THE HARD STUFF STUFF BOOKS & DVDs
Tenement Kid
Bobby Gillespie WHITE RABBIT
From slums to Screamadelica – Primal Scream dynamo’s inspirational memoir.
Named after a track on Primal Scream’s 2013 album More Light, Bobby Gillespie’s autobiography dazzles with the confessional honesty, punk attitude, fervent political beliefs and obsessive musical passion that drove Primal Scream to become the ecstatic, idiosyncratic trailblazers who defined an era with 1991’s Screamadelica.
Forty years of often outspoken interviews accompanying the Scream’s excess-all-areas roller-coaster suggested a decent account could be forthcoming, but Tenement Kid grips instantly with its vivid evocations of growing up dirt-poor in gang-ridden 60s Glasgow, playing in perilous industrial ruins, enduring sadistic school teachers and working in a printing factory, with Patti Smith’s Piss Factory burning his brain. Gillespie’s fiercely socialist father was a politicising influence, from home Black Power posters to staunch union activitism.
Gillespie’s first single was the Sweet’s , gig Thin Lizzy at the Apollo, Sex his “psychic jailbreak”. Writing with compelling eloquence, he captures the transformative impact of musical milestones with Force 10 passion worthy of Lester Bangs; “Johnny Rotten’s voice was like a razor blade stuck through a cheek. His intense laser stare burned holes straight into my innocent teenage consciousness with the pure, amphetamine hatred and contempt of a self-righteous, paranoid speed freak.” Seeing The Clash in ’77 was “beyond music… it was pure energy”.
