Book of Life
By (Author) Deborah Conway
Allen & Unwin
Allen & Unwin
3rd October 2023
6th June 2024
Australia
General
Non Fiction
Musicians, singers, bands and groups
Composers and songwriters
782.42166092
Paperback
400
Width 155mm, Height 235mm, Spine 24mm
470g
You think you know Deborah Conway You think seeing her striding and scowling down Sydney's back streets in an oversize coat or galavanting around a golf course wearing a close approximation of plus fours means you know who Deborah Conway is She figures you probably don't know the half of it. And there's a lot to know.
If you have listened to any of DeborahConway's songs and were half curious about the origins; if you have ever wondered whatever happened to that chick who covered herself in Nutella and was photographed shovelling cream cakes in to her mouth; if you gave a nanosecond of thought to whose bare arse adorned the giant Billboard ads for Bluegrass jeans in the 1980's and how much someone could get paid to do that; if you liked Tracey Mann's vocals in The Takeaways but asked yourself, "did she really sing them"; if you were a movie buff who thought Running On Empty was a classic BEFORE it became a cult phenomenon and need behind the scenes gossip, now's your chance to find out all this and so much more.
Conway pulls back the curtain on the fevered world of a 1980's post punk band, the spectacular rise and fall and rise of one of the more obstreperous women working inside Australia's music industry, a woman who has straddled the high arts and the low without losing her footing or her mind and whose fierce independence has seen her produce her best work.
Book Of Life: the good, the bad, and the ugly of being alive in the 20th and 21st centuries from the vantage point of a music insider (and outsider) with a deep need to tell the truth about it all.
Deborah Conway has been a musician for over 40 years. Innovator, motivator, role model, facilitator and entrepreneur, Conway is fearless in her risk taking, has pushed and pulled existing boundaries and has always argued her cause with integrity and intelligence to pursue the highest standards of whatever is in her sights. For the last 3 decades Willy Zygier, musician, songwriter & composer, has been her primary collaborator.
Aside from releasing a dozen studio albums and playing countless live shows, Conway has been a producer, festival director, actor and is soon to be a published author.
In 2020 Conway was created a Member (AM) of the Order of Australia and received the Australia Council's Don Banks Award for outstanding contribution to music. In 2022 Conway was inducted into Music Victoria's Hall of Fame.