiers died. After the family came to America, her mother got a job at the Tolstoy Foundation, run by the great writer's daughter. By contrast my dad served in the Pacific theater, then started out his career in a gas station. My mother was a public school teacher.
Manuela was bright and ambitious. She wrote a few articles for William F. Buckley's National Review and then, in 1975, joined the Wall Street Journal, where she stayed for over 20 years in various capacities, including book editor. She won a Pulitzer in 1983 for criticism, in which she truly excelled, once writing of a Metropolitan Opera performance that "the place was so empty I thought I'd missed an air-raid drill."
She also had a heart as warm as a Christmas fire.
By comparison I sounded frightfully like Gomer Pyle, was an academic slacker, and a journalistic nonentity. My biggest scoop had been an alleged Bigfoot sighting near the Dismal Swamp in Virginia. That résumé enhancer was followed by employment with an even more exotic being—the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a.k.a. the Korean Lunar Deity, whose Washington Times had given me a job, unaware that when asked how many Supreme Court justices there were (just prior to ascending to Washington), I answered "a dozen."
Nonetheless, she smiled upon me. An early assignment was to review Roseanne Barr's My Life As a Woman. My analysis was somewhat mundane, reaching its high point when observing the author possessed a pair of "billowing glutes the size of sofa cushions." This didn't seem to offend Manuela, and indeed might have pleased her, as it did famed producer Ray Stark, who called (there was no email) to praise the piece and ask if I'd like to try my hand at Hollywood writing. Being an ignorant rube who didn't, at the time, know Stark's glorious reputation (West Side Story, Funny Girl, Steel Magnolias), I turned him down.
Manuela and I worked off and on for years. I had not heard from her for awhile when, in 2004, she called out of the blue. "Shiflett," she said (she often started conversations by calling my name), "what are you doing these days?" Not much, I honestly replied. "Well, you are now the television critic for the Bloomberg Muse. Where are you living?"
"Richmond."
"Where on earth is Richmond?"
The job was a breeze. I wrote one 600-word column a week and made a solid middle-class living. She let me review whatever I wanted, but there was one unspoken commandment: Do not bore me. She could be demanding but was also forgiving. One day I got another call:
"Shiflett, where did you learn to spell? It's KAMA Sutra, not KARMA Sutra." This inspired one of my better comebacks, which I attribute to her influence:
"Manuela, I am a writer, not a speller."
While she often broadened my horizons, I sometimes broadened hers. One day Manuela came down to Washington to interview some art world deity. We had lunch, after which she asked for a lift to her appointment. It was a sweltering D.C. summer afternoon—hot, damp, the sort of weather only an anaconda could love. "I hope you've got a good air conditioner," she said as we approached my car.
As it happened, my AC was taking the summer off, and I had gone old school. "It works like this," I explained as we pulled out of the parking garage. "You put down your window and I'll step on the gas."
Manuela was not amused.
We shared a love of music, though her love was far more elevated than mine. She wrote the libretto for an opera (Modern Painters) while I created what one critic called "Gonzo folk" with titles like "Virgins in Heaven." Yet she was entirely supportive. One evening, while still in the grips of youthful ambition, a colleague and I played a gig at a Columbia University venue. Just after taking the stage I noticed Manuela and then-partner Francesca Zambello in the audience. I gasped so profoundly my uvula could likely be heard slapping against the back of my throat.
This was hardly an overreaction. Manuela was a Pulitzer-winning opera critic and creator while Francesca was a world-renowned director who worked with the greats, including Placido Domingo. I sang like a drunk monkey and kept time like a sundial on a rainy day.
After the gig, I sheepishly approached their highnesses. Manuela could not have been nicer, with Francesca adding that "your voice fits the room." It was only later that I remembered the venue, which was below a chapel, was popularly known as the Crypt.
I had just finished (I hope) rewriting a novel the day Manuela died. I hadn't talked to her in a while. Her love life had gone bad, her beloved Beagles had died, she'd been battling cancer, and I wasn't feeling that great myself. I might have dared to send her the title page (Three Clicks Past the Paraclete) to see what she thought.
I can imagine her response. "Shiflett—you're groping for profundity. Try again. But don't give up!"
She now belongs to the ages, and the ages had better watch their step.
Dave Shiflett is a contributor to the Wall Street Journal and posts his original music and writing at Daveshiflett.com
Two New Dolly Parton books
Star of the Show and Ain't Nobody's Fool
‘Star of the Show’ and ‘Ain’t Nobody’s Fool’: Dolly Parton’s Reign
Dolly Parton’s voice brought her early success as a performer. Her songwriting talent and her business savvy made her a music titan.
By Dave Shiflett
Jan. 2, 2026 9:46 am ET
When those long-awaited aliens finally get around to colonizing Earth, they may be somewhat baffled by the Dolly Parton phenomenon. How did a person of such humble origins get so rich and famous? Why did a woman seemingly dependent on wigs, makeup and, eventually, plastic surgery seem so real and admirable to so many?
Two books offer complementary insights into these questions. Ms. Parton’s “Star of the Show,” written with Tom Roland, provides the basics. Born on Jan. 19, 1946, in Sevier County, Tenn., Dolly was the fourth of 12 children in a family of very slight means. The Partons made up for a lack of formal schooling (her father could neither read nor write; Dolly barely got through high school) with a rock-solid religious upbringing and a talent for living off the land. When Dolly was in third grade, her mother used scraps of fabric to make her a “coat of many colors,” which a “mean girl” ridiculed.
These pressures formed a diamond-like personality anchored in traditional beliefs: Love Jesus (adult church attendance not necessary), be smart (higher education not necessary), marry young and stay married, and beware men who go around calling themselves Colonel.
Ms. Parton wrote her first song at 5 years old (“Little Tiny Tasseltop,” about a doll made from a corncob) and worked hard on her vocal chops from an equally young age. She made the Billboard Country charts in 1967 with the singles “Dumb Blonde” and “Something Fishy.” In September of that year she debuted on “The Porter Wagoner Show” (Tammy Wynette didn’t work out), which would launch her to eternal stardom and adoration.
Ms. Parton recounts all this in somewhat Hallmarkian prose, though there are rhinestones in the mix. She refers to her parents as “horny hillbillies.” She tells us that Jane Fonda, one of her co-stars in the movie “9 to 5” (1980), is a lousy singer. And she warmly recalls a Las Vegas fan who capped off Ms. Parton’s rendition of “Me and Little Andy,” in which a child and her puppy die, by shouting “did you have to kill the damn dog?”
While her enduring marriage to Carl Dean provided stability, life on the road took its toll. “I was not eating properly,” she writes of one hard stretch, “or sleeping that well either,” and eventually required hospitalization. But she saw a healing hand at work. She believes the Almighty, who sometimes “just has to slap me down,” was telling her to tap the brakes now and then.
Words play second fiddle to the many stunning photographs of a seemingly ageless Ms. Parton in “Star of the Show.” A number of them are full-page images, with no physical attribute overlooked (two of which Ms. Parton mentions without a hint of salaciousness, as if describing a pair of pet dachshunds), including the time she donned Dallas Cowboy cheerleader garb (page 318 for those in a hurry). She includes a brief appreciation of her wig stylist and reports outliving a few plastic surgeons.
Ms. Parton, with her artificial enhancements and natural intelligence, puts AI in a new light. One story makes the point. Her 1974 release of “I Will Always Love You” soon caught Elvis Presley’s attention. This put her over the moon, but Elvis’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker—a rapacious music-industry buccaneer—insisted that she hand over half of her publishing rights. She refused, which eventually paid off after Whitney Houston released her own version in 1992. Ms. Parton quips that she could have bought Elvis’s Graceland with the royalties.
Exactly how much did she make from that song? Upward of $10 million, Martha Ackmann reports in “Ain’t Nobody’s Fool,” a deeply detailed, and footnoted, account of Ms. Parton’s life and career.
Ms. Ackmann adds factual heft to Ms. Parton’s breezy narrative, writing that her father, Lee, excelled at boozing and carousing and that there were times when the overworked star might have tipped the bottle a bit more than the Good Lord would advise.
Ms. Ackmann also attests to Ms. Parton’s traditional values. During the filming of “9 to 5,” she was required to kiss her character’s spouse (played by the husband of a close friend). Ms. Parton asked that the set be cleared. The same spirit informed Ms. Parton’s demands before hosting “Saturday Night Live” in 1989. (“I wouldn’t cuss, and I wouldn’t make fun of Jesus.”) She ignored political pressure against touring South Africa during apartheid in the 1980s. “She was an entertainer,” Ms. Ackmann writes, “not a politician.”
Ms. Parton has a heart to match her big hair. Her Imagination Library, inspired by her belief that her father had been “crippled” by illiteracy, has reportedly distributed some 300 million books to children. She’s built a business empire, including an amusement park (Dollywood) and a line of frozen and comfort foods. She’s also come to love the finer things. During a recording session, Ms. Ackmann writes, “Dolly popped a pint of Häagen-Dazs into the microwave until it softened, then scooped out mouthfuls with a potato chip.”
Her long road has led to the usual place. Husband Carl died on March 3, 2025, at 82. She has said final farewells to Porter Wagoner and her longtime singing partner, Kenny Rogers. When her own time comes she’ll be ready. “When I’m called before God,” she writes, “I want to be able to say, ‘God, I used everything you gave me.’” Adds Ms. Ackmann: “She once joked that if she lived to be one hundred, she hoped people would say, ‘dang, she looks good for her age!’”
Seems like an exceptionally safe bet.
Mr. Shiflett posts his original music and writing at Daveshiflett.com.
Copyright ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Appeared in the January 3, 2026, print edition as 'The Queen of Country'.
Review of Wings -- The Story of a Band On The Run
‘Wings’ Review: Paul McCartney’s Wandering Star
For McCartney, post-Beatles life didn’t mean a retreat from the business of rock ’n’ roll. With a new band, he got on the bus.
By Dave Shiflett
Nov. 21, 2025 11:33 am ET
John Lennon’s observation that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus earned him full immersion in fire and brimstone, though he might have also been accused of understatement. Timothy Leary, the Harvard professor and LSD apostle, took a more expansive view, insisting that the Fab Four were “mutants” and “prototypes of evolutionary agents sent by God” to create “a young race of laughing freemen.”
All things must pass, as George Harrison observed, and individual popularity was fleeting after the Beatles disbanded in 1970. Starting anew, even for musical deities, can be a bumpy road. The first decade of Paul McCartney’s second act is fully illuminated in “Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run,” an oral history drawn from interviews with band and family members, as well as other interested parties, and edited by Ted Widmer.
Mr. McCartney opens the book with a brief overview of his life immediately after the Beatles. The rumor was that he was dead. Not quite. He and his wife, Linda, had holed up on their Scotland farm, where he learned to pour cement and shear sheep while she worked on her musicianship and cooking.
His solo comeback took off with the song “Maybe I’m Amazed” (1970), a vigorous ode to Linda, followed by the No. 1 hit “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” (1971), a strangely memorable song whose meaning remains elusive after decades of listening. The album “Ram” (1971) was nuked by Jon Landau, the Rolling Stone critic, who called it “the nadir in the decomposition of sixties rock” and “incredibly inconsequential and monumentally irrelevant.”
The wounded Mr. McCartney got “depressed,” he recalls, and found himself wondering, “can I make a decent record?” When Wings, created in 1971, released its first album, “Wild Life” (1971), Mr. McCartney discovered the boo birds were still circling. “It got slammed.”
Touring was the way forward. His attempt to get the Beatles back on the road during the “Let It Be” sessions was vetoed by Lennon. (“I think you’re daft” was Lennon’s reply.) But Wings’ initial tour, which began in 1972, was deft and a triumph of seat-of-the-pants improvisation. There were no booking agents or scheduled performances; the band simply showed up at various universities and asked if they could play. The ticket price: 50p. “It was very rough and ready,” Mr. McCartney acknowledges. “We had eleven songs,” some of which had to be repeated to fill out a gig. The subsequent Wings Over Europe tour rolled forth in a bus whose top speed was 38 miles an hour. But the band reached its own cruising speed and stayed there many years.
The story is augmented by timelines that add a contextual charm all their own. Shortly after the Bloody Sunday killings in January 1972, Mr. McCartney shook up the authorities with the Wings release of “Give Ireland Back to the Irish,” a song banned by the BBC. On Feb. 10, 1972—two days after Wings hit the road—David Bowie started touring as Ziggy Stardust. Eleven days later, Richard Nixon arrived in China to see if Mao Zedong was up for a thaw. On June 18 Mr. McCartney celebrated his 30th birthday; the day before, five men had been arrested for breaking into Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate. All of which might suggest the cosmic stage manager also likes playing a bit by ear.
Wings, the core of which was formed by the McCartneys and Denny Laine (the Moody Blues’ former guitarist), and augmented by various sidemen, followed a wandering star that took them to many interesting places, none more so than, in 1973, a recording studio in Lagos, Nigeria. Mr. McCartney recalls pilots scanning the jungle in search of the airport and wondering (there was no instrument guidance), “is that it over there?” They were greeted by “millions of bugs.” A half-dozen assailants later robbed the McCartneys. A bronchial spasm sent the maestro to hospital.
Yet diversity paid dividends. The resulting album, “Band on the Run” (1973), which includes the hit “Jet,” would win two Grammys.
The book brims with often captivating details. A 1974 visit with Lennon during Lennon’s “Lost Weekend” in Los Angeles included an invitation from Harry Nilsson for Mr. McCartney to sample elephant tranquilizer (declined). “Abbey Road” (1969) was initially to be called “Everest”—after the engineer’s favorite brand of cigarettes—which would have spared countless people countless hours of analyzing the album’s street-crossing cover shot. Mr. McCartney also recalls writing a song called “Suicide” at the same time he wrote “When I’m Sixty-Four” (1967), with the hope that it might be covered by Frank Sinatra. The chairman of the board apparently considered “Suicide” DOA.
Wings played its final gig at the Concerts for the People of Kampuchea on Dec. 29, 1979, followed by Mr. McCartney’s marijuana arrest in Japan and a canceled tour. That took the wind out of Wings, but it had been a good flight.
Hard times were lurking. Lennon was murdered on Dec. 8. 1980, and Linda McCartney died of breast cancer in 1998. But the show always went on. Along the way, Mr. McCartney had hits with Michael Jackson, Rihanna, Kanye West and Stevie Wonder. He eventually married a trucking-company executive for whom he wrote “My Valentine” (2012), which Cole Porter might have envied.
These days Mr. McCartney often drives 20 minutes to a studio near his home to work on new material. “I take great pleasure from routine,” he writes, a routine that includes a touring life that has stretched to more than 65 years. At a recent Columbus, Ohio, concert, an attending friend tells me, the 83-year-old played nearly three hours without a break.
Timothy Leary might have been onto something.
Mr. Shiflett posts his original music and writing at Daveshiflett.com
Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Appeared in the November 22, 2025, print edition as 'Following a Wandering Star'.
‘Last Rites’ and ‘Ozzy & Me’: Osbourne’s Odyssey
The Black Sabbath singer made his stage persona a symbol of everything parents dreaded. ‘The Osbournes’ reinvented him as an endearing dad.
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Ozzy Osbourne with his son Jack in 1985. (Photo by Mike Maloney/Mirrorpix via Getty Images) Mike Maloney/Mirrorpix via Getty Images
Readers of a certain age may recall significant disenchantment at the 1970 release of Black Sabbath’s song “Iron Man,” which was said to be an exercise in aural dentistry, sans Novocain, unleashed by a band of devil worshipers. Yet many naysayers eventually cottoned to Sabbath’s singer, Ozzy Osbourne. Two new books may explain why.
For one thing, Ozzy (born John Michael Osbourne on Dec. 3, 1948) was a scrapper. As he tells us in “Last Rites”—co-written with Chris Ayres and published after Osbourne’s death in July—he grew up with his parents and five siblings in a neighborhood still bearing the scars inflicted by Hitler’s Luftwaffe. Their public housing was without indoor plumbing. Young Ozzy’s future seemed similarly bleak. He struggled at school and at burglary, the latter for which he earned a short prison sentence. Among his early legitimate jobs was at a local slaughterhouse dispatching animals with a bolt gun.
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Last Rites
Yet he had his dreams. At 19 he joined the Polka Tulk Blues Band, named after the brand of talcum powder favored by his mother. Black Sabbath, named after a horror movie, soon followed and made Osbourne rich enough to develop world-class alcohol and drug regimens. These habits would get him fired from the band a decade later and plague him during his long solo career.
Excess was a core feature of Osbourne’s brand, like Dean Martin and his martinis multiplied by a thousand or two. At one point, we learn, Osbourne drank four bottles of cognac a day; at other times he made do with a bottle of vodka chased by enough codeine to drop a water buffalo. Cocaine was constant. Yet he humbly admits to being something of a piker compared to John Bonham, Led Zeppelin’s drummer and Osbourne’s drinking pal, who once drank 40 shots of liquor in one day (his last). In the same spirit, Lemmy Kilmister, the singer-bassist for Motörhead, might stay up 10 days and nights buzzing on methamphetamine and Jack Daniel’s. But head and shoulders above the rest, we are told, was André the Giant, the professional wrestler. “The guy would drink whole jugs of vodka and cranberry,” Osbourne tells us, “and while he was sitting there, waiting for ’em to be made, he’d get through a six-pack of beer. The guy was physically incapable of getting drunk.”
Indulgence came at the usual price: addiction and a bitter harvest of regrets. Osbourne kicks himself especially hard for the mistreatment of his also-famous wife. “I’d be dead without Sharon,” he writes, while also recalling his 1989 attempt to strangle her after returning home from the Moscow Music Peace Festival. Infidelity also strained the marriage, which, like his boozing and doping, he blames on addiction, “a disease that keeps telling you you don’t have a disease.”
He could also be rough on animals. Osbourne retells the infamous story of orally beheading an unsuspecting bat. He doesn’t mention an earlier admission, of shooting 17 cats during a drug binge. All of this in support of his Prince of Darkness schtick. Yet there’s another side to the story: Osbourne could also be a generous, friendly, fun-loving bloke—at least according to Stephen Rea’s “Ozzy & Me.”
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Ozzy & Me: Life Lessons, Wild Stories, and Unexpected Epiphanies from Forty Years of Friendship with the Prince of Darkness
Mr. Rea, a former journalist from the U.K. who now teaches writing in New Orleans, met his music idol at age 15 after his mother wrote Osbourne’s staff about a 1985 concert in Rio de Janeiro. A 40-year friendship between Osborne and Mr. Rea followed, one that allowed the writer to travel the world as part of the singer’s inner circle. “I’ve been to hundreds of shows on all six inhabited continents,” Mr. Rea writes, and anyone seeking the skinny on Osbourne’s performance at, say, the Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, N.J., on Jan. 18, 1996 (plus many others) will find Mr. Rea’s detailed and affectionate book an invaluable resource. One of the more captivating performances occurred in Carterville, Ill., on Aug. 21, 2017, when a wealthy winery owner paid Osbourne “a fortune” to sing “Bark at the Moon” and other songs during a solar eclipse. The experience left Mr. Rea feeling “like I was whisked to another universe in a different dimension.”
Those were the days—and Mr. Rea misses them. (“What are the odds a teen admirer will write to Ed Sheeran or Taylor Swift and become friends?”) He recalls Osbourne’s somewhat dismaying encounter with a woman who recognized him from his reality television show, “The Osbournes,” but was unaware he was a singer. All told, Ozzy sold more than 100 million recordings.
His latter years were blighted by maladies, including heart problems, Parkinson’s disease, and memory and hearing loss. He also developed vibrant viewpoints based on a lifetime of research. Nicotine, Osbourne warns in “Last Rites,” is “the most addictive substance I’ve ever put into my body” while marijuana is a “gateway drug” whose legalization is “a disaster waiting to happen.” While he sported multiple tattoos, these days “people are tattooing their entire faces—and then having surgery to remove their lips and ears, so they look like aliens.” Ergo, “how’s your kid gonna feel when you’re reading him ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ with a full-face skull tattoo and no nose?” He has long denied being a Satan worshipper, as some critics insisted, and he once told an interviewer he was a baptized Christian.
Suddenly this Ozzy sounds like the husband of that long-ago Harriet.
Like Keith Richards, Osbourne often spoke in an endearingly incoherent patois, every other word an F-bomb, which he helped normalize and eventually diminished through overuse. He also found respectability. At the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in 2002, he proudly recalls, President George W. Bush revealed that his mother, the beloved Silver Fox, “was a huge Sabbath fan.” Osbourne might regret drinking three bottles of wine and jumping onto his table during the festivities that evening, but he did have a role to play.
Final words? He suggested these for his tombstone. “I told you I wasn’t feeling well.” Pitch perfect, maestro.
Mr. Shiflett posts his original music and writing at Daveshiflett.com.
Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the October 18, 2025, print edition as 'Ozzy’s Odyssey'.
WALL STREET JOURNAL REVIEW-- BEAR WITH ME
A world bereft of an academic appraisal of celebrity bears would somehow seem deficient, so a growl of appreciation is due Daniel Horowitz, whose “Bear With Me” tells us tons about Teddy, Smokey, Pooh, Paddington and even the dreadful Berenstains.
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Bear With Me: A Cultural History of Famous Bears in America
Mr. Horowitz, a professor emeritus of American studies at Smith College and a prolific author, tells us early on that bears appear in the Bible maybe 14 times while lions, sheep and goats get hundreds of mentions. But as the years passed bears came on strong, inspiring Michael Bond’s Paddington Bear, A.A. Milne’s Pooh and William Faulkner’s Old Ben. Bears also caught the eye of guys who knew how to make the truly big bucks, including stuffed-animal entrepreneurs, P.T. Barnum and Walt Disney.
Bear superstars get plenty of ink. The ubiquitous Teddy, for instance, was created out of a marriage of mercy and capitalist enthusiasm. The story began when Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a bear during a 1902 Mississippi hunt (his guide was a former slave named Holt Collier, who had been a Confederate scout). T.R. blasted plenty of animals but killing this bear, which Collier had subdued and tied to a tree, would have been more an execution than a legitimate act of killing for sport.
The press initially mauled the president for his refusal to dispatch the animal (it appears Collier might have later done the deed with a knife) but in the wilds of Brooklyn, N.Y., a Jewish immigrant couple saw an opportunity and created a stuffed “Teddy’s Bear” they displayed in their candy-store window. Roosevelt reportedly approved their request to use his name to market the stuffed bears (other manufacturers soon followed suit) and the rest is history.
Some human-bear relationships got off to even rockier starts. Hugh Glass, who was attacked by a grizzly in 1823 and allegedly crawled 200 miles for help, inspired several books in his day and at least two films in ours, including “The Revenant” (2015). John “Grizzly” Adams, a mid-19th-century member of the Adams family (which also produced two U.S. presidents) was mauled early on yet eventually came to consider grizzlies his “faithful friends”—and income streams. He joined forces with Barnum, who later wrote about a bear-wrestling exhibition in Mariposa, Calif., that netted Adams $800—real money back then. Adams’s storied life, which may have been cut short by complications from his earlier injuries, would feather many Hollywood nests.
Mr. Horowitz wags an academic tongue, noting that Teddy Bears eventually transitioned, in some quarters at least, from “stuffed animals resting next to a child” to “objects of critical assessments through their association with imperialism and the patriarchy.” He lashes Rudyard Kipling for the author’s “imperial colonizer” instincts, though Mr. Horowitz adds that Baloo, the bear in Kipling’s “Jungle Book” (1894), was a wise teacher who, in Walt Disney’s devious hands, “echoed American racial stereotypes.” In a similar spirit, Uncle Remus and his tales of Brer Bear, from the late-19th-century folktales created by Joel Chandler Harris, “confirmed an image of black inferiority many whites needed,” according to the writer Julius Lester. When viewed through enlightened eyes, Mr. Horowitz tells us, “bear narratives illuminate issues of gender, race, and imperialism.”
Readers who would rather hear about Paddington than the patriarchy may experience intense eye-rolling from time to time. Yet Mr. Horowitz also provides interesting bear facts: Some can run up to 30 miles an hour; and while grizzlies can kill you, attacks are rare. In one 90-year stretch at Glacier National Park in Montana, the author writes, nine people died from bear attacks while 48 drowned, 23 fell from cliffs and 26 perished in auto accidents.
Yet some bears are constant nuisances, and not simply due to a love of dumpster diving. Exhibit A: The Berenstains.
Stan Berenstain and Janice Grant wrote the instructional parenting book “Have a Baby, My Wife Just Had a Cigar” (1960) before becoming bear authors, helped along by Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, who at the time was working as an editor at Random House. Geisel, a man of his times, suggested Uncle Remus as a model for a new animal-based series. The world was soon up to its nose in Berenstains: As Mr. Horowitz tells us, there are now more than 300 books about the Berenstain family, with over 260 million copies sold since 1962.
A resistance of sorts eventually formed. Mr. Horowitz generously quotes Charles Krauthammer on the dreadfulness unleashed by this clan of “lumbering cuddlies.” Mama Bear is “the final flowering of the grade-school prissy” while Papa Bear is “the Alan Alda of grizzlies, a wimp so passive and fumbling he makes Dagwood Bumstead look like Batman.” Many readers may be tearfully reminded of how much we miss Charles Krauthammer.
Mr. Horowitz finds time for Yogi Bear, who originated in 1958; the Gummi Bears, who came along in 1985; Fozzie Bear from the Muppets; and Garfield’s Pooky. We also meet bears recruited for environmental causes, including Smokey, the arch-foe of forest fires, and Bi-Polar Bear, from the animated web series Queer Duck, who is part of what Mr. Horowitz describes as a “gay bear subculture” whose members are “hairy, hefty, and aging.”
We may even experience a provoked thought, perhaps while contemplating Mr. Horowitz’s wariness of “cultural appropriation.” If authors should only write from perspectives reflecting their gender, race, sexual and other dispositions, shouldn’t “Winnie-the-Pooh” have been written, or at least co-written, by a bear? Perhaps a question to give us legitimate paws.
Mr. Shiflett reviews frequently for the Journal and posts his original music and writing at Daveshiflett.com.
Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the August 20, 2025, print edition as 'An Omnibus Of the Ursine'.