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.
'Superb - Thorn has written the Men Explain Things to Me of musical memoirs' - Travis Elborough
'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' - Sinead Gleeson
'My Rock 'n' Roll Friend is a book to treasure, brimming with empathy and good jokes. It's something of a lost art, writing well about your friends, and Tracey Thorn does it brilliantly, capturing the difficult bits with great honesty, and shining a light into a whole industry.' - Andrew O'Hagan