David Clayton Thomas

BOOK REVIEW,  Quill & Quire

Blood Sweat and Tears

By David Clayton-Thomas

Publisher: Viking Canada

   As the former frontman for the rock band Blood, Sweat & Tears, David Clayton-Thomas is no stranger to the spotlight. He has been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and been given a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame. As if that weren’t enough, Clayton-Thomas can now add memoirist to his list of accomplishments.

   Clayton-Thomas opens his book with an introduction that prepares readers for a raw and honest account of his life. What follows is a highly personal and passionate description of child abuse, prison, poverty, artistic longing, and the price of success. His rise from the depths of Canada’s prison system to centre stage is an incredible story, one he relates in a voice that is sensitive and, at times, quite funny.

   For fans of BS&T or Clayton-Thomas’s solo work, this memoir delivers the rawness and honesty that it promises. It sheds light on the darker side of the author’s life and the inspiration behind some of his music. The story of a nuanced character battling internal conflicts makes for fascinating reading.

Reviewed by David Leonard (from the December 2010 issue)

BLOOD, SWEAT AND TEARS

David Clayton-Thomas, Viking Canada.

SMILING THROUGH THE TEARS

David Clayton-Thomas has some skeletons in his closet, but he’s setting them all free and it feels mighty good.

“The pressure’s off now in interviews,” There are no loaded questions they can ask me anymore. There it is. Read the book.

  He comes clean about the humiliating beatings he withstood at the hands of his father, his criminal teenage years as a Toronto street kid, his years spent as a scrappy convict bouncing between juvenile halls and prisons where the frequent fighter and troublemaker would entertain himself by singing in the “natural echo chambers” that were solitary-confinement cells.

He comes clean about the drugs, the cutthroat business dealings and the ego clashes that went on within the band during its platinum-plated 1970s peak and its subsequent dissolution into Clayton-Thomas and a revolving cast of hired-gun musicians half his age, not to mention the fatal 1978 overdose in Amsterdam of his friend and bandmate Greg Herbert. And he comes clean about how the staunch will to succeed that elevated him from the streets into pop music’s elite was, for decades, a strain on his health, his family and his interpersonal relationships.

There’s also, however, a genuinely inspirational rags-to-riches story to be found in the life of a self-made man who, as Clayton-Thomas recalls, once “walked out of Millbrook Penitentiary with 20 bucks in my pocket, a mail-order guitar and a dream.

Ben Raynor

The Toronto Star

Blood Sweat and Tears

David Clayton-Thomas

Penguin Group (Canada)

A BOOK TO MAKE YOU SO VERY HAPPY

 David Clayton-Thomas finds a fitting title for his gritty memoir.

A genuinely inspirational rags to riches story...

The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

Blood, Sweat and Tears
by David Clayton Thomas
Penguin Group (Canada)

There’s a lot about David Clayton-Thomas that will impress you, besides his rich, raspy voice.

In his memoir, aptly titled Blood Sweat and Tears, he shares his personal history that reflects and defines a distinctive era in music and pop culture.  From the Yonge Street Strip to Woodstock, to Vegas and back to Toronto...  "We are all heroes and villains in the play of our lives – it all depends on which act we are watching and who is writing the script. This is my story.” His author’s voice is much like the lyrics to his songs - intuitive, direct and genuine.

Lynn Fenske

Toronto Books Examiner

Blood Sweat and Tears

The David Clayton-Thomas book is an amazing roller coaster ride though the dreams and nightmares of a Canadian kid who, against all odds, became one of Canada's greatest singer-songwriter-performers.  His voice and songs are known everywhere in the world.  I knew of his legend and many of the stories but to hear them first hand from his own recollections was a great read for me.  David,  thanks for the great story and the great music.

Randy Bachman

This is a big brawling, no holds barred account of a lifetime of rock & roll, from the bareknuckled bars of Canada to The Met and Carnegie Hall. The mud, drugs and chaos of Woodstock, the historic Eastern European tour, Madison Square Garden and The Hollywood Bowl, told by a man who did it all.
   A compelling inside look at the music business, stardom and politics, set in the turbulent times in which he lived and told in his own words.