Tenement Kid: Rough Trade Book of the Year

Product Information

Anyway the reason behind this long-winded memory is because that Tenement Kid is Gillespie’s memoir and it documents his childhood, his stint in Altered Images and The Wake, the formation of Primal Scream , his drumming days with The Jesus and Mary Chain.

I can understand that he has to slow down his Glasgow accent so folk from elsewhere can understand him (I have the same accent) but OH MY GOD! Fizzing with an infectious passion for the magic of rock music, Bobby Gillespie’s vivid and evocative new memoir, TENEMENT KID: From the Streets of Glasgow in the 1960s to Drummer in Jesus and Mary Chain and Frontman in Primal Scream, traces the Primal Scream frontman’s path from a post-war Glasgow tenement to the release of Screamadelica, the band’s psychedelic award-winning masterpiece that helped usher in the 1990s. This account proves that his talents clearly extend to writing in the longer form and this was an interesting enough read.sense – but more in the word’s original Blakean sense – emotion recollected in tranquillity, as the saying went. It was quite amazing how often his musical tastes matched mine and how we discovered certain genres around the same time in our lives. To which a seasoned observer of Bobby Gillespie’s career might sigh and respond: well, of course he does. Published thirty years after the release of their masterpiece, Bobby Gillespie's memoir cuts a righteous path through a decade lost to Thatcherism and saved by acid house.

Though at times, the band started to believe that they would never break through; they and their sound got a re-boot thanks to the Acid House movement which completely changed their direction. Tenement Kid is Bobby Gillespie’s story up to the recording and release of the album that has been credited with ‘starting the 90’s’, Screamadelica. He even made a pilgrimage to Midnight Records when he was in New York with the Jesus and Mary Chain.

Readers will be astonished by the detail in his memoir, the extraordinary rolling energy of his prose, and his warmth, gratitude and performerly wisdom . I'm older by a few years and we grew up in different parts of the city (Glasgow) but the interests we had, the music we loved and just the places / events we'd go to were pretty similar. Primal Scream dude tells his story, including time served in Altered Images and Jesus And Mary Chain. Page 1 Bobby is ripping into the fact that his local area is being torn down due to Edward Heath's policies in the late 60's.