My Rock ’n’ Roll Friend by Tracey Thorn

An exploration of female friendship and women in music, from the iconic singer-songwriter and bestselling author of Another Planet and Bedsit Disco Queen

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'Entertaining, affectionate and righteous' Guardian

'Says so much about being a woman' Cosey Fanni Tutti 

‘A gorgeous, vivid account of female friendship, what it is to be a woman in a band, activism, art, motherhood, love and having men take credit for your work’ Sinéad Gleeson 

‘It's such a radical act – as well as a loving one – for a woman to tell the story of her friend like this, and to free her (and all of us, it feels!) from the distorting prism of the male gaze. I honestly wanted to stand up and cheer!’ Melissa Harrison 

‘My Rock ’n’ Roll Friend is a book to treasure, brimming with empathy and good jokes.’ Andrew O’Hagan

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My Rock ’n’ Roll Friend
By Tracey Thorn
Paperback / 5 May 2022 / £9.99

In 1983, backstage at the Lyceum in London, Tracey Thorn and Lindy Morrison first met. Tracey’s music career was just beginning, while Lindy, drummer for The Go-Betweens, was ten years her senior. They became confidantes, comrades and best friends, a relationship cemented by gossip and feminism, books and gigs and rock ’n’ roll love affairs.

Morrison – a headstrong heroine blazing her way through a male-dominated industry – came to be a kind of mentor to Thorn. They shared the joy and the struggle of being women in a band, trying to outwit and face down a chauvinist music media.

In My Rock 'n' Roll Friend Thorn takes stock of thirty-seven years of friendship, teasing out the details of connection and affection between two women who seem to be either complete opposites or mirror images of each other. This important book asks what people see, who does the looking, and ultimately who writes women out of – and back into – history.

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ABOUT Tracey Thorn

Tracey Thorn is a singer-songwriter and writer, best known for her 17 years in bestselling duo Everything But The Girl. She has released four solo albums, one movie soundtrack, a large handful of singles, and three books, including the Sunday Times bestsellers Another Planet and Bedsit Disco Queen. She has been a judge of the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Goldsmiths Prize and writes regularly for the New Statesman. She lives in London, with her husband Ben Watt and their three children.

@tracey_thorn | traceythorn.com

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Another Planet by Tracey Thorn

A memoir about suburban childhood from Tracey Thorn, singer-songwriter and Sunday Times bestselling author of Bedsit Disco Queen

‘Another Planet is about being a teenager in suburbia in the 1970s, and revisiting one’s own youth from middle age. It touches on class, culture, music, plum jam and parenting teens. It’s wonderful. You’ll read it in one go’ - Nina Stibbe

‘I loved it. Thorn is the rarest of things: a singer whose phrasing is as good on the page as it is through a microphone’ - John Niven

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Another Planet - A Teenager in Suburbia
By Tracey Thorn
7 February 2019 | Hardback £14.99 | eBook | Audio Download

‘I’m not the only person to have grown up stifled and bored in suburbia, it’s almost the law. The diary entries, this monotonous litany of having nothing to do, are a relentless howl of frustrated energy. Brookmans Park was stultifying, frozen-in-time. In the world at large, things changed a lot during the 1960s and 70s, but in the heart of the Green Belt nothing seemed to move. Stranded in the past, it wrestled with the present, and hated the future. And there I was, stuck with it.’

In a 1970s commuter town, Tracey Thorn’s teenage life was forged from what failed to happen. Her diaries were packed with entries about not buying things, not going to the disco, the school coach not arriving. 

Before she was a bestselling musician and writer, Tracey Thorn was a typical teenager: bored and cynical, despairing of her aspirational parents. Her only comfort came from house parties, Meaningful Conversations, and the female pop icons who hinted at a new kind of living. 

Returning more than three decades later to Brookmans Park, scene of her childhood, Thorn takes us beyond the bus shelters and pub car parks, the utopian cul-de-sacs, the train to Potters Bar and the weekly discos, to the parents who wanted so much for their children, the children who wanted none of it. With her trademark wit and insight, Thorn reconsiders the greenbelt post-war dream so many artists have mocked, and so many artists have come from. 

‘I adored this. Wise, tender, beautifully observed, deadly funny. A green belt memoir classic’ - Max Porter 

‘Tracey Thorn turns the tables on her teenage boredom and chips a jewel out of doing stuff – and not doing stuff – in suburbia. A meditation on mooching and moping, escaping and finding, mums and dads, love and ageing, which is reflective, warm and deeply touching’ - Keggie Carew

'Another Planet is a poignant, rueful, tender portrait of a world so little written about, but which so many of us will recognise. I devoured it. Thorn is a brilliant writer, and a brilliantly insightful chronicler of a certain type of English experience' - Melissa Harrison

‘I devoured Another Planet. Thorn’s intimate reflections on teenage angst, motherhood, panic attacks, family and music are so moving and insightful, and written with wit and sensitivity’ - Cosey Fannie Tutti

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Tracey Thorn is a singer-songwriter and writer. After forming her first band, Marine Girls, while still at school, she delivered her breakthrough debut mini solo album, A Distant Shore, in 1982. She then spent seventeen years in bestselling duo Everything But The Girl. Since 2007 she has released three further solo albums, one movie soundtrack, a clutch of singles and two books, including the Sunday Times bestselling memoir, Bedsit Disco Queen. She currently writes a column for the New Statesman and launched her new album Record in March 2018. She lives in London with her husband Ben Watt and their three children. 

@tracey_thorn | traceythorn.com

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PRAISE FOR TRACEY THORN

‘The Alan Bennett of pop memoirists. I loved her book so much I wanted to form a band, too. Preferably with Thorn’ - Caitlin Moran

‘Beautifully written, dryly funny and searingly honest’ - Sunday Times

‘The Everything But The Girl frontwoman and former Marine Girl seizes our attention because she never asks for it, and in that her authorial voice is like her singing voice, soft and low, magnetic’ - Guardian

‘Warm, assertive, sweetly funny, but most of all honest’ - Daily Telegraph

‘I loved it’ - Nina Stibbe

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MORE INFORMATION

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