Advance praise for The Tao of Bill Murray

As much as I love Gavin Edwards’s wonderful The Tao of Bill Murray, I can’t help but feel sad that Bill Murray has never covered my eyes on a street corner.

Reading The Tao of Bill Murray is like spending time with Bill, but probably safer.—Danny Rubin, screenwriter of Groundhog Day

When confronted by life’s challenges and opportunities, we should all be asking ourselves, ‘What would Bill Murray do?’ This book actually has the answers.

An important piece of cultural documentation

Edwards does an admirable job of profiling Murray's unique approach to life, friendship, and work, via interviews with the actor himself as well as friends, collaborators, and those acquaintances. The book is bursting with anecdotes that underline Murray's unconventional and fun-loving life: he's commandeered a street cleaner, crashed an off-campus house party and started doing the dishes, and driven a cab while the cabby practiced playing saxophone in the back seat... Murray's fans are sure to savor this book and walk away with a deeper appreciation of the actor and his work.

[A] funny, affectionate portrait . . . Edwards skillfully weaves together many well-known and entirely new anecdotes from throughout Murray’s career that capture him at the height of his power. Murray is an endless delight, and his knack for bons mots and non sequiturs will keep readers laughing before revealing an unexpectedly poignant vision for happiness. . . . A fun and revealing look behind the charm and mythos of Bill Murray that will only strengthen his legend.

Bill Murray the actor takes a backseat to Murray the trickster figure in this collection of notable, implausible, even inexplicable offscreen appearances. . . . A hilarious read . . . Sure to please Murray fans.

If you are among the multitudes who have a Bill Murray story (viz: ‘I was in the airport bar, and who sat down next to me but Bill Murray?’), The Tao of Bill Murray will speak to you.

Invite yourself to the party, put on some music, drop some coin and buy the book.

This book is like the Holy Bible but for atheists… Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, agnostics, etc. For anybody who values joy, enlightenment and party-crashing this is a must read

Anyone who misses Word magazine like an old friend, has just found the perfect read.

Hepworth lifts the lid on the unrepeatable year when rock's lunatics finally took over the asylum.

Full of fascinating detail and obviously a labour of love, a must for anyone who can remember the Seventies or who was there.

A wonderful piece of work

Without doubt, one of the greatest self-penned appraisals of a popular entertainer's life and work...What makes this book a classic (yes, you heard me) is the beauty of the writing, the seemingly effortless imagery of situations, saints and sinners (EC puts himself in the latter category, often), and the persuasive nature of the text that should make even the most casual reader clamour for more after 670 pages

One of the finest musical biographies I have ever read ... an engrossing and rewarding read

The greatest songwriter of our generation ... a tremendous read

It really is stunning. Hugely illuminating, fiercely passionate, funny, moving and beautifully written.

Typically sharp and funny on songwriting

The writing is as good as you would expect from such an accomplished lyricist. The tone is wise, warm and often rueful, befitting a 61-year-old elder statesman, and the story a compelling one

For serious music fans? It has to be Elvis Costello's Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink (Viking). Utterly definitive and clearly, painstakingly penned by Costello himself, who doesn't want to miss a detail

Writers like Costello because he's always taken writing seriously. That's obvious to anyone who pays attention to his lyrics, and it's even more apparent to anyone who reads Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, his charming new autobiography. The book is refreshingly free of salacious gossip and needless name-dropping; it's an intelligent self-assessment from a musician who went from angry young man to elder statesman of pop ... a defiantly fun autobiography.

This is a big book, literally, by one of the best rockers in the business. Given the singular, and eclectic, nature of his career, it is no surprise that Elvis Costello's anecdotal autobiography is an idiosyncratic journey through his music and the people and places that have inspired him ... A must for Costello fans everywhere.

Costello's prose cuts with the same spiky wit and observational power as his well-known lyrics ... packed with great lines, vivid anecdotes ... a treat for his many fans.

Plenty of tales to keep the pages turning. Readers will be fascinated by Costello's stories...his book feels like a discussion between friends over a pint.

Often brilliant and wholly idiosyncratic

Revelatory, evocatively crafted, [and] highly entertaining

A winningly droll and good-natured guide to his life and many works throughout

Punctuated with sardonic and self-aware truths

Vivid ... It's not surprising that one of rock's most literate songwriters would pen such a deep, free-form memoir

Elvis Costello delivers an impeccably detailed autobiography. He's often as brilliant at turning a phrase in prose as he is in his lyrics

Enthralling ... This is family history as musical encyclopedia, and to listen to Costello recount his life is to be buttonholed by an enthusiastic fan. Fandom for Costello is inseparable from the compulsion to write songs and, it seems, to understand his own life ... Fortunately for the fan of Costello's music the topic of discussion is often his own songs, and he is, unsurprisingly, a witty and eloquent guide

[Costello] pens books with the same clever writing that he uses in song

Costello['s] book is capacious, clever, and full of heart and soul

The story unfolds like a movie that jumps across time, more thematic than chronological, as boyhood anecdotes and obsessions intersect with mature songs and adult reckoning.... The book doubles as a selective mini-history of 20th century music, as told by a discerning guide. He addresses artists both towering (Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Johnny Cash) and relatively unheralded (David Ackles, Robert Wyatt) with a fan's affection and music scholar's insight

With an encyclopedic knowledge and appreciation for, and deep love of, music, and with an expressive power and heart, Costello's memoir will take its place in the highest echelons of the genre

His book is almost essential as an idiosyncratic history of 20th-century pop music

Studded with entertaining anecdotes