Spend a year with Robyn Hitchcock, make a pre-emptive strike with Radio Birdman, get a piece of Billy Childish’s mind, riff with Earl Slick, prowl Serge Gainsbourg’s Paris, and more great holiday reads. Let’s crack the covers:
1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left
By Robyn Hitchcock
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left explores how that pivotal slice of time tastes to a bright, obsessive-compulsive boy who is shipped off to a hothouse academic boarding school as he reaches the age of 13 — just as Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited starts to bite, and The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band explodes. When he arrives in January 1966, Robyn Hitchcock is still a boy pining for the comforts of home and his family’s loving au pair Teresa. By December 1967, he’s mutated into a 6’2″ tall rabid Dylan fan, whose two ambitions in life are to get really high and fly to Nashville. In between — as the hippie revolution blossoms in the world outside — Hitchcock adjusts to the hierarchical, homoerotic world of Winchester, threading a path through teachers with arrested development, some oafish peers, and a sullen old maid — a very English freak show. On the way he befriends a cadre of bat-winged teenage prodigies and meets their local guru, the young Brian Eno. At the end of 1967, all the ingredients are in place that will make Hitchcock a songwriter for life. But then again, does 1967 ever really end?”
Radio Birdman: Retaliate First
By Murray Engleheart
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Sydney’s legendary Radio Birdman were a stake through the satin and scarfed hearts of the mid-’70s music scene, revolutionising the conservative Australian industry in the process. Regarded as one of the earliest punk bands, before the world had heard of The Sex Pistols, Birdman were feared and loathed by many, yet adored by fiercely loyal fans. But their story has never been told in depth until now. Murray Engleheart’s Radio Birdman: Retaliate First is drawn from more than 150 interviews with the band members, their closest associates, devotees and observers. From tales of singer Rob Younger filling his mouth with sheep brains from a human skull to fans breaking limbs while dancing wildly at gigs and publicans cutting the power in a desperate bid to halt their force-of-nature-like performances, the Radio Birdman story is one of confrontation, commitment and inspiration. With 2024 marking their half-century of existence, and a commemorative tour that may be their last, it’s the perfect time to look back over 50 years of the band that never took a backward step and made rock and roll thrilling and dangerous once more. Radio Birdman: Retaliate First is the ultimate insider’s guide to how Australia’s most hated act were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame and became global icons.”
To Ease My Troubled Mind: The Authorised Unauthorised History of Billy Childish
By Ted Kessler
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “In 1977, 17-year-old Steven Hamper was a stonemason in the dockyards of Chatham, Kent. His heart, however, beat in sync with the punk rock tremors of the era, seduced by its celebration of amateurism. So, in a gesture of revolutionary defiance, he took a three-pound club hammer and smashed his hand, vowing to never work again. In doing so, Steven Hamper metamorphosed into Billy Childish, a true renaissance man. Childish has since remained steadfastly true to punk’s DIY cred, becoming one of the most recognisable and authentic voices in whichever artistic endeavour he undertakes. He has released over 150 albums of raw rock ’n’ roll, punk, blues and folk, written many volumes of searing poetry as well as several autobiographical novels. But what he is perhaps best known for in recent years is his painting, for which he is now critically, commercially and internationally feted. He hasn’t changed course in any of his disciplines, though. The world just caught up with the sheer volume of his brutally honest work. To Ease My Troubled Mind is a mosaic portrait collated over a year of interviews with Childish, as well as with close family, ex-girlfriends, bandmembers past and present, friends, foes, collaborators, even his therapist. It is an unflinching, yet frequently spiritual and funny portrait of an artist whose obstacle-strewn upbringing formed the backbone of his work: raised in a broken home and abused as a child, Childish was an undiagnosed dyslexic in remedial class at school who is nevertheless now Britain’s most prolific and uncompromising creative force.”
Guitar
By Earl Slick & Jeff Slate
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Earl Slick was barely out of his teens when David Bowie hired him to play guitar on the ground-breaking 1974 Diamond Dogs tour. It marked the beginning of a relationship that would endure through thick and thin for the next 40 years. Gracing classic albums like Young Americans, Station to Station and the 2013 comeback The Next Day, Slick played on the tour that followed Bowie’s smash hit Let’s Dance album and was at his side for the epic Glastonbury show in 2000. But it wasn’t just Bowie. The young guitarist was in John Lennon’s band at the time of the former Beatle’s tragic murder. Other collaborations read like a roll call of rock ’n’ roll royalty including Mick Jagger, The Cure, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Joe Cocker, Buddy Guy, Ian Hunter, David Coverdale and Eric Clapton. And in the ‘80s he became an MTV star in his own right with the success of Phantom, Rocker and Slick. Through it all he lived the rock ’n’ roll life to the hilt. Until it nearly killed him. One of rock’s great sidemen, Slick was in the room when music history was made. Guitar takes us there, shining a light on superstars like Bowie and Lennon, while recounting the extraordinary story of the boy from New York City who became a real-life Johnny B. Goode.”
Rockin’ the Kremlin: My Incredible True Story of Gangsters, Oligarchs, and Pop Stars in Putin’s Russia
By David Junk & Fred Bronson
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia opened its borders, and Russian audiences were hungry for Western popular music and the values it espoused. David Junk was one of the first idealistic, young Americans to seize this opportunity. Rockin’ the Kremlin is the thrilling true story of how David became the first CEO of Universal Music Russia and built impactful cultural bridges with music — but also how that would all shatter with the rise of Vladimir Putin and invasions of Ukraine. There was no proper music industry in the U.S.S.R., and creating a modern music industry in Russia would be far more challenging than anyone had anticipated. David assembled a team of young and talented Russians, and they navigated a terrain filled with political chaos, organized crime, powerful oligarchs, bombings, and violence — with cultural clashes tinting many aspects. They captivated millions by bringing superstar acts to Russia for the first time ever, including Metallica, Mariah Carey, Sting, Eminem and Enrique Iglesias, while developing local talent such as Alsou and t.A.T.u. — Russia’s greatest-selling pop act of all time. Eventually, David would even build a music industry in Ukraine and other countries in Eastern Europe. While Russia’s descent into authoritarianism and two invasions of Ukraine have tarnished this, the industry that David shepherded has birthed a newer generation of Russian musicians who are speaking out against the war and Putin. Filled with unique insights as well as gripping — and sometimes humorous — stories, this book reveals how it all happened.”
Kurt Kaiser: Icon and Conscience of Contemporary Christian Music
By Terry W. York
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “At the age of four or five, a young boy made his way to the piano in his Chicago home and picked out a recognizable tune. His German-American parents sensed they had witnessed something special. They would embrace their son’s gift for music as God-given, and as a responsibility both for them and for him to steward. Little did his parents know that Kurt Kaiser (1934-2018) would go on to become one of the most influential church musicians of the modern era. His musicianship, especially as a pianist, and his Christian commitment took him around the world, but never far from the church. When his talent took Kurt and his young family to Waco he stepped onto his largest stage — the emerging Christian recording industry. A commanding presence in this arena, Kurt contributed to the shape and direction of what would become Contemporary Christian Music. Faithfully recounting Kaiser’s story using recordings, documents from the musician’s personal office, interviews, letters, and unpublished sources, Terry W. York‘s Kurt Kaiser: Icon and Conscience of Contemporary Christian Music traces how Kaiser’s name and music became markers in the history of church music.”
Serge Gainsbourg’s Paris Map
By Felicia Craddock & Joel Hasemeyer
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “A guide to the home city of singer, songwriter and actor Serge Gainsbourg, from birth at L’Hôtel-Dieu de Paris in April 1928, to his final resting place at Cimitière du Montparnasse. Along the way, we note residences, bars, studios, nightclubs, along with many scenes of scandal, debauchery and great art. At the time of his death in 1991, Gainsbourg was perhaps best known outside France for the songs Je t’aime… moi non plus and Bonnie And Clyde, and his marriage to Jane Birkin. His influence is perhaps greater now than at any time. Famous fans have done much to bring his work to a wider international audience, notably Air, Jarvis Cocker of Pulp and Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys. Since September 2023, his former home at 5 bis Rue de Verneuil has been open to the public, along with a museum, bookstore-boutique and café-piano bar opposite, The Gasinsbarre.”
