What Is Hip?: The Life and Times of The Tragically Hip

by Marc Shapiro

“The Tragically Hip… the soundtrack our lives.” – Justin Trudeau


On August 20th, 2016 11.7 million Canadians stood transfixed, watching the final concert of The Tragically Hip, and the rest of the world asked, “Who is this band?” New York Times Bestselling pop journalist Marc Shapiro answers that question in the first American book about this Canadian rock band that largely shunned the spotlight but has become the standard bearer of a resurgent sense of Canadian pride and patriotism.


What is Hip? The Life And Times Of The Tragically Hip delves deep beneath the surface of this rock and roll story to discover how a band that spent more than three decades in the rock and roll trenches selling millions of albums and opening for the likes of The Rolling Stones, The Who and Led Zeppelin’s Page Plant, remained almost unknown outside their home country, even as they rose to the level of rock royalty in Canada.


What Is The Life And Times Of The Tragically Hip


•The behind the scenes story of how the band took over The Horseshoe Tavern and made it their own
•How a high up political personality was instrumental in landing the band their manager
•The day-to-day, often unforgiving, spirit-grinding days of life on the road in Canada
•The ins and outs of opening for three of the biggest groups in the history of rock and roll


The Tragically Hip are not cartoon rockers. They are real men who live by their creativity and their principles. Through extensive research and a couple of well-placed sources, author Marc Shapiro has put together a complete look at The Tragically Hip’s from their humble Kingston, Ontario roots, to endless tours, to their internal struggles to keep their music fresh, to the fanatic loyalty they fostered in millions of Canadian fans. These fans shed more than a few tears when it was announced that singer Gord Downie had been diagnosed with brain cancer, and that The Hip were about to embark on what might be their final tour.


Marc Shapiro is the author of more than 75 books. His most recent releases include Trump This! The Life And Times Of Donald Trump and Hey The Unauthorized Biography Of A Rock Classic. When he is not working, which is rare, he can usually be found mowing the lawn, taking out the trash and walking the dog.

224 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 19, 2017

About the author

Marc Shapiro is the author of the New York Times bestselling biography, J.K. Rowling: The Wizard behind Harry Potter, and more than a dozen other celebrity biographies. He has been a freelance entertainment journalist for more than twenty-five years, covering film, television, and music for a number of national and international newspapers and magazines.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/marcsh...

Reviews

[Neil · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book reads like the first draft of a college term paper. I was shocked and dismayed by the clunky phrasing, grammatical miscues, and (even) spelling errors throughout, and only finished it because I find the subject so engrossing, resentful to the end that I was forced to play editor. Having recently finished an exceptionally well written (and exhaustive) history of The Smiths, I was struck by how important it is to me as a fan that the story of artists I admire be told well and professionally; this effort fails on both counts in my book.

[Ian Hakes · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is not a good book. Somewhere inside might lurk the beginnings of a mediocre book about the Tragically Hip. However, this reads like a Wikipedia article that was fleshed out to 40,000 words with a week's worth of Google result facts shoved into the copy.

There is no doubt in my mind that this publication was anything but a quick money grab by the author and the publisher. The grammatical, factual, and even spelling errors in this book suggest that Marc Shapiro fired off a rough draft and Riverdale slapped a (terrible) title on it and shipped it out the door. If this text ever passed by an editor's eyes, they should be fired from the profession. I couldn't get over how many simple mistakes made it into the final copy. It suggests that if those minor things made it through, I strongly doubt any of the facts were checked.

Give this a hard pass.

[Spencer Collier-Jarvis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Some interesting facts, but the book is so poorly written that it is difficult to teustthe information. Several errors (such as mis-quoting the name of a Hip song) are unforgivable lack of diligence while others (calling the band Thin Lizzy 'Thin Lazy') seem like he wrote this on his phone.