Tenement Kid

Bobby Gillespie From slums to Screamadelica – Primal Scream dynamo’s inspirational memoir.

Named after a track on Primal Scream’s 2013 album More Light, Bobby Gillespie’s autobiography dazzles with the confessional honesty, punk attitude, fervent political beliefs and obsessive musical passion that drove Primal Scream to become the ecstatic, idiosyncratic trailblazers who defined an era with 1991’s Screamadelica.

Forty years of often outspoken interviews accompanying the Scream’s excess-all-areas roller-coaster suggested a decent account could be forthcoming, but Tenement Kid grips instantly with its vivid evocations of growing up dirt-poor in gang-ridden 60s Glasgow, playing in perilous industrial ruins, enduring sadistic school teachers and working in a printing factory, with Patti Smith’s Piss Factory burning his brain. Gillespie’s fiercely socialist father was a politicising inf luence, from home Black Power posters to staunch union activitism.

Gillespie’s first single was the Sweet’s Hellraiser, gig Thin Lizzy at the Apollo, Sex Pistols’ God Save The Queen his “psychic jailbreak”. Writing with compelling eloquence, he captures the transformative impact of musical milestones with Force 10 passion worthy of Lester Bangs; “Johnny Rotten’s voice was like a razor blade stuck through a cheek. His intense laser stare burned holes straight into my innocent teenage consciousness with the pure, amphetamine hatred and contempt of a self-righteous, paranoid speed freak.” Seeing The Clash in ’77 was “beyond music… it was pure energy”.

He roadies for Altered Images, records and supports New Order playing drums in Factory outfit The Wake, forms

Primal Scream in 1983. He also joins

Jesus And Mary Chain’s “four-headed monster of fuzz-toned psychosis”, describing JAMC’s infamous riots from the bottle-strewn stage.

After Psychocandy, Gillespie concentrates on Primal Scream’s evolution from paisley psych through “ramalama balls-to-the-wall filthy fuck music” to embracing acid house as punk’s DIY successor, and meeting DJ Andrew Weatherall, whose visionary punk genius and Loaded remix pave the way to Screamadelica’s triumph and tour, where the book ends.

Gillespie still believes in music’s redemptive power. That undimmed youthful enthusiasm, tempered with life experience wisdom, are just two reasons why this profoundly moving memoir will stand among the great music biographies.

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