NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and editor of The New Yorker gathers his writing on some of the essential musicians of our time-intimate portraits of Leonard Cohen, Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, and more. The greatest popular songs, whether it´s "Respect" sung by Aretha Franklin or "Blind Willie McTell" performed by Bob Dylan, have a way of embedding themselves in our memories. You remember a time and a place and a feeling whenever you hear them. In Holding the Note, David Remnick writes about some of the most influential musicians, songwriters, and performers of the past fifty years. He portrays a series of musical lives-Leonard Cohen, Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, and more-and their unique encounters with the passing of that essential element of music: time. From Cohen´s performing debut, when his stage fright was so debilitating he couldn´t get through "Suzanne," to Franklin´s iconic mink-drop at the Kennedy Center, Holding the Note delivers intimate portraits of some of the greatest creative minds of our era, written with a passionate lifelong attachment to their music and an acute appreciation of how it has shaped us.