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Bill Frisell, Beautiful Dreamer: The Guitarist Who Changed the Sound of American Music
The definitive, authorised biography of guitar icon and Grammy Award-winning artist, Bill Frisell, featuring exclusive interviews with Paul Simon, Bon Iver and more.
'Frisell plays guitar like Miles Davis played trumpet.' - New Yorker
***
Over a period of 45 years, 40 albums as leader, and appearances on more than 300 recordings, Bill Frisell has established himself as one of the most innovative and important musicians at work today. Grammy Award-winning Frisell has topped jazz charts and polls, played major concert halls and festivals around the world, and has been hailed in the New York Times as 'the most significant and imitated jazz guitarist to emerge since the beginning of the 1980s'. His reach and dedicated following stretch far beyond the borders of jazz, however, into a musical world shaped by a vast range of forms, from country to bluegrass, Americana, folk, rock, blues, pop, classical and avant-garde.
Spanning geography and genre, and with fans ranging from Bon Iver to Elvis Costello and Lucinda Williams to Marianne Faithful, everybody loves Bill Frisell. This is the story of why.
Veteran music journalist Philip Watson, through days of exclusive one-to-one interviews with the artist, as well as conversations with friends, family and collaborators including Paul Simon and Van Dyke Parks, brings to light the importance of the Bill Frisell story in this definitive work.
'Frisell plays guitar like Miles Davis played trumpet.' - New Yorker
***
Over a period of 45 years, 40 albums as leader, and appearances on more than 300 recordings, Bill Frisell has established himself as one of the most innovative and important musicians at work today. Grammy Award-winning Frisell has topped jazz charts and polls, played major concert halls and festivals around the world, and has been hailed in the New York Times as 'the most significant and imitated jazz guitarist to emerge since the beginning of the 1980s'. His reach and dedicated following stretch far beyond the borders of jazz, however, into a musical world shaped by a vast range of forms, from country to bluegrass, Americana, folk, rock, blues, pop, classical and avant-garde.
Spanning geography and genre, and with fans ranging from Bon Iver to Elvis Costello and Lucinda Williams to Marianne Faithful, everybody loves Bill Frisell. This is the story of why.
Veteran music journalist Philip Watson, through days of exclusive one-to-one interviews with the artist, as well as conversations with friends, family and collaborators including Paul Simon and Van Dyke Parks, brings to light the importance of the Bill Frisell story in this definitive work.
753 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 15, 2022
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227 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
May 22, 2023
It took me a long time to finish Philip Watson's, Bill Frisell, Beautiful Dreamer mostly because I put it down after reading the first part and then got busy with work until recently. The first part of the book is a traditional biographical sketch of Bill's early musical life growing up in Colorado. It covers his early training on clarinet and his conversion to guitar, two stints at Berklee (the first lasting only one semester), lessons with the legendary Jim Hall and Pat Metheny, and his transformation from a Jim Hall copycat to a guitarist whose work reflects the influence of multiple genres from bluegrass, country, blues and jazz, to psychedelic, and experimental, all with an encyclopedic knowledge of and appreciation for the great American songbook. According to Bill, loosely paraphrased here: it's all connected.
The second part of the book continues with chapters on Bill's career focusing on his many collaborations and his own work as a band leader and composer with interludes comprised of interviews and listening sessions (of songs from key Frisell albums) with important collaborators and admirers like Hal Willner, Van Dyke Parks, Gavin Bryars, and Paul Simon to name a few. And while I liked the idea of this approach, unfortunately, I did not find all of the interviews and insights on the music that compelling. I preferred Philip Watson's informed narrative treatment of the phases of Bill's musical life and his own assessment and critique of Frisell's recordings.
Bill Frisell is one of my favorite guitarists and musicians, so I thoroughly enjoyed reading Bill Frisell, Beautiful Dreamer. It's full of neat anecdotes, and interesting interviews of family members, friends and musicians, and packed with insightful music reviews and project descriptions. And though I have heard many of Frisell's recordings, thanks largely to Spotify, I have not heard them all, and upon reading about those that have escaped my attention, I am now on a new mission to hear the entire Frisell catalogue because, well, "Music Is Good."
The second part of the book continues with chapters on Bill's career focusing on his many collaborations and his own work as a band leader and composer with interludes comprised of interviews and listening sessions (of songs from key Frisell albums) with important collaborators and admirers like Hal Willner, Van Dyke Parks, Gavin Bryars, and Paul Simon to name a few. And while I liked the idea of this approach, unfortunately, I did not find all of the interviews and insights on the music that compelling. I preferred Philip Watson's informed narrative treatment of the phases of Bill's musical life and his own assessment and critique of Frisell's recordings.
Bill Frisell is one of my favorite guitarists and musicians, so I thoroughly enjoyed reading Bill Frisell, Beautiful Dreamer. It's full of neat anecdotes, and interesting interviews of family members, friends and musicians, and packed with insightful music reviews and project descriptions. And though I have heard many of Frisell's recordings, thanks largely to Spotify, I have not heard them all, and upon reading about those that have escaped my attention, I am now on a new mission to hear the entire Frisell catalogue because, well, "Music Is Good."
July 28, 2022
This reads like the sort of hyperbolic biography that politicians have written for themselves to convince the voting public that they’re wonderful people. But you can see that coming from the ludicrous subtitle. A better subtitle would have been Everybody Digs Bill Frisell. The parts about Frisell’s life and recordings are informative, even for someone like me who has been a fan since his first solo recording, Rambler. But the unrelenting string of interviews and quotes with hip, trendy musicians only peripherally connected to Bill raving about what a genius he is quickly get tiresome, to the point that I just scanned the last third of the book.
March 25, 2022
Detailed account of Bill Frisell's life and career (so far).
It gets a bit samey; Bill is a nice, talented man and everybody likes him.
It gets a bit samey; Bill is a nice, talented man and everybody likes him.
January 12, 2025
I am definitely a Bill Frisell fan. I’ve owned several of his albums, and have been fortunate enough to see him a few times in NYC jazz clubs. What I didn’t realize what the vast extent of his discography. I really didn’t understand the longstanding work with Paul Motian and John Zorn. But also, his extensive collaborations with many other musicians. This book has been really helpful for me to explore his body of work. Since I’ve been reading it, I’ve been listening pretty much non-stop to all sorts of stuff that had never been on my radar.
What comes across clearly in this book is the Bill is just a really nice, sweet person, who puts artistry first above everything else, and elevates the quality of the music in whatever ensemble he works with. He is also one of the hardest working musicians, constantly zig zagging across the globe doing concerts and recording sessions.
There are some interesting chapters where the author interviews a fellow musician and they listen to a Bill Frisell album together and provide commentary. And, some of the early biographical material was interesting.
However, I didn’t think it was a particularly good “book”. There is way too much qualitative description of his style. For example, I just opened to a random page and found this passage, “Frisell sound is its deceptive simplicity. His guitar colors are the result of deep understanding and hard-won knowledge, and yet they have vibrant clarity to them, as if the music has been distilled somehow and is naturally transparent, like water in a rock pool. It takes enormous skill and some daring to play as sparely and directly as Frisell does and yet retain all the subtleties, shades, implications, and abstractions of a full form…”. That’s a nice paragraph and I agree with the sentiment, but it feels like about a fifth of this book consists of passages like this. There is also a lot of detail about personnel or song choices in various recordings and concerts. After a while, that all gets pretty tedious. In this sense, the book reads like 500 pages of liner notes, covering many (albeit still only a fraction) of his works.
The bottom line is that this is a interesting book if you want to navigate Frisell’s body of work. But unless you are a fan, I don’t think you’ll get much out of it. And if you are already a fan, you have to put up with a lot of this effusive prose to get to the information you want.
What comes across clearly in this book is the Bill is just a really nice, sweet person, who puts artistry first above everything else, and elevates the quality of the music in whatever ensemble he works with. He is also one of the hardest working musicians, constantly zig zagging across the globe doing concerts and recording sessions.
There are some interesting chapters where the author interviews a fellow musician and they listen to a Bill Frisell album together and provide commentary. And, some of the early biographical material was interesting.
However, I didn’t think it was a particularly good “book”. There is way too much qualitative description of his style. For example, I just opened to a random page and found this passage, “Frisell sound is its deceptive simplicity. His guitar colors are the result of deep understanding and hard-won knowledge, and yet they have vibrant clarity to them, as if the music has been distilled somehow and is naturally transparent, like water in a rock pool. It takes enormous skill and some daring to play as sparely and directly as Frisell does and yet retain all the subtleties, shades, implications, and abstractions of a full form…”. That’s a nice paragraph and I agree with the sentiment, but it feels like about a fifth of this book consists of passages like this. There is also a lot of detail about personnel or song choices in various recordings and concerts. After a while, that all gets pretty tedious. In this sense, the book reads like 500 pages of liner notes, covering many (albeit still only a fraction) of his works.
The bottom line is that this is a interesting book if you want to navigate Frisell’s body of work. But unless you are a fan, I don’t think you’ll get much out of it. And if you are already a fan, you have to put up with a lot of this effusive prose to get to the information you want.
December 9, 2025
More of a celebration than a biography. It's good and mostly interesting.
July 25, 2024
A nice (luke-warm) companion piece for fans. Fun avenue for discovering some albums or collaborations I wasn’t aware of, and a long form opportunity for Frisell speak about other artists he’s worked with extensively, like Paul Motian. I thought the listening sessions were the most engaging sections, especially with someone like Rhiannon Giddens, who was unfamiliar with Bill Frisell’s original music but very familiar with his repertoire of early American music versions. Not the most dynamic book, but hey
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June 23, 2023Philip Watson was once deputy editor at GQ magazine, and has been known for his expertise in the world of music and entertainment. When he delves into a subject, he definitely holds nothing back. This is precisely what you will find here thanks to his most interesting look at one of the most revered guitarists in history. The fact that many will not have heard of him (including myself) is a shame, because so many have been deprived of a true master of musical styling and session work. The cover of the book has the notation, “The guitarist who changed the sound of American music.” The fact that author Watson could write a book over 500 pages long with notes, is testimony to the fact there is much more to Frisell than people might realize.
The book at times reads like a who’s who of the music world, because Frisell has interacted with countless musicians of every genre. He is not pigeon-holed into one musical form, having been part of some of the greatest recordings of all time. The author notes that Frisell when he was much younger, would go to the store and buy records from the likes of Paul Butterfield, Mississippi John Hurt, Marianne Faithful, Cream, and Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. He would play along with the songs, trying to figure out the chords, and learn the solos.
Although jazz may have signified his first love of music, that did not stop him from exploring and being exposed to other types of music. He watched them all in concert. Whether Buffalo Springfield, Bob Dylan, James Brown, or Jimi Hendrix, he watched and learned.
While he became a sort of hero worshipper to the greats of the music world, it was not long before many of those same musicians sat up and took notice of Frisell, with a style and technique that blazed new pathways in music. In fact in the book, some of the biggest and best in the business offer their own comments on Frisell as a master guitar craftsman.
For the uninitiated, Bill Frisell is definitely a musical visionary, and it is high time his style and talents were appreciated by even more than those countless fans of yesterday and today.
The book at times reads like a who’s who of the music world, because Frisell has interacted with countless musicians of every genre. He is not pigeon-holed into one musical form, having been part of some of the greatest recordings of all time. The author notes that Frisell when he was much younger, would go to the store and buy records from the likes of Paul Butterfield, Mississippi John Hurt, Marianne Faithful, Cream, and Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. He would play along with the songs, trying to figure out the chords, and learn the solos.
Although jazz may have signified his first love of music, that did not stop him from exploring and being exposed to other types of music. He watched them all in concert. Whether Buffalo Springfield, Bob Dylan, James Brown, or Jimi Hendrix, he watched and learned.
While he became a sort of hero worshipper to the greats of the music world, it was not long before many of those same musicians sat up and took notice of Frisell, with a style and technique that blazed new pathways in music. In fact in the book, some of the biggest and best in the business offer their own comments on Frisell as a master guitar craftsman.
For the uninitiated, Bill Frisell is definitely a musical visionary, and it is high time his style and talents were appreciated by even more than those countless fans of yesterday and today.
September 15, 2024
Watson have given us a detailed and admiring account of Frisell's influences, career to date, recordings, equipment and use of technology, level of skill and improvising, working groups, concerts and travel, many collaborations, genre-defying compositions and performances, and working with recording companies. That makes it invaluable for Frisell enthusiasts. But by the middle of the book's 451 pages (also thankfully includes extensive notes and index, along with color photographs) Watson's account for me got a bit slow going through all the details, and I got bogged down in the middle. So I stepped back from it - I think the artist would approve -- since two years is a long time to read a book, Picking it up again more recently, I found it refreshing to read about his working philosophy of creativity and performance, later recordings and projects, his more recent experiments, and how he manages his stamina through heavy touring around the world.
A very nice deepening of Frisell's story is Watson's interspersing throughout the book interviews he did during eleven listening sessions to Frisell's records by musicians, songwriters, producers, a cartoonist, and friends, getting their impressions of the music and its impact on them in the moment.
A bit of the author's whimsey shows up too with his numbering of the book's final chapter of the book 33-1/3.
Maybe the most helpful aspect of the book is learning about Frisell's work ethic and working philosophy:
A very nice deepening of Frisell's story is Watson's interspersing throughout the book interviews he did during eleven listening sessions to Frisell's records by musicians, songwriters, producers, a cartoonist, and friends, getting their impressions of the music and its impact on them in the moment.
A bit of the author's whimsey shows up too with his numbering of the book's final chapter of the book 33-1/3.
Maybe the most helpful aspect of the book is learning about Frisell's work ethic and working philosophy:
"I sit there and I write all this stuff and I'm not sure where it's coming from. It's like ... am I remembering it? Or am I making it up?" (p. 433)
Thirty-five years later, after the first solo concert in Berlin [2018?], Frisell wrote in an email to me, 'It was good. Trying not to think. Just start going. So far it's working. Don't want to get too cocky. But. Not thinking is good. The music always knows what to do." (p. 434)
April 24, 2024
A portrait of the artist that is not unlike a Bill Frisell guitar solo itself - impressionistic and non-linear, and full of heart. With tangents and asides - with multiple sections devoted to trying to describe Frisell's truly indescribable sound - and interspersed with a dozen listening sessions with other musicians and artists, this is not exactly conventional biography, sometimes to its detriment. The temporal back and forths made it a little difficult at times to track the exact contours of Frisell's career. It could also feel like the abstract meditations on tone and style took up a little too much space. There are a couple of sections where we are presented with quickfire descriptions of the recording and release of classic albums with only paragraph or so on each; perhaps these were areas that could have used a little extra space? Still, this is a warm and engaging portrait and inspired a lot of listening over the last couple of weeks for me, which is ultimately the sign of successful musical biography.
February 4, 2025
Loved this book -- even without the drama and flash of the average musician biography, this book remained interesting throughout. It touched on (to my estimation) just about all of the recordings Frisell has been a part of, which is a considerable amount. I was also really moved by the depiction of Frisell as a person, his manner of speaking, his mannerisms. Fascinating to see how someone coming up in the post-bop jazz world has been able to carve out such an identifiable niche.
The love for Frisell was fairly gushing throughout, but the author threw in just enough less-positive reviews to make it feel at least modestly even-keeled. A few of the interview sections with other artists were interesting, while others felt like they weren't covering any new ground -- they were an interesting way to break things up, but not all of them were absolutely essential to telling the Frisell story.
The love for Frisell was fairly gushing throughout, but the author threw in just enough less-positive reviews to make it feel at least modestly even-keeled. A few of the interview sections with other artists were interesting, while others felt like they weren't covering any new ground -- they were an interesting way to break things up, but not all of them were absolutely essential to telling the Frisell story.
June 16, 2022
A deep and detailed look at the life of master musician - rather, master human - Bill Frisell. Ok, so I am biased in that Frisell is one of my biggest musical influences, but this is really a well explored, researched and informed book, with direct involvement from Frisell himself alongside a host of musical and creative masters of their art of the past 70+ years. Yes, it is a big tome, and yes perhaps the layout of the timeline/chapters might require a little consideration from the reader as the book can feel a little interrupted, however, for me those elements just align to within the somewhat timeless qualities that are Bill Frisell and his music. I have been inspired to go back, revisit and re-listen to the many specific albums, songs, collaborators and influences noted or discussed within this book!
Highly recommended!!!
Highly recommended!!!
June 8, 2023
Yes, I quite like the jazz guitar of Bill Frisell (I have 9 albums including 2 double albums), but is he the man that changed the sound of American music - NO!, not even American jazz. Unfortunately, like many authorised biographies of still living artists this is a boring, fawning, sycophantic ramble of 455 pages by an uber-fan of what is quite frankly not a very interesting man. There's no tragedy, rise against adversity, attempted murder etc of anything remotely interesting (cf Jaco Pastorius, Larry Carlton and many others). I gave it a real good try but life's too short and there's better books.
June 12, 2022
Bill Frisell is a worthy topic for a biography, and although Philip Watson's tome has a lot of interesting information to convey, it is overly long and repetitive. To some degree, this structural approach mirrors how Frisell develops his improvisational music, always mixing new discoveries with familiar melodies. But when encountered in Watson's prose, this technique is not as effective, and this volume could have been greatly improved simply by being shorter, and avoiding so much unnecessary repetition.
September 13, 2022
A beautiful comprehensive look at Frisell's life, temperament and place in American music. While the the book follows the familiar arc of a musical bio, there are diversions in the form of the Counterpoint sections of a book and pauses in the drive of the bio to reflect in depth on aspects of Frisell's personality, his creativity and his family life that deliberately deepen the book. Funny at times, tearfully poignant as well and a wonderful read.
March 5, 2023
I felt that “Beautiful Dreamer” lost momentum sometime after “Nashville.” We get very little here about his marriage, his daughter, and the week-to-week inspirations that moved him from one approach to another. I also didn’t enjoy the interviews with other musicians that interrupt the narrative throughout: one subject even admitted that she didn’t know his music, at all. A great try at a fascinating subject, though.
February 13, 2024
Absorbing, comprehensive biography of one of my favorite guitar players. I especially appreciate how it balances its linear narrative with chapter-long discussions of specific aspects of Frisell’s music— for instance, his compositional chops or his affinity for visuals. There are also some great “listening sessions” with other artists, providing further insight into Frisell’s art. One complaint: Big bios like this really ought to have annotated discographies!
July 19, 2022
An exceptional musical biography; it’s up there with Segrest and Hoffman’s bio of Howlin’ Wolf, MOANIN’ AT MIDNIGHT, and Epstein’s NAT KING COLE. Watson’s enthusiasm for Frisell and his art is palpable. But this not a puff piece by any stretch of the imagination. If Watson is not a fan of a record or recording, he’ll say so. It’s refreshing. This is as good as it gets.
October 15, 2022
Impressively comprehensive, and definitely not a fluff piece. The author might simultaneously overstate Frisell’s influence at times while being overly critical at others, but Watson couldn’t cover Frisell’s musical life in more depth. Even if you’re not a serious fan but want to be, this will help you comb through Frisell’s massive catalogue.
January 19, 2025
Enjoyable, with good insights into the various phases of Bill Frisell's career (made me go back and listen through his recorded output), but a little repetitive and a little longer than it needed to be. Some of the interludes of different musicians listening to Frisell's music fell a little flat to me. Though available online, a discography would have been helpful.
July 18, 2022
Excellent. I love being able to track recordings mentioned while reading a book like this. Doesn’t always work but does, here, Found this to be much more interesting than Keith Richards or Dylan’s books. Maybe it helps to have a biographer instead of DIY.
January 28, 2023
Libro ricco, corposo e approfondito per tutti i fan di Frisell. Curioso come, nonostante sia uscito a marzo 2022, letto a meno di un anno di distanza sia già indietro rispetto alla prolificità di registrazioni di Frisell. Forse servirà un aggiornamento fra qualche anno.
July 25, 2023
Detailed and well-written biography of a great musician.
August 5, 2024
Took a long time to chew through, but worth the time and effort. Joins the lost of first class musical bios. Also gives me a whole new level of respect for Frisell as a musician.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews