My Rock’n’Roll Friend
Tracey Thorn CANONGATE. £12.99
Deep analysis of female friendship and rock storytelling from the bestselling singer-songwriter/author.
Tracey Thorn first met Lindy Morrison in 1983, a face glimpsed in a dressing room mirror at the London Lyceum. The drummer with the seemingly cool and exotic Go-Betweens, Morrison became Thorn’s friend, but also a looking glass heroine – outspoken, headstrong, living a life Thorn envied yet feared. But while Thorn’s group Everything But The Girl embraced money and success, The Go-Betweens struggled, floundered, Morrison locked in a toxic relationship with the band’s two frontmen, one her ex-lover. Part eye-opening biography (Morrison was a left-wing activist, working with the Australian Black Panthers), this is also an act of redress, retelling The Go-Betweens’ story as that of a trio, not a duo, and picking apart the genderbiased clichés of all male rock narratives. Crucially, it’s also a moving tale of solidarity between two people who, at times, only seemed to have each other, for better and for worse.