MUSIC LITERATURE

WITH the exception of maybe Jennifer Lawrence and Nicolas Cage, are there any film stars of the last 20 or 30 years whose autobiographies you would actually want to read? Would any of them have anything interesting to say?

It’s different with music. There’s an honesty or an arrogance about musicians that often leads to riveting prose. The best biopic of 2014 was Viv Albertine’s astonishingly candid Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys

So come 2015 who will be opening up to us? For the hipsters the key text will no doubt be Kim Gordon’s Girl in a Band, in which the former Sonic Youth frontwoman writes about the New York music scene in the 1980s and 1990s, the rise of alternative rock and her relationship with fellow band member Thurston Moore.

“At the heart of the book is the examination of what partnership means – and what happens when it dissolves,” the press release says. Like we said, honest.

In April, Everything but the Girl’s Tracey Thorn follows up her debut Bedsit Disco Queen with Naked at the Albert Hall (Virago). The subtitle, The Inside Story of Singing, should give you a flavour of what to expect – Dusty Springfield, Dennis Potter and The X Factor.

Closer to home Belle and Sebastian co-founder Stuart David has written a memoir, In the All Night Cafe (Little Brown, April) that revisits 1990s Glasgow and the group’s origins. There’s also talk of a new Looper album.

But the loudest music memoir of 2015 will surely be Noddy Holder’s. Fresh from banking this year’s cheque for Merry Christmas Everybody, Sir Nod will give us The World According To Noddy: Life Lessons Learned In and Out of Rock & Roll in April. Why? Coz he luvs us.