Description

‘Entertaining, affectionate and righteous’ Guardian
‘Says so much about being a woman’ Cosey Fanni Tutti

A TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

In 1983, backstage at the Lyceum in London, Tracey Thorn and Lindy Morrison first met. Tracey’s music career was just beginning, while Lindy, drummer for The Go-Betweens, was ten years her senior. They became confidantes, comrades and best friends, a relationship cemented by gossip and feminism, books and gigs and rock ‘n’ roll love affairs.

Morrison – a headstrong heroine blazing her way through a male-dominated industry – came to be a kind of mentor to Thorn. They shared the joy and the struggle of being women in a band, trying to outwit and face down a chauvinist music media.

In My Rock ‘n’ Roll Friend Thorn takes stock of thirty-seven years of friendship, teasing out the details of connection and affection between two women who seem to be either complete opposites or mirror images of each other. This important book asks what people see, who does the looking, and ultimately who writes women out of – and back into – history.

Publisher Review

This book says so much about being a woman -- COSEY FANNI TUTTI A vivid and witty memoir of the friendship between Thorn and Lindy Morrison of the Go-Betweens, two women in a cultural world dominated by men . . . [Thorn] brings wit, candour and vividness to her storytelling . . . As well as providing a portrait of a mercurial and brilliant musician, the book exposes the sexism and hypocrisy of an industry . . . Entertaining, affectionate and righteous * * Guardian * * It's such a radical act - as well as loving one - for a woman to tell the story of her friend like this, and to free her (and all of us, it feels!) from the distorting prism of the male gaze. I honestly wanted to stand up and cheer! -- MELISSA HARRISON A gorgeous, vivid account of female friendship, what it is to be a woman in a band, activism, art, motherhood, love and having men take credit for your work -- SINEAD GLEESON My Rock 'n' Roll Friend is a book to treasure, brimming with empathy and good jokes. It's something of a lost art, writing well about your friends, and Tracey Thorn does it brilliantly, capturing the difficult bits with great honesty, and shining a light into a whole industry. The book is a rare opportunity to see one sublime artist in counterpoint to another, and all the sexist bullshit is revealed, all the love and trouble, as Thorn shows once again how to be a beautiful chronicler of what memory does and what life amounts to -- ANDREW O'HAGAN I truly love this book. As a woman who's been in the music business over twenty-three years, I can relate to so much of it. Thorn's writing is important and necessary, as I realise how much I need a book to do the looking from my side of things. But it's not just a rebalance from the bore of yet another blokey book about the music world, Thorn pulls you into the love, to the scenes, heart-stopping moments, as if you were right there, wired in to see the world her way . . . and it finally makes sense -- KATHRYN WILLIAMS Superb - Thorn has written the Men Explain Things to Me of musical memoirs -- TRAVIS ELBOROUGH Thorn's books to date have been uniformly fantastic. My Rock 'n' Roll Friend, which documents her intriguing 37-year relationship with Lindy Morrison, drummer in 80s Australian critical darlings The Go-Betweens - a band whose bookish public image concealed a noticeably tougher, earthier reality - promises equally great things * * Guardian, Ones to Watch * * Not only is this a vivid and heartfelt tribute to a mentor, it's also a thoughtful and moving meditation on the connective tissue of life-long friendship. Perhaps Thorn's best book yet * * The Bookseller, Editor's Choice * * Praise for Another Planet: A beautiful writer . . . Exceptional . . . Made me catch my breath . . . Her language is straightforward, chatty, easy-to-read. Musical. Though Thorn tells us sharp truths, we gobble them up because she delivers them in such a deceptively pretty, poignant way -- Miranda Sawyer * * Financial Times * *