Où Est Le Bibliothèque?

Way back in time when your grandparents were young, Stonehenge was still in its original packaging, the Romans had been a bit naughty at Golgotha and Uriah Heep were celebrating 30 years in the business, I the magnificent unbeatable munificent 1537 wrote about my Top 15 Books About Music.

Fifteen isn’t many and I have read around 432.7 other books about music since then, as well as all the ones I had forgotten about when I wrote the original post. I am currently 9 pages into Michael Bradley’s Teenage Kicks: My Life As An Undertone which is as brilliant and funny as his band was.

These books are not in any order whatsoever, other than the order they were pulled from my shelves. Word up.

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1. Sick On You: Andrew Matheson. A gloriously seedy, ego ridden, bitch-fest written by the singer of the Hollywood Brats. The subtitle ‘The disastrous story of the Hollywood Brats, the greatest band you’ve never heard of‘. A tale of kitchen-sink squalor recounting the tale of the proto-punk glamsters who were at least 3 years ahead of their times, made hilarious by Matheson’s trenchant views on all manner of rock low lives, celebrities and debauched living. The Hollywood Brats shared some DNA* with 1537-faves The Boys and had some absolutely stonking tunes in their own right. Recommended for historical reasons and because Matheson is wonderful, objectionable, ornery company throughout and a damned good writer.

2. Factory: Mick Middles. The rise and fall and cultural rise again of a certain very independent record label based in Manchester. This is quite simply an excellent story, really well chronicled. The triumphs, the busts, the ludicrous decision making … big record companies employ suites of offices full of bright young things to make sure almost everything Factory Records did wouldn’t happen today. It’s all very hit and myth.

3. Girl In A Band: Kim Gordon. A much more personal read, you could trail this as the saga of the disintegration of a great band and a marriage, but that would be reductive. I see this as a pithy, slightly detached musing on individual and group creativity, with some great grunge-era gossip and sparkles. Gordon has some really interesting, surprisingly direct things to say about art and relationships and this is a book I pick up every so often to reread bits of.

4. Hotel California: Barney Hoskyns. If you have ever spoken to me for more than 3 minutes, chances are I will have recommended this book to you, possibly twice. This is a brilliant account of all those well-intentioned musos and players transitioning from the 60’s into the 70’s, from idealism into numbness. All those snowblind thin killer hippies quickly becoming cashillionaires. Every page has a great story on it, well told. Warning: contains large amount of Eagles.

5. Monsters Of River & Rock: Adrian Smith. Iron Maiden’s compulsive angler writes a decidedly fishy memoir. The only non-Janick Gers in Iron maiden who I think I would actually like if I met is absolutely charming, modest company throughout, from his tales of playing ‘Silver Machine’ with his mate Dave Murray in 1972 to madness with Maiden in Rio, its all great. There’s fish too, if that’s your sort of thing**. I bought this for my uncle not long before he died, he loved it.

6. The Fallen: Dave Simpson. In which the author tracks down all 60+ previous members of The Fall, well except one. This is ultimately a wonderful and frightening tale of epic proportions, as Simpson assembles the tales of the fallen. Is this a strange Victorian cult born out of the miasma seeping out of the ground in Prestwich? or is this just a lurching, rickety omnishambles borne aloft by a strange genius? neither; but there are some great stories here.

7. Diary Of A Rock ‘n’ Roll Star: Ian Hunter. A candid account of Mott The Hoople’s 5-week American tour in 1972. Insight, comedy, history, glam rock, philosophy, guitar economics, fist fights and household chores this book has it all. ‘I cleaned the flat up a bit – mopped the cat shit up from the kitchen floor, had a bath and washed my hair. I don’t look too bad’ – that’s how to go on tour! Ian Hunter is wise, funny and charming company, just as you’d expect.

8. Love Goes To Building On Fire: Will Hermes. The New York music scene between ’73 and ’77, basically. This is another set of great stories, excellently told. I really love the way this book deals with the pre-punk scene in NYC, crime, grime, garbage in the streets, but it was cheap, so artists and musos could live there, dangerous though it was. I learned a lot from this book^ and I like the way it doesn’t just deal with all the usual suspects. A cracking read.

9. Rebel Girl: Kathleen Hanna. ‘Girls to the front!’ How could I not love a book by the writer of one of my fave songs ever? Kathleen Hanna has written a vibrant, difficult, hugely readable dispatch from the front lines of feminist punk. The shit she has had to deal with beggars belief, that she stands strong and is able to carry others through it all is frankly inspirational. That she is the leader of two genius bands, is married to one of the authors of the next book in this list, sang backing vocals on a Metal Church LP and was high school mates with The Slayer Hippy from Poison Idea just makes it all better. Read it, get angrier.

10. Beastie Boys Book: Michael Diamond & Adam Horowitz. Speaking of NYC! This house brick of a book is a wonderful, comprehensive, lovely, loving tribute to the BBs and most importantly, their fallen comrade Adam Yauch. Full of trivia, great photos, cartoons, archive shit, hindsight, horseplay and amazing anecdotes, reading this book was a highlight of whichever the hell year it came out in.

11. Everybody Loves Our Town: Mark Yarm. A favourite read of last year, this is a comprehensive oral history of the Seattle scene, brilliantly assembled by Mark Yarm^^, mostly from interviews he carried out himself. He is great at capturing the goofy otherness of the scene and the harrowing endings of so many of its proponents, famous and not so. As I read it I kept wanting different endings from the ones I knew were coming down the line; poor Layne. This is exemplary muso history.

12. Denim & Leather: Michael Hann. Steve Dawson from Saxon, ‘There were a lot of women … I was a regular at Department of Urology in Sheffield‘. This oral history of NWOBHM is perfect and draws on far more than just the usual suspects. It’s very funny, an exciting story and rather quaint in places too. It has also made me buy a few more records. Def Leppard = top blokes, Iron Maiden = much less so, based on this book.

13. Just Kids: Patti Smith. We knew that Ms Smith was going to write a swaggering, lyrical account of her life and (mostly early) career at some point, this is better than I’d even hoped. I’m a big devotee of Robert Mapplethorpe too and he is at least as much the subject of most of this book, as she. Picking this book up again just now prompted me to reread at least 30 minutes of it. My fave bit is a rather sweet encounter Patti has with Jimi Hendrix at Electric Ladyland, or the story of when Mapplethorpe took the cover photo for Horses, another very sweet story.

14. Kid A Mnesia: Thom Yorke & Stanley Donwood. A lavishly produced hardback book of strikingly impactful, yet depressing art dealing with the state of the world. The perfect gift for the melancholic Radiohead fan in your life. I bought this for my son and he simultaneously bought it for me for Christmas one year. It is really clever stuff, visually very arresting in that way Donwood is. I am pretty certain I have never read any of the words in the book, they are probably good too.

15. I Live Inside: Michelle Leon. Given to me by a friend, this is the tale of sweet, punky Michelle the original bassist in Babes In Toyland. Her tales from the grunge trenches, serving in the wildly dysfunctional trio make excellent reading, Leon is really interesting and perceptive about female friendship. What gives this book real emotional resonance is that she was Joe Cole’s girlfriend at the time of his shooting, which was not something I knew. She writes about that time and her subsequent spiral with a clear-eyed honesty that I find inspiring. That she wins through and crafts her own happy ending is similarly inspirational.

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I reckon I could do you another 15 books tomorrow, or in 2038*^. I selected the above by ease of findingness and hazily-remembered impact, I put one book back on the shelf because of recent troubling far-right tendencies by the author and a couple of others because they were very high profile.

Have you ever read a book?

1328 Down

PS; Its where the title comes from and I want to add to the sum total of happiness in the world:

*possibly scraped off a dirty sheet in a squat circa ’74.

**not him out of Marillion, the scalier kind.

^the folly of heckling Wayne County being one of them.

^^not to be confused with Mark Arm of Mudhoney, or Park Farm which is just up the road from here.

*^if I haven’t used them to trade for food and crossbow bolts in our climate ravaged nuclear wasteland by that point.