Fans have always eagerly devoured rock autobiographies and their popularity seems to be on the rise, with several musicians deciding the time is right to tell their stories. Following the recent release of Patti Smith’s second memoir, M Train, a meditation on memory, loss and her worldwide quest for the perfect cup of coffee, we take a look at a few of the best books that offer a revealing – and sometimes unflattering – look into the lives and careers of our heroes.
Girl in a Band: A Memoir (2015)
Kim Gordon
Dey Street Books
Dh44 from Amazon
Key line “To overcome my own hypersensitivity, I had no choice but to turn fearless”
Kim Gordon’s wide-ranging CV – bassist and co-songwriter in Sonic Youth; visual artist; fashion designer; actress – signalled a memoir that would likely be daisy-fresh, and so it proved. There’s a rare eloquence and honesty about Gordon’s book and it never reads as though it were a chore to write. There’s surprisingly little on Sonic Youth’s music, but the dissolution of Gordon’s 27-year relationship with the band’s guitarist, Thurston Moore – their marriage was a sort of fairy tale for 1980s indie music’s most devout – is movingly, unflinchingly rendered. Gordon flags-up memorable encounters with Courtney Love, Yoko Ono, Neil Young and William Burroughs, but it’s the pre-fame years that shape her most. She spends much more time on them than most memoirists, but you’re never temped to skip a few pages. It was her “brilliant, manipulative, sadistic, arrogant, almost unbearably articulate” elder brother, Keller, a paranoid schizophrenic, Gordon says, who eventually brought about the self-reliance that has served her so well ever since.
* James McNair
Between a Heart and a Rock Place (2010)
Pat Benatar
William Morrow
Dh42 from Amazon
Key line “I was a nice girl, a little square and cautious perhaps, but with an edge. Still, I would not be a casualty. I had a plan to succeed and not succumb”
Pat Benatar, formerly Patricia Andrzejewski, is a classically trained singer who grew up in a middle-class home on Long Island, New York, and relied on her instincts to skyrocket her to fame, becoming the pioneering female hard-rock act of the 1980s. But without the usual rock-memoir fodder of scandals and drugs, Benatar hooks readers with honest insight into what her record label insisted upon in terms of her image, royalties and creative involvement. Confident in her talents, she fought against the sexism of the industry’s old-boys’ club with her guitarist, partner and husband of 33 years, Neil “Spyder” Giraldo, firmly by her side. Women who grew up idolising Benatar for her fiery songs Hit Me With Your Best Shot, Love Is A Battlefield and Invincible will appreciate this first-hand account of her struggles to achieve her dream. She was able to compete with the top male rockers by recording platinum albums and selling out arenas in an era when the market was hungry for a strong female icon. This is a story less about a rock star and more about one woman’s endeavour to shatter the glass ceiling with strength, determination and hard work.
* Ellen Fortini
The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star (2007)
Nikki Sixx
Pocket Books
Dh47 from Amazon
Key line “I tried to keep it all together, but then I gave in to the madness and became one with my insanity”
Nikki Sixx’s autobiography of a year in his life, 1987, is a haunting personal account. Although published 20 years after the year in focus, its grittiness and realism come through because it is – as the title of the book says – his diary. At his lowest moments, Sixx – the bassist and creative driving force behind the rockers Mötley Crüe, who are performing at Abu Dhabi’s du Arena on November 20 – was drug addicted and living in the walk-in wardrobe of his mansion’s master bedroom. It is the casualness and the honest brutality of such descriptions that are so striking. Who knows whether he was thinking when he wrote his diary entries that they might one day be published. As a result, was it affected to appear more dramatic? Was it heavily edited nearly two decades later to heighten the outrageous behaviour? I don’t believe so. What cannot be argued is that there is no act more courageous for a writer than to share the intimate thoughts, fears and insecurities that inhabit a diary. There is no greater insight for a reader than to be granted access to a closed book.
* Michael Jabri-Pickett
The Long Hard Road Out of Hell (1998)
Marilyn Manson
Regan Books/HarperCollins
Dh40 from Amazon
Key line “There’s nothing like the feeling of knowing that you’ve made a difference in someone’s life, even if that difference is a lifetime of nightmares and a fortune in therapy bills”
Ghostwritten by Rolling Stone journalist Neil Strauss, The Long Hard Road Out of Hell takes a black humour-laced journey through Brian “Marilyn Manson” Warner’s sometimes disturbing childhood, the origins of his eponymous band and the notorious early shows that alerted Middle America to his talent for shock-rock. It also delves into the claustrophobic, insanity-laced sessions for the breakthrough Marilyn Manson album Antichrist Superstar – to date, the quintessential MM release – recorded with Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor. What really separates The Long Hard Road Out of Hell is Warner’s self-deprecation and razor wire-sharp analysis of his motivations and less-than-edifying episodes during the period in question. Published a year before the Columbine school massacre that led to an explosion of macabre interest in all things MM – thanks to scarcely researched media claims that the killers had been influenced by the band’s music – it’s a fascinating insight into the makings of one of the most infamous acts of a generation.
* Adam Workman
Miles: The Autobiography (1989)
Miles Davis
Simon & Schuster
Dh51 from Amazon
Key line “Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery”
I’ve read a lot of music memoirs, but nothing has ever shocked, moved, intrigued or appalled me as much as Miles Davis’s eponymous autobiography. Published in 1989, two years before the great jazz revolutionary’s death, Miles is drawn from hours of monologues faithfully transcribed by journalist Quincy Troupe. Colloquial, profane, uncensored – there’s no sugar coating here.
Davis insightfully recounts his early life and breaks, playing with bebop forefather Charlie Parker, the making of the masterpiece Kind of Blue – the world’s best-selling jazz album – the birth of his “Second Great Quintet”, which launched the careers of Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock, and the trailblazing fusion explorations of the 1970s.
But far more than these facts – often disputed, as Davis is renowned for arrogant hyperbole – what emerges is a portrait of a man. And not a very nice one. Davis takes up page after page with brutally honest accounts of his crippling addictions and regular violence towards women. We get the unselfconscious insights of a deeply racist and ceaselessly narcissistic monster. However much I continue to revere his work, reading Miles made me hate the book’s author.
* Robert Garratt
COMING SOON
Martha Wainwright
Due early next year through Macmillan imprint Flatiron, Martha Wainwright’s memoir Stories I Might Regret Telling You entices with its title. Wainwright is, of course, the daughter of Loudon Wainwright III and the late Kate McGarrigle, and the sister of Rufus Wainwright. We’re told her famous family – and Martha’s“strange love affairs” – will be a big part of the story.
Johnny Marr
There’s also respite ahead for those awaiting Johnny Marr’s considered response to Morrissey’s best-selling 2013 moan-moir, Autobiography. The former Smiths guitarist’s as-yet-untitled book is due in the autumn of next year. “The early material Johnny has written is utterly breathtaking”, according to Ben Dunn, director of Marr’s chosen publishing house, Century.
Carrie Brownstein
This side of the New Year, Carrie Brownstein, of Sleater-Kinney, is coming out with Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl, which looks promising. As a feminist and pioneering punk guitarist, who later went on to co-write the American comedy-sketch show Portlandia, Brownstein has plenty to draw upon. The book is published by Penguin and will out on October 27.
Carly Simon
Carly Simon’s Boys In The Trees: A Memoir, published by Flatiron books, is due out on November 24. The singer, best-known for her 1972 American No 1 You’re So Vain, reportedly addresses “the unravelling of her storybook marriage” to fellow singer-songwriter James Taylor.”
Roger Waters
Enduring curmudgeon / provocateur Roger Waters, the former Pink Floyd frontman, recently announced that he is writing his autobiography.
Mike Love
Beach Boy Mike Love’s book, Good Vibrations: My Life As A Beach Boy, will dissect his “complex” relationship with his cousin Brian Wilson. It is due out next summer.
Sinead O’Connor
Her as-yet-untitled memoir, out next year, has news for anyone who thinks her recent blog post “Dear Everyone I’ve Ever Slept With” might hint at her book’s contents. “I’ve no intention, nor ever had I, of dishing the dirt,” she says.
