As a child in the mid-1970s, novelist Tiffany Murray lived in and around Britain’s most then-famous recording studios, Rockfield, in Monmouthshire’s Wye Valley. Rural in location but cutting edge in technological terms, Rockfield was one of the world’s first recording studios to offer residential accommodation to music acts. In a manner that is equal parts nostalgic reverie and sentiment-free memoir, My Family & Other Rock Stars (Fleet, £22) conveys the vagaries of an alternative lifestyle without seeing it as such.
Murray’s mother Joan was Rockfield’s resident chef, and along with recipes (apple and blackberry crumble with custard for Showaddywaddy), notes (“there’s no point in slaving over a bouillabaisse for Motörhead ...”), a significant cameo appearance by a much loved Irish band (“Horslips push open the studio doors ... They look exhausted. Their long hair flattens to their faces, but they laugh like children ...”) and indelible memories (“I stay up with Bad Manners to watch A Clockwork Orange on VHS, and my mum tells me off ...”), a world of wonder and happiness is conveyed, albeit viewed not always through rose-tinted glasses.
The same realism can be directed towards I Was There: Dispatches from a Life in Rock and Roll by Alan Edwards (Simon & Schuster, £25). The world of music-connected public relations from the 1960s onwards is presented by Edwards (who has a 45-year career at the PR coalface, working with acts from The Who, Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin to David Bowie, Spice Girls, Amy Winehouse and Prince) as a tough gig for anyone with a sensitive frame of mind.
Having been employed by some people for whom even cursory friendship is a flexible notion, one might think Edwards will dish up several servings of grit. Once a PR, always a PR, however, seems to be the central tenet here, so instead of full disclosure we have subtle digs. It’s a breezy, page-turning read for all of that as Edwards, whose PR company was one of the 10 most phone-hacked at the height of tabloid intrusion in the late 1990s/early 2000s, outlines his career failures (Michael Flatley, Paul McCartney) and successes (Bowie).
Failure and success are writ large throughout Tax, Drugs and Rock’n’Roll, by Damian Corless (Mirror Books, £14.99). The Irish journalist has a history of delivering meticulously researched nonfiction books, and here he dutifully delves into the decades when Ireland went from a cultural backwater to a lake of sociocultural importance.
One of the book cover’s two subtitles is “The years that went whoosh!”, and Corless takes that fast-forward approach without skimping on the details behind the influx of (mostly) famous UK musicians that decamped to Ireland to take advantage of the tax breaks. Woven among the factual details are innumerable anecdotes and several reminiscences from some of the people involved, and while some of the topics have been addressed many times before (Self Aid, the rise of U2, the Pink Elephant nightclub, the visit in 1979 of Pope John Paul II), Corless manages the not inconsiderable feat of covering them with a fresh lick of paint.
Sometimes, of course, history doesn’t need refurbishing, and that’s the case with Ceoltóirí Chualann: The Band That Changed the Course of Irish Music by Peadar Ó Riada (Mercier Press, €24.99). The subtitle isn’t at all misleading or misrepresentative, by the way, as Ó Riada doesn’t have to point out. The author’s father, Seán Ó Riada, created the groundbreaking blueprint for the development of Irish traditional music, the patterns of which were later added to by the likes of The Chieftains, Horslips, Bill Whelan, Iarla Ó Lionáird and The Gloaming. Ó Riada’s text might be brief (less than 50 pages of 250), but it is filled with priceless memories of growing up in a creative household. Perhaps just as importantly for traditional music historians and musicians, the book also includes 400 musical arrangements and original scores. The book, by the way, is beautifully designed throughout, with a superb cover illustration by Craig Carry.
Also well-designed and featuring over 200 photographs of one of the most important and influential rock bands of the past 30 years, Radiohead: Climbing up the Walls by Tom Sheehan (Welbeck/Headline, £35) is one of those coffee-table books strictly for fans – otherwise, you’re dipping into and out of it with no interest or involvement.
Erstwhile chief photographer of the UK weekly music newspaper Melody Maker (which ceased publication almost 25 years ago), Sheehan has been covering the band since 1992 through assignments involving recording sessions, live shows, touring and official studio portraiture. The images, taken up to 2003, are complemented by music writer Craig McLean’s recollections drawn from numerous band interviews, while the foreword is by the band’s Ed O’Brien. If looking at how the band has changed through the decades fails to fully grab the attention (irrespective of how good the images are – and many are superb), McLean’s writing, you might say, puts everything in its right place.
Celebrating the 40th anniversary of Bruce Springsteen’s album, Born in the USA, There Was Nothing You Could Do by Steven Hyden (Hachette, £28) is catnip for fans of The Boss, who continues to act as a lightning rod for people committed to traditional rock’n’roll values. Hyden, an experienced music journalist and author, blends anecdotes and sharp critical analysis about the album and its songs (as well as those that didn’t make the final cut). Describing Springsteen as “a one-man monoculture”, Hyden delves into the period that sees his subject creating a more skeletal version of Born in the USA, a collection of songs akin to “a shadow album”, tracks that would be eventually beefed up by the E Street Band, and some, including The Klansman, that would never officially be released. He also looks at the album in a broader historical context (post-Vietnam and Watergate) and the later ambivalence towards it by Springsteen himself: “I put a lot of pressure on myself ... to reproduce the intensity of Nebraska on Born in the USA. I never got it.”
One could never accuse cult UK songwriter Robyn Hitchcock of being boring, and throughout 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left (Constable, £22) he constantly surprises. The book title is a hint; the year is pivotal for Hitchcock, primarily because pop/rock music of 1967 was the soundtrack “of when the world went into colour, and the child I was hatched into a teenager”. It was also the year that he started his second-level education at boarding school, where he deftly negotiated a path through loutish, nicknamed peers and an array of eccentric tutors.
Hitchcock also developed a passion for Bob Dylan, The Beatles, The Beach Boys and The Rolling Stones (“To this day, whenever I hear The Last Time ... I think of learning Greek…”). Interspersed with that year in boarding school are poignant yet affable recollections of growing up with free-spirited, kindly parents. The book title, however, is central to Hitchcock’s subsequent career and mindset. Advice, part-helpful, part admonishing, from his father (“You’re becoming self-obsessed…”) triggers a response that the songwriter has never contested: “I’m a teenager and I’ll stay one for the rest of my life.”
