4 More Books To Read If You Love Rock Music
Take a deep dive into rock ’n’ roll and learn from the best
About a year ago, I wrote an article recommending some of my favourite books about rock music. As it happens, four recommendations only scratch the surface of the wealth of music-related literature out there, so one year on I thought I’d offer some more of the great titles that I’ve been reading. My TBR list is full of more fiction, non-fiction, and autobiographies, so stay tuned for even more recommendations in the future.
In this article, I’ll be focusing more on non-fiction and biographies. If you’d like to read some fiction set around rock music, check out some of the titles on my last article. But today we’re throwing it back with some works written by experts in the field: The Slits’ Viv Albertine, Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein, The Lunachicks, and music journalist Simon Reynolds. While each read explores a different era or scene, they all offer an in-depth look at some of the music that has shaped rock music as we know it today.
Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys — Viv Albertine
Viv Albertine is best known as the self-taught guitarist of British punk band The Slits. One of the pioneers of women in rock, her legacy on the scene is not to be ignored. In Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys, she details her journey inside and outside of the world of music. You arrive at her autobiography hungry for details of those rebellious early days of punk, but it’s what comes next that keeps you hooked.
After the disintegration of The Slits, Albertine took a long break from music, in which she battled seven years of infertility treatment followed by a cervical cancer diagnosis, before reinventing herself and making her return as a solo artist. These years are the most fascinating and inspirational chapters of her memoir.
Too often we’re presented with the narrative that your best work has to happen before you turn 30 — especially if you’re a woman in the music industry. Viv Albertine’s story turns this harmful stereotype on its head with the reassurance that reinvention can come at any time. Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys is much more than your average rock memoir.
“I hear a phone ringing through the thick fuzzy air. It’s Thunders, asking me to join the Heartbreakers. He says to come over to the rehearsal studios right now. I’m scared but I go anyway. That should be written on my gravestone. She was scared. But she went anyway.”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
For fans of The Slits, The Clash, and The Sex Pistols.
2. Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: A Memoir — Carrie Brownstein
Moving on to another legend we have Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl: A Memoir by Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein. Released right around the time the band got back together after a six-year hiatus, this autobiography takes us through Brownstein’s life from her unsettled childhood to her success in one of riot grrrl’s most prominent bands.
Most of all, she comes across as a passionate music fan, in the way that she describes the explosive alt-rock music scene in ’90s Washington, Seattle. Her stories take us around the world as Sleater-Kinney reaches the top of their game and recounts the devastating moment when she realises that the band can’t go on. But the memoir goes beyond just talking about Sleater-Kinney, diving into Brownstein’s personal life, giving us insight into the person behind the rock star.
“My favorite kind of musical experience is to feel afterward that your heart is filled up and transformed, like it is pumping a whole new kind of blood into your veins. This is what it is to be a fan: curious, open, desiring for connection, to feel like art has chosen you, claimed you as its witness.”
― Carrie Brownstein, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: A Memoir
For fans of Sleater-Kinney, Bikini Kill, and Bratmobile.
3. Fallopian Rhapsody: The Story of The Lunachicks — The Lunachicks with Jeanne Fury
Here we have the story of one of the most badass, unrelenting punk bands since The Runaways: the incomparable Lunachicks. It’s a different format from other memoirs of the genre, written with Jeanne Fury in a mixture of first-person perspectives and interview-style sections. Reading their story makes them even more difficult to categorise into the confines of a specific genre since they stand out so uniquely among their contemporaries.
What started as a group born out of a genuine love of music and punk culture hit its fair share of obstacles on the road, most notably various members’ struggles with addiction and the sheer misogyny that tried to pit them against other all-female groups of the time. While many would have become bitter from having the door shut in their faces for so many years, The Lunachicks were only encouraged to uplift others and make the scene a more inclusive space. They raged against the stereotype of what a woman in a rock band could be with over-the-top costumes and a refreshingly crude sense of humour. We have a lot to thank them for. Fallopian Rhapsody invites us into their world in an unfiltered retelling of their journey as a band.
“We were so naïve. Bands that featured women were often seen as a novelty act — not real musicians — and weren’t given the same access as dudes who did the exact same thing. It was as if these clubs viewed bands that had women in them as one particular thing”
―The Lunachicks, Fallopian Rhapsody: The Story of the Lunachicks
For fans of: Lunachicks, Bratmobile, L7
4. Rip It Up And Start Again: Post Punk 1978–1984 — Simon Reynolds
If there’s a more detailed book about rock music, I haven’t found it. In almost 600 pages (and the print was quite small in my edition!), Simon Reynolds dissects every inch of the post-punk movement in the six years from 1978 to 1984. Beginning at the end of punk, marked by the dissolution of The Sex Pistols, Reynolds explores the genre of post-punk not in chronological order but regionally, looking at individual scenes that produced some of our favourite bands.
With the current resurgence of post-punk by bands like Fontaines D.C. and IDLES, this book is more and more relevant to the current music scene — although it will make you wonder if we should be recycling the same descriptor for these modern bands. Reynolds shows post-punk in all of its original forms, taking the time to explore gloomy goth rock, synth-pop, industrial rock and everything else that arose in the wake of punk. Yes, it’s a hefty book and felt a little intimidating at the start, but reading it was never a chore. I found myself taking breaks to get lost in Wikipedia rabbit holes about bands I wanted to find out more about. It’s the only reference book for the period that you’ll ever need.
“Young people have a biological right to be excited about the times in which they’re living. If you are very lucky, that hormonal urgency is matched by the insurgency of the era — your innate adolescent need for amazement and belief coincides with a period of objective abundance. The prime years of post-punk — the half-decade from 1978 to 1982 — were like that: a fortune. I’ve come pretty close since, but I’ve never been quite as exhilarated as I was back then. Certainly, I’ve never been so utterly focused on the present.”
―Simon Reynolds, Rip It Up And Start Again: Post Punk 1978–1984
For fans of Public Image Ltd, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Depeche Mode, The Fall, Joy Division and many, many more.
