Yanni B. Good
Some books chronicle epic journeys of personal exploration. Others inspire them. Rarely does a book do both. . Enter: Yanni in Words, chronicling Yannis journey from anonymous, old-Europe roots to international, Fabio-like ambassador of orchestrated electronic music. Here are ten short lessons from its pages:
1. Yanni, like Zeus and Zorba, is from Greece. Born Yanni Chryssomalis in the Greek town of Kalamata, the man who would become Yanni lived an idyllic life in a small mountain town full of culture and blowjobs. Which leads to point two.
2. As a youth, Yanni was all about the whores. His first sexual experience was at a bordello next door to his school. He was thirteen and a half and didnt know what a blowjob was. He spent subsequent years brothel-hopping.
3. Yanni is a genius. He was accepted into the University of Minnesota without a functional understanding of English. He learned the language from reading textbooks. He graduated with honors and a psychology degree. Years later a smart-ass reporter asked the Y-man if his music was a mass brainwashing scheme that employed his background in psychology. Yanni compassionately scoffed at this theory.
4. Yanni loved Dynasty star Linda Evans. He loved her with a passion and intensity that us mortals can only look upon with awe and envy. They broke up, but are still good friends.
5. Yanni is punk rock. He is a self-taught musician who started his pro career with a Midwest prog-rock quartet called Chameleon. Yanni went against every prevailing music trend and sensibility of his day to pursue his personal vision of music.
6. Yanni is Jesus, Buddha and Vishnu rolled into one. Yanni is a simple man, and In Words is sprinkled throughout with aphorisms and parable-like teachings. The book opens with the following: "I believe music represents humanitys soul...If our souls can come together in music, then as a race we can achieve harmony and peace."
7. Yannis music is not New Age music.
8. Yanni is an unstoppable cultural force. A cashier at Barnes & Noble in Brooklyn told me: "We were selling two, three copies a day of that Yanni book. Mostly its heavy-set, middle-aged women who are buying it. The staff calls it the new horror."
9. Yanni will never shave his mustache. Like Samsons hair, it is the source of his mythic power.
10. The ladies love cool Yanni C.
In a world of focus-grouped, commodified art, where sincerity is the punchline and beauty is the joke, where musicians get web pages and media kits before they write any songs, it is refreshing that someone can be so passionate and fervently individualistic about his shitty music. In Words leaves no doubt about one thing: No one made Yanni but Yanni.
Yanni in Words By Yanni (with David Rensin) Miramax/Hyperion, 318 pages, $24.95