Getting personal

Last year, Michael Hann wrote a strangely sour piece about the boom in music books for the Guardian (a boom to which he's an active contributor) and now it's Alexis Petridis' turn to tackle the subject, albeit with narrower focus on memoirs.

Seeking to identify the reasons behind the trend, Petridis cites "the existence of three music imprints at major publishers - in addition to the output of longstanding specialists such as Omnibus". But people willing to publish music books is only part of the equation - the boom also relies on people willing to buy the books, and on people willing to write them in the first place.

Petridis suggests that a generation of musicians have aged sufficiently to have reached a vantage point from which they're now able to take stock of their careers with a bit of perspective. To that, I'd add the fact that pandemic lockdown and the enforced break from performing live not only afforded a lot of artists the practical opportunity to write a memoir, but also naturally inspired the reflective thoughts conducive to such a project.

As for the book-buying public, all of Petridis' interviewees agreed that "their success is linked to the decline of the traditional music press". Those fans who grew up with the likes of NME, he argues, still have a hankering for long-form music writing and a craving for context (rather than just the music), and so constitute a readymade readership.

What spoils the article somewhat is the fact that it's peppered with slightly sniffy comments about some of the "cultish musicians" who've published surprisingly successful books. Petridis sees this, somewhat uncharitably, as simply a reflection of the scale of the boom. If there's interest in books by Lush's Miki Berenyi and Will Carruthers of Spacemen 3, the logic goes, then it must be because of something other than the books themselves.

I, however, would point out that there's not necessarily any correlation between the relative stature of an artist and their ability to write or to engage a reader. Dave Grohl's The Storyteller, for instance, is an easy and largely entertaining page-turner, but it won't win any awards for depth or style. By contrast, Sleevenotes by Hey Colossus bassist Joe Thompson - capturing the frequently grim slog of a life spent making music and touring with a low-profile band - is much more widely relatable. Similarly, listening to Adelle Stripe on White Rabbit's Songbook podcast raving about Nico: Songs They Never Play On The Radio, written by her keyboard player James Young, instantly made me buy a copy, and Viv Albertine's unflinchingly frank Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys thoroughly deserved its success. It's not so much who you are, then, as what (and how) you write. 

Neither, as a reader, is there any particular need to be a fan of the musician-author in question. It's a given that I'll read Kim Gordon's Girl In A Band and Stuart Braithwaite's Spaceships Over Glasgow at some point (shamefully, it hasn't happened yet), as well as Thurston Moore's forthcoming Sonic Life - but I also devoured Bad Vibes by Luke Haines, someone whose music I generally have little time for but whose savage dissection and demolition of Britpop made me cackle with delight. Berenyi's Fingers Crossed sounds very much in the same vein, and as a result it's firmly on my reading list.

Ultimately, though, the precise reasons for the current boom are arguably unimportant. Let's just enjoy being able to dive headfirst into an ever deepening pool of great books.