Tenement Kid

Rough Trade Book of the Year

Bobby Gillespie

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English

Hachette
27 September 2022

Music; Rock & Pop music; Autobiography: arts & entertainment; Memoirs

'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

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. 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 Primal Scream.

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'. 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, Bobby Gillespie's memoir cuts a righteous path through a decade lost to Thatcherism and saved by acid house.

By: Bobby Gillespie
Imprint: Hachette
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 196mm, Width: 128mm, Spine: 32mm
Weight: 344g
ISBN: 9781474622080
ISBN 10: 1474622089
Pages: 432
Publication Date: 27 September 2022
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Bobby Gillespie is a singer, songwriter and founder member of the rock and roll band Primal Scream. The band's origins are in the city of Glasgow. They have released 11 albums including major hits, 'Loaded', 'Rocks', 'Country Girl' and 'Kowalski'.

Reviews for Tenement Kid: Rough Trade Book of the Year

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