Tenement Kid - Bobby Gillespie

This  book is described on the cover as a punk rock fairytale. It might also be described as how gritty determination pays off. That and  how to - just about - keep your head above water when you’re happily floating  in a sea of drugs and rock and roll excess. Bobby Gillespie grew up in a tenement block in Glasgow. A rough and violent upbringing in a rough and violent area, during an era when Thatcher’s Britain had decided that as such places were never going to  vote Tory were best left to their own devices. His trade union activist  father, and all that he saw around him ensured that Bobby’s politics were shaped from a young age. As well as a strong sense of  political grievance the other formative influence  was punk rock. From a very young age he attended punk concerts in Glasgow, sometimes in the company of  fellow traveller Alan McGee who was later to  form Creation Records a label instrumental in launching Primal Scream, Oasis and a great many others into the world. From an early age Bobby was obsessed with music, seeking out  unknown bands and rare tracks first at the local record shops and then far wider as he was able to travel with his band. Bobby Gillespie is certainly no light-weight when it comes to  musical knowledge and  readers of this book should keep their Spotify app open as page after page is littered with references to bands you have never heard of but now feel that you should. As he found his musical feet Bobby left his apprenticeship in the printing trade to become the drummer of celebrated punk  band The Jesus and Mary Chain whilst also undertaking guest drum and roadie duties for a number of other  Scottish bands including Altered Images  whose back history is far more on the outside than songs like Happy Birthday might have you believe. Whilst with the Mary Chain Bobby also began forming and rehearsing his own band that would become Primal Scream, a welcome life-raft after being asked to leave JAMC. This coincided with  a long lasting  diversion into the  burgeoning acid house movement, ecstasy now added to the cocktail of drink and drugs through which he tested and found himself. The book continues through the release of Primal Scream’s massive single Loaded and then  stops just at the release of the album Screamdelica on the 23rd September 1991 when, by a coincidence another masterpiece, Nirvana’s Nevermind, was released. As noted in the book’s final line “ for some people that’s the day the nineties really began!”.