Got to Make It

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Summary: Tears - Tunes & Happiness
Review: A captivating story of a young boy's first adventure in the world of music, love, and self fulfillment. It's style is very realistic and truly allows the reader to follow his adventures, happiness, and disappointments. The narrative makes you travel with the author down the early roads of his life journey as though you were at his side. An excellent read for those who can remember those days, and a great opportunity for those too young to grasp the feelings of what it must have been like to experience life as did he. It also takes you through the challenges he experienced and gives a vivid picture of how he survived a brain tumor, failed marriage, and other serious and not so serious life events.

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Summary: Damn You Jack!
Review: Damn you Jack Eadon!! 'Got To Make It' kept me up until 2am for days until I finished it. I kept reading it in bed while trying not to wake up my wife with my booklight glowing through the darkness. Being in my early 30's I've only experienced the 60's as it probably wasn't: the TV-friendly Time-Life "Summer Of Love" packaged CD version, full of cliche'd images, shallow descriptions and dismissive attitudes towards the struggles of the era which are now illustrated through the words of someone who lived the political, social and music scene of the "60's" in 'Got To Make It'. This is a book that lays it all out there. The whole John Lennon sequence was literally a headtrip and a thrilling learning experience for me. You can just picture the scene all in white, just like in Lennon's music video for 'Imagine'! Now I always hear the "Hi" when I pop in "Sgt. Pepper's Reprise" in my CD player. I never did before. Wow, maybe he's saying Hi to all of us. This is a great story, full of tragedy, obstacles, small victories, innocent coming-of-age experiences that many of us never talk about, large defeats in life and love...and finally a huge victory that spans the globe and just makes you feel good. Sometimes with a little help from your friends....and sometimes not...you've got to make it.

I'll never forget Stanleys' mantra "It's all in the trying". There couldn't be an idea more important for every aspect of your life. And I'll never forget the philosophy that you and John Lennon shared: "to get 'it' out there...live your dream by doing it, getting thru the small failures, live thru the pain of being a true artist and don't be a fake...."

With 'Got To Make It' Jack Eadon reaches a new level as a writer. You've got to read it. Thanks, Jack!

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Summary: "Got To Make It" Brings It All Back
Review: It still bugs me that I missed Woodstock.

I was only nine years old that summer, so I didn't fully realize what it was all about. Not until years later, after growing up with the music that had been introduced to me by my older brother, did I realize what an influential (and mind-bending)event that must have been. Looking back, I have always felt that I missed out on one of the defining moments of the '60s.

Fortunately, this book was written. After reading Got To Make It, there are now many more things I can understand, relate to, and appreciate more fully. With its personal, insightful perspective, the book speaks on behalf of those who lived through the turmoil of that decade -- and how it changed them and shaped them. The personal impact of events like the draft, the anti-war protests, and the hunger marches, and pivotal crises like the Kennedy and King assassinations and Kent State, are all brought home with a clear voice that sparks a direct connection, at a heart-to-heart level, between all those old rockers and their wide-eyed younger brothers (like me).

I now feel that I can better understand what my brother went through as we were growing up together in that tree-shaded, middle-class Vanilla World known as suburban Chicago. And why he always seemed a little bit smarter than me.

Rating:
Summary: Got to Make It! by Jack Eadon
Review: Jack Eadon pours out his heart and soul making himself vulnerable to the world and himself. He shows great insight on a universal level. True artists get lost in their medium; Jack's being the poetry. I see "Got to Make It!" as timeless. I was able to relate to the feeling of the 60's, paralleling the emotional environment today in our world. I found this book very thought provoking. I can't wait to hear the music!

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Summary: "Got To Make It" Brings It All Back
Review: Reading Jack's evocative book about striving to achieve his dream of making it as rock performer triggered a flood of memories for me about similar dreams, some pursued, some not. Jack's story is a must-read for anyone who shared his dream or had their own at that youthful stage when anything was possible. It's a wonderful narrative that brings back so many elements of growing up in the late 60s when everything seemed possible.

Emotional, entertaining and exceptionally evocative. Enjoy!

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Summary: Got to Make It
Review: Thank you Jack Eadon for letting me share in your very personal journey of the sixties. Your honesty is captivating. You gave back to me memories of that era, the old neighborhood and people, which had long been forgotten. You made me smile. It took me days before I could pick up another book as I wanted more of "Got to Make It". Jack Eadon, you have truly made it.

Rating:
Summary: Got to Make It
Review: Thank you Jack Eadon for letting me share in your very personal journey of the sixties. Your honesty is captivating. You gave back to me memories of that era, the old neighborhood and people, which had long been forgotten. You made me smile. It took me days before I could pick up another book as I wanted more of "Got to Make It". Jack Eadon, you have truly made it.

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Summary: Tripping Down Memory Lane
Review: This book is a treasure for anyone who grew up in the late 1960's. The author shares his story in a well written, poignant, introspective, often funny, always touching look at his life in high school and into young adulthood, following the rising star of his high school band, which became a cult hit in Europe in recent years. The northern suburbs of Chicago form the background for "Got to Make It" and Jack Eadon brings that time alive with his personal memories and history.

A wonderful tie-in is the availability of the music that forms the heart of this book - that added dimension makes this a truly powerful inclusive work. Going to the author's web-site is a must and rounds out his story in a rich and interesting manner. The cult status of band is fascinating - the story of how and why that happened is alone worth reading the book.

For those who were not fortunate enough to be in their formative adolescence during the late 1960's, the author shares universal truths concerning the joys and agonies of a very bright, vulnerable young man of any era and the joys and pain of the paths he chooses. In many ways this book is a universal hero's journey, with the final treasure being a measure of surety and growth following tremendous challenges and perils. I highly recommend "Got to Make It" .

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Summary: Got To Make It
Review: To those interested in the phenonomenal sixties the media supplied nostalgia has limitations. Sweeping in its scope it is about mass-event, movements and counter-movements and their predictable collisions. You have the sense of reading war-journalism and that what's there is filtered through the dynamics of identity groups and a few very photogenic celebrities.

Fortunately a didactic shift is slowly takeing place that re-emphacises the inner experience of those who lived through that epoch--who felt the doubt, confusion, ambition, triumph, ambivelence and growing self-awarness in those years.

These are, I feel, the most important accounts right now. They are important because they supply the missing human dimension which makes history vicarious,living, and without which there is the possibillity of distancing and abstraction.

"Got to Make it" is one of the best personal accounts I've seen. The protagonist is Horatio Alger with a guitar. It is an honest rags to spiritual riches story about a resourseful working-class teenager who attemps to realize his Rock'n Roll dreams against daunting odds and against the vivid dynamics of sixties cultural upheaval. There are plenty of tears, belly laughs, and unexpected plot-turns and twists of fate. It is the
unofficial insider's narrative to a generation of musicians who were vastly tallented, innovative and who's unorthodox approach to life informed the rest of their lives with applaudible results.