Tenement Kid is Bobby Gillespie's story up to the recording and release of the album that has been credited with'starting the 90's',Screamadelica.
Born into a working class Glaswegian family in the summer of 1961,Bobby's memoirs begin in the district of Springburn,soon to be evacuated in Edward Heath's brutal slum clearances.
Leaving school at 16 and going to work as a printers'apprentice,Bobby's rock n roll epiphany arrives like a bolt of lightning shining from Phil Lynott's mirrored pickguard at his first gig at the Apollo in Glasgow. Filled with'the holy spirit of rock n roll'his destiny is sealed with the arrival of the Sex Pistols and punk rock which to Bobby,represents an iconoclastic vision of class rebellion and would ultimately lead to him becoming an artist initially in the Jesus and Mary Chain then in Primal Scream.
Structured in four parts,Tenement Kid builds like a breakbeat crescendo to the final quarter of the book,the Summer of Love,Boys Own parties,and the fateful meeting with Andrew Weatherall in an East Sussex field. As the'80s bleed into the'90s and a new kind of electronic soul music starts to pulse through the nation's consciousness,Primal Scream become the most innovative British band of the new decade,representing a new psychedelic vanguard taking shape at Creation Records.
Ending with the release of Screamadelica and the tour that followed in the autumn,Tenement Kid is a book filled with the joy and wonder of a rock n roll apostle who would radically reshape the future sounds of fin de siecle British pop. Published thirty years after the release of their masterpiece,Bobby Gillespie's memoir cuts a righteous path through a decade lost to Thatcherism and saved by acid house.
Publisher: Orion Publishing CoISBN: 9781474622080Number of pages: 432Weight: 340 gDimensions: 196 x 128 x 30 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'Gillespie is rock and roll's Oliver Twist. A punk rock fairytale,razor sharp on class struggle,music,style,and a singular view of the world resulting in one of the world's great bands. Couldn't put down'- Courtney Love
'As hugely influential and inspiring as Bobby Gillespie's music is,we now know his genius includes the telling of this story and reviving the ghosts that brought the music to life'- Mark Lanegan
'A righteous journey,an elegy for the transformative power of rock and roll told with heart and soul. The Gospel according to Bobby Gillespie'- Warren Ellis
'If they encapsualted the spirit of rock and roll in one person it would be Bobby Gillespie. The book is affirmative not just of a rockin'life but the beautiful working-class culture that made it. I felt like shedding tears of joy reading it,but also enraged about what we've lost'- Irvine Welsh
'From Rottenrow hospital to the TOTP studio,this is the enthralling and vividly detailed story of a boy dreamed himself into a rock and roll star'- Simon Reynolds
'Readers will be astonished by the detail in his memoir,the extraordinary rolling energy of his prose,and his warmth,gratitude and performerly wisdom... the way Gillespie writes about music's intoxicating buzz is inspirational...Tenement Kid's joy is in its undeviating belief in rock iconography'- Mojo
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