The past year has been a banger for musical memoirs by women.
by Kaylen Ralph
Just short of a year ago, Lisa Robinson’s There Goes Gravity was released. With a career spanning more than three decades, Robinson’s memoir offered a panoramic view of the music industry from her standpoint as a journalist, starting with contemporary rock and roll’s infancy in the early 70s through today’s megastars (Lady Gaga, Eminem, Kanye West, etc.)
Robinson’s memoir and body of work speak for themselves. She’s good at what she does, and she has a successful career to show for it. Not only was she a pioneer in the rock journalism genre, she inspired generations of women who wanted to be music writers, too. “I wasn’t a critic…This was somewhat of a rarity in the early 1970s when ‘rock journalism’ was in its infancy and mostly populated by boys who had ambitions to become the next Norman Mailer,” she writes in There Goes Gravity.
In the year since the release of There Goes Gravity, there have been a handful of other books starring some of rock and roll’s queens. We’ve reviewed a few of the books on this site. As Robinson makes clear, rock journalism was a boy’s club, but so was the rock genre itself. This week’s release, Girl in a Band, the highly anticipated memoir by Sonic Youth’s founding member Kim Gordon, is the cherry on top of a year in which we saw the release of The Slit’s lead guitarist and songwriter Viv Albertine’s memoir—Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys.—and a significant update to the Stevie Nicks canon with Zoe Howe’s Stevie Nicks: Vision, Dreams and Rumours. In the fiction genre, but still notable, was Caitlin Moran’s How to Build a Girl, released last October. Despite Moran’s insisting that the book is not autobiographical, it’s an honest and unsparing look at what women in rock and roll can encounter, especially at an early age. And even though each of these contributions hinges on heartbreak (as they say, rock and roll will break your heart), the real collective triumph is showcasing the women who built a genre and inspired generations of followers.
1. There Goes Gravity by Lisa Robinson (Riverhead Books, 2014)
Each chapter of this book is a profile in miniature. From the Rolling Stones to Madonna and Lady Gaga, Robinson shows her range while celebrating the work of others. Check out our review from last April, as well as this Canon of other notable rock and roll writing by women.
2. How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran (Harper Collins, 2014)
Protagonist Johanna Morrigan/Dolly Wilde gets an early start as a music journalist. While still in high school, she starts work at Disc & Music Echo (a real British music newspaper). She gets less-than-prestigious assignments covering the groups that suburban kids go gooey-eyed for, but as she dives deeper into London’s underground counterculture and her work at D&ME, she gets to cover more high profile groups. The turning point, both in the evolution of Dolly’s career and in her adolescent lifestyle, is when she gets chastised for being “too fangirl” in her review of John Kite, a fictional artist with whom she becomes obsessed. Check out our review from last October.
3. Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. by Viv Albertine (St. Martin’s Press, 2014)
Albertine’s memoir covers the basics (as the title indicates). As a young girl growing up in a London suburb, she decides early on that she wants to be a rocker. As she sneaks into shows and strategizes how to break into the industry for herself, we’re treated to a roadmap of the makings of a real star.
“I read the book Groupie by Jenny Fabian and I’m ashamed to say I though it sounded OK, being a groupie,” she writes in her memoir. “But I knew I wasn’t witty, worldly or beautiful enough to even be that. The only other way left for a girl to get into rock and roll was to be a backing singer and I couldn’t sing.”
4. Stevie Nicks: Visions, Dream and Rumours by Zoe Howe (The Overlook Press, 2015)
Though not a memoir, Howe’s massive Nicks tome is an example of the legacy Lisa Robinson has created. Howe’s Stevie Nicks biography is her latest book, but she’s previously written about The Slits, Florence + The Machine and more.
5. Girl in a Band by Kim Gordon (Dey Street Books, 2015)
Of all the aforementioned books, this one really is a story about heartbreak. It’s a story that starts at the end. From page one, we already know that Gordon is separated from her husband and Sonic Youth co-founder Thurston Moore. As the band goes on its final tour around South America in 2011, Gordon grapples with the struggle of appearing to be at least friendly with her estranged husband, while he’s practically chomping at the bit, ready to launch his solo career. Sonic Youth’s origin story is fascinating, but Gordon’s story keeps the beat as her heart is breaking.
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Kaylen is one of The Riveter’s co-founders and the EIC. She moved to Minneapolis, MN after graduating from the Missouri School of Journalism in August 2013. In addition to her editorial duties at The Riveter, Kaylen also works as a freelance researcher for The Sager Group. You can follow her on Instagram and Twitter at @kaylenralph.
