Tenement Kid

'Gillespie is rock and roll's Oliver Twist. A punk rock fairy tale, razor sharp on class struggle, music, style, and a singular view of the world resulting in one of the world's great bands. Couldn't put down' — Courtney Love

Born into a working-class Glaswegian family in the summer of 1961, TENEMENT KID begins in the district of Springburn, soon to be evacuated during Edward Heath's brutal slum clearances. Leaving school at 16 and going to work as a printers' apprentice, Bobby Gillespie's rock n roll epiphany arrives like a bolt of lightning—shining from Phil Lynott's mirrored pickguard at his first gig at the Apollo in Glasgow.

Filled with 'the holy spirit of rock n roll,' his destiny is sealed with the arrival of the Sex Pistols and punk rock, which to Bobby represents an iconoclastic vision of class rebellion. This would ultimately lead him to become an artist, initially with The Jesus and Mary Chain and later with Primal Scream.

Key Moments in Bobby Gillespie's Journey:

• Springburn beginnings: Growing up in a working-class Glaswegian family during the slum clearances.
• Rock n roll revelation: Experiencing Phil Lynott's performance at the Apollo in Glasgow.
• Punk rock awakening: Discovering the Sex Pistols and embracing their vision of class rebellion.
• Musical evolution: Joining The Jesus and Mary Chain and later founding Primal Scream.

Building like a breakbeat crescendo to the Summer of Love, Boys Own parties, and the fateful meeting with Andrew Weatherall in an East Sussex field, the narrative flows as the '80s bleed into the '90s. A new kind of electronic soul music starts to pulse through the nation's consciousness, culminating in the release of Screamadelica—the album often credited with 'starting the '90s.'

TENEMENT KID is a book filled with the joy and wonder of a rock n roll apostle who would radically reshape the future sounds of fin de siècle British pop. Bobby Gillespie's memoir cuts a righteous path through a decade lost to Thatcherism and saved by acid house.