So far, 2016 has been a sad year for fans of rock ‘n’ roll music. The shelves that house library call number 780.92—musician biographies—have seen a surge of borrowing activity of late with the recent deaths of prominent rock musicians including David Bowie, Glenn Frey of the Eagles, Lemmy of Mötörhead, and two founding members of the Jefferson Airplane. Reading the stories behind the music is a good way to gain a greater appreciation of an artist’s life and music. Recently-published memoirs are also taking the library by storm, including the sublime autobiographies of three female post-punk rockers. Biographies of lesser-known, but historically essential, musicians make for some enlightening reading this winter. Turn up the stereo to maximize the rocking reading experience!
780.92 GORDON
In addition to playing bass guitar
and singing lead vocals in popular experimental post-punk rock group Sonic
Youth, Kim Gordon is a writer, producer, fashion designer, and actress. Arguably
the coolest female rock icon of the 80s and 90s, Gordon sang gritty, surreal
songs while playing on stage between noisy guitar feedback played by longtime
partner Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo. Always decked-out in retro thrift-store
chic, Gordon exuded confidence, never pretense. (Check out their MTV hit “Kool
Thing” from 1990, where Gordon duets with Chuck D of Public Enemy!) Gordon
opens the book on a bitter, heartbroken note, as she describes her awkward
experience of the band’s last-ever show in 2011, a month after publicizing the
couple’s impending divorce. She goes on to detail her life growing up in
Southern California, her art school studies, and her eventual immersion in the
“no-wave” music scene in New York City. Her descriptions of the recording of
each Sonic Youth album are rather brief, but interesting enough for readers who
have been fans for decades, or for people discovering the band’s music for the
first time.
780.92 BROWNSTE
Carrie Brownstein, prior to
achieving fame with her comedy television series Portlandia, fronted “riot
grrrl” indie rock band Sleater-Kinney from 1994 to 2006. Her 2015 memoir
details her life playing guitar and singing in the band, describing the band’s
leftwing politics and punk ethics. A particular description explains her
meeting with a major label early on in the band’s career, showing up late and with
a bad attitude, not wanting “to be accepted and loved by the mainstream.” Brownstein
relates her struggles with depression and a difficult early life in a family
that ended in divorce when she was 14, her mother suffering severe anorexia. Readers
who only know Brownstein from her witty sketches parodying alternative-lifestyle
Mecca Portland, OR, along with comedian Fred Armisen on Portlandia, will likely
be taken aback at the depth and intelligence and struggle detailed in her
memoir.
780.92 ALBERTIN
Viv Albertine got her start as
guitarist in the UK feminist punk band The Slits, who helped define the late
70s/early 80s music scene as they toured with the Clash and the Buzzcocks. The band’s sound featured fragmented semi-in-tune
guitars, reggae influence, and plenty of attitude in a rock and roll
underground scene dominated by men. Albertine, who went on to direct BBC
television and later feature films, describes moment after moment in her life
where men try to tell her she could not do something because she is a woman. The
second half of the book details a less exciting life after the band including a
failed marriage, cancer, and depression. The timing is great, though, as
readers get to discover new musical territory they may not know about. The
golden ages of punk rock, post-punk, and indie rock are long gone, but with the
era of YouTube and Spotify have granted easy access to the archives of the glories
of forgotten music history. The biographies mentioned in this article can help
illuminate the reader to the stories behind the music.
780.92 WYATT
Melancholy songs and a fragile
vocal style are the characteristics of English musician Robert Wyatt. Japanese
composer Ryuichi Sakamoto referred to Wyatt as “the saddest voice in the
world.” A legend in the obscure music enthusiast/1970s record collector realm,
Wyatt rose to the forefront of the late-60s counterculture music scene as drummer
of the psychedelic/jazz/progressive rock outfit Soft Machine. He was later
fired from the band due to his alcohol abuse. In 1973, while inebriated at a
party, Wyatt fell from a fourth-story window and ended up paraplegic. Wyatt seems
to consider being fired from Soft Machine the worse tragedy in his life. The
book contains an exhaustive bibliography of the eccentric Wyatt’s lengthy
career from Soft Machine through numerous collaborations with artists such as
Brian Eno and Björk. When readers check out this biography and look up Wyatt’s
beautiful cover version of Chic’s “At Last I am Free,” they will hear why he is
such a cult favorite.
781.66 PHILLIPS
Sam Phillips was the man who
discovered rock ‘n’ roll and introduced the music to the world. Phillips’ name
is virtually synonymous with hit records in the mid- to late-1950s. Phillips is
the man who launched the careers of Elvis Presley, Howlin’ Wolf, Johnny Cash,
Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins with his Sun Records studio in Memphis. Peter
Guralnick interviewed Phillips over the course of twenty-five years before
Phillips’ death in 2003. Philips thought of himself not as a crusader, but as
an explorer. According to Guralnick, ”’I didn’t set out to revolutionize the
world,’ Phillips said one time. Instead what he wanted to do was to test the
proposition that there was something ‘very profound’ in the lives of ordinary
people, black and white, irrespective of social acceptance.’ ‘I knew the
physical separation of the races—but I knew the integration of their souls.’” As
he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Johnny Cash made sure to
give thanks to Sam Phillips, of course.
--Jeremy Morelock, Reference Department
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