Miles | 
| Author: Miles Davis
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $17.00
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Rating:  67 reviews
Sales Rank: 105567
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 448
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 0671725823
Dewey Decimal Number: 788.92165092
EAN: 9780671725822
ASIN: 0671725823
Publication Date: September 15, 1990
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
For more than forty years Miles Davis has been in the front rank of American music. Universally acclaimed as a musical genius, Miles is one of the most important and influential musicians in the world. The subject of several biographies, now Miles speaks out himself about his extraordinary life. Miles: The Autobiography, like Miles himself, holds nothing back. For the first time Miles talks about his five-year silence. He speaks frankly and openly about his drug problem and how he overcame it. He condemns the racism he has encountered in the music business and in American society generally. And he discusses the women in his life. But above all, Miles talks about music and musicians, including the legends he has played with over the years: Bird, Dizzy, Monk, Trane, Mingus, and many others. The man who has given us some of the most exciting music of the past few decades has now given us a compelling and fascinating autobiography, featuring a concise discography and thirty-two pages of photographs.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 62 more reviews...
 Raw!!! December 7, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Excellent. Really covers the early renaissance era of Jazz throughout America and Europe. Miles was HUGE around the world.
Loved every bit of it. The realism is unsurpassed. I felt like I was transported back to 1948 and relived the era along with Miles and the other Jazz Greats! What an amazing life. Extrmely high, highs as well as low, lows. Highly recommended
 THE ULTIMATE HIPSTER November 29, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Some truly hilarious adventures in this book, man! As you might imagine, Miles lived a quite exciting life, one we mere mortals shall only dream about. Whether banging high-priced prostitutes in 5-star hotels, playing w/ Parker, Coltrane, Gillespie in Harlem, or being so coked-up he turned to the old lady standing next to him in the elevator & said 'What're you doing in my car, bitch?' then slapped her in the face, getting him a couple days in Bellevue.
Miles also describes the 2 years he spent virtually alone, no visitors, in his Manhattan apartment, snorting coke & not picking up the trumpet once - so he says.
Also some vivid recollections of police beatings, overt racism, shameful discrimination - basically being a black guy in America at the time & taking heat for it. Many of Miles own prejudices come to light; one wishes he had written more about his family but I guess he felt like leaving that part of his life private; he was still alive.
Some inside info on Parker, Coltrane, Dizzy, as well as other Black celebrities like Richard Pryor & Bill Cosby. Also, Davis' personal recollections concerning the birth of Jazz, the Harlem Scene back then, & the exploitation of the black man in America.
Anyways, man, if being broke, unemployed, ugly, out-of-shape, hopeless, depressed, self-loathing, crazy, futile, idiotic, single, & lonely is COOL, then call me 'MILES DAVIS!'
- Rizzob
amazing ! April 8, 2008
excellent choice if you want to know the true story. it is amazing how well written (for a musician) it is and how Miles remembered things with an awesome precission.
Miles March 19, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Miles: The Autobiography by Miles Davis and Quincy Troupe *****
Miles Davis has always been a fasinating character to me so when I realized that there was an autobiography of him I tracked it down and bought it. While and after I read the book I didn't know what to think. I mean it is not your typical autobiography. It doesn't talk about most of the stuff you would expect him to talk about and when he does talk about it it's very brief and not in depth in the slightest, but at the same time it is still very interesting. The drug addiction, the women, the violence, the racism, everything the man went through is here. Not much is said about his children how ever, I'm not sure if that is purposeful or not but he does say that his sons are "screw ups" so it is all possible that he just didn't give to nothings about them, though when he briefly mentions his daughter he seems very proud of her. So all in all Miles is a great and interesting tale of one of the most important, original, and influential musicians of all time.
My only complaints are that Miles comes across as an ego maniac though he claims he is not several times in the book. The other one is that Miles Davis is one of the biggest and most racist men in all of history. Everything he says about being treated like nothing because he is black is the same way they he treated white people and the saddest part was that he couldn't even see that he was doing it. He claimed that blacks did everything better and white people stole everything. I will admit white people steal a lot, whites are essentially the `vultures of culture' but blacks did not invent everything, whites, Mexicans, and every other race invented things, and just because some one was influenced by it doesn't mean they copied it like he claims. Also just because someone invented something does not mean they do it the best, to even say that applies prejudice. It depends on the person not what color they are. As a musician Miles is killer, but as a person he really just sucked.
So if you can get past this then Miles is a great and interesting read.
a long bunch of Miles December 25, 2007
Although conventional wisdom may indicate a pathway to genius as a strait line, point A (prodigy) to point B (fame and renown), it's actually one motherf****er of a zigzag. It ain't a matter of black and white neither, although Miles Davis would have you believe that he was in the middle of a race war conducted at his expense where his climb to glory was clouded behind a storm of white critics, corporate America and the perceptions of white Americans (he became the highest paid jazz performer in history). The picture that does come to focus is one of focused dedication, unique intelligence and an astonishing series of musical visions which carry a young dentist's son from East St. Louis to worldwide fame.
Miles takes us on his journey in his own colorful vernacular from day one to the year before his death, a rare, delectible treat in an autobio. Redacted are specific musical methods and cumbursome jazz theory, but the discussion is generous in his crediting others who have come in and out of his bands and contributed to the music he made: Gil Evans, John Coltrane, Dizzy, Bird, Shorter, Hancock, even his own nephew, who he eventually fires. The man is not the loner one might think and thrives in the company of musicians and artists but sadly succombs to the artist's best friend: drug dealers.
His mistrust of the world around him was exacerbated by prodigious drug use and sad realizations of who got what for the art form he helped create. Elvis is tossed aside, "lazy white musicians" performing crap, but he's at his most loquacious when describing his visions of a musical chart for his art and his heartfelt recollection of collaborators gone by, many lost to the same drugs in which he wallowed, many white. The language goes into full bloom as he recounts the many women he either married, had children with or simply bedded. He claims to have never gone after another band member's lady, but anyone else was fair game.
What makes Miles, the book, most appealing is his humanity, his stark feelings on his fellow man and the insight one gets from hearing a smart guy tell his tale of an artist's circuitous journey to legend. Not once do you hear a dishonest note and we're party to a vibrant blueprint that now, after his passing, makes me Kind of Blue.
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