Tenement Kid: Rough Trade Book of the Year

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Published thirty years after release of their masterpiece, Bobby Gillespie’s memoir cuts a righteous path through a decade lost to Thatcherism and saved by acid house. Online since 2010 it is one of the fastest-growing and most respected music-related publications on the net. For anybody who’s ever – horrible term – “made it”, there’s a tendency to either amp up how nasty it was, or to sentimentalise it as the good old days. So far, so normal: he was born in 1961, the year Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, and youthful dreams of that kind were common.

I wished I'd spoken to Bobby about music at school, I thought the only thing we had in common was a love of Glasgow Celtic. He talks up Primal Scream as the sole inheritors of a decades-old mantle of rock’n’roll greatness and himself as the possessor of a uniquely deep subcultural knowledge beyond the ken of mere mortals; he rages about revolutionary politics; he discusses the band’s fabled drug use in unflinchingly heroic terms. I really recommend this audio book, the narration is captivating and the story and anecdotes will interest any music/pop-rock culture nut, Primal Scream fan or otherwise. All told, this is an enlightening source of information on BG himself, the JAMC, and Primal Scream, but feels like a missed opportunity to create something truly amazing. A previous reviewer says Gillespie laboured too much on the politics - they miss the point of what he's about and why he ultimately pursued music.I haven’t done therapy for a while but, when I did, I’d describe certain reactions and they’d say, you’re disassociating. It’s a really nicely produced book too, with a couple of generous photo sections, various b/w pictures scattered through the text, and also some great gig flyers and posters.

Really looking forward to the next one but am PRAYING that this doesn't wrap up the later period of his life after the mainstream success in a handful of pages like so many other artist's life stories. In fact, it’s his detailed account of his pre Scream musical activity that makes for some of the best reading in the book.Bobby Gillespie has some great stories to tell about his life and his artistic journey up to the release of Primal Scream's album "Screamadelica.

To which a seasoned observer of Bobby Gillespie’s career might sigh and respond: well, of course he does. Building like a breakbeat crescendo to 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, TENEMENT KID closes with the release of Screamadelica, the album often credited with 'starting the '90s'. Back in 1994, when I was 15 years old, my only way of listening to new music was to listen to the radio on Sunday evening. Gillespie leaves the door open for another instalment, as Tenement Kid concludes with the release of Screamadelica. Gillespie’s family lived in one room, sharing a bathroom with other families, later moving to a “room and kitchen” in the same tenement, with the then-family of four sharing a bedroom.Born into a working-class Glaswegian family in the summer of 1961, TENEMENT KID begins in the district of Springburn, soon to be evacuated in Edward Heath’s brutal slum clearances. But overall, a mostly positive read if you’re interested in the Glasgow / Indie bands / music scene of the 80s and 90s. View image in fullscreen With his sons, Lux and Wolf, and wife, Katy England, at Paris fashion week in September 2019.

His memories of his days as a music fan from the mid-70s onwards are fascinating and his description of the magnanimous support offered by people such as Siouxsie Sioux, Steve Severin and Peter Hook are heart-warming. For many people, the decade started to come into its own on Monday, September 23rd, 1991, when two game changing, youth-culture defining albums were released on the same day. The minutiae of the early Creation years is especially fascinating to me but his descriptions of the ecstatic nights that led to their embrace of house music brings it all back in full color. At which point Tenement Kid concludes, with Gillespie basking in its success and the reader wondering what he’s actually like behind the posturing and hyperbole: a very odd way to end an autobiography.It ends a little abruptly with the launch of Screamadelica, and suspect there may be more to come as he’s done lots of other things since. We are experiencing delays with deliveries to many countries, but in most cases local services have now resumed. Started out with a wee bit of repetition of phrases and ideas (plus some and odd stylings) but soon found a speedy and excitable pace. It is a tale of redemption, of how - through a spiritual and chemical path - rock and roll can truly save, taking you away from the suffering to your higher self. There is angry political invective aimed at “class traitors”, of a kind that makes people feel obliged to point out that Bobby Gillespie sent his children to private school.