I am Woman hear me Raw

From Yoko Ono to Courtney Love, the riot grrls get a few things off their chests in a trio of new books.

Cover There comes a time in a music journalist's life, usually around the age of 30, when the realisation hits home that they have never written anything longer than 2,000 words. Which means they only have 2,000-word ideas, and 2,000-word dreams, and, worse still, 2,000-word pay cheques. Massive drifts of depression tend to set in, followed by an increasingly urgent desire to do something worthwhile.

And so they write a book. Usually it's either a fairly entertaining stagger through My Drug Nights With The Bass-Player From Special School or dull historical porridge about how the Beatles nicked everything they knew from Chuck Berry. Oh, like, thanks. Cheers for reminding us, we'd all forgotten for ten minutes, etc.

But this spring has seen a bizarre trend of stunningly well-written books that stretch your brain and swell your heart with every page. And, even more bizarrely, the best three books deal with Gender in Rock and it's not boring.

Karen O'Brien is a BBC World Service producer and freelance writer. Her second book, Hymn to Her: Women Musicians Talk is very simple in format brief introduction to each artist, then seven or eight pages of pure, uninterrupted quotes from the musicians, covering any subject they wish, but mainly concentrating on the music industry and the problems of being a woman therein.

Its power lies in the non-bias an almost heroic lack of ego on the part of the author allows, for instance, the reader to like Yoko Ono within two paragraphs, and, by the end of the chapter, positively howl with indignation at her mistreatment over the years. Mo Tucker, Kirsty MacColl and Suzanne Vega also come across clearer and stronger than they do in "normal'' interview, because their own agendas within the music industry are not diluted or corrupted by the agenda of, as is usual, a male journalist.

Whatever anyone says, there is a difference between male and female journalists and musicians. All the musicians interviewed become exceedingly indignant at reviews and interviews that have concentrated on, and even denigrated, the shapes of their bodies and the way they style their hair. Things have not progressed one jot since the 1950s, when, Ono recalls, "People didn't say to a woman: `What do you do?' Women were either beautiful or not very beautiful.''

The music industry is still sadly fuelled, in the main, by male fantasy, and men do not usually fantasise about absurdly talented singer-songwriters with 32 in waists. This is why you do not see many absurdly talented singer-songwriters with 32in waists they're out there, but they won't be on your television, on your radio or in your record shop until more women within the industry start waving the cheque book.

Amy Raphael's book, Never Mind the Bollocks: Women Rewrite Rock, is roughly similar in format to Hymn to Her. Raphael provides a bittersweet introduction, pointing out the Secret History of Women in Rock which runs in tandem with all those males in rock, but is frequently forgotten or ignored and then allows her interviewees to vent their spleen, document their struggles, or enthuse about the music and the female artists they love.

Courtney Love, possibly the most misunderstood, mistreated and frequently misguided woman in rock since Ono (and no, the comparison has nothing to do with dead husbands), has 28 pages in which to document her experiences, and to theorise about feminism and pop music, and it's still not enough. She quotes widely from Susan Faludi, Naomi Wolf and Toni Morrison's novel, Sula;and talks frankly about her husband's feminism (one of Kurt Cobain's last quotes was ``The future of rock belongs to women''). If anyone wishes to understand what Love has had to go through, this is definitely recommended.

Finally, Simon Reynolds and Joy Press's The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion and Rock'n'Roll. Reynolds's first book, Blissed Out, is possibly the greatest book ever written about rock music the language of obsession leaks from every page; metaphors are piled on top of each other until the whole edifice sways gently in the breeze.

With his wife Joy Press (whose name does sound uncommonly like a sexual technique popular in the mid-1970s) Reynolds has continued his love affair with the English language over the hefty 388 pages of The Sex Revolts, which can now be officially proclaimed as the second-best book ever written about rock music. The fact that it definitively tackles women and gender throughout rock`n'roll's appealingly grubby 40-year history is the cherry on a particularly toothsome word cake. A warning this book is so fearfully intellectual your brain might explode. Mine did by page 43.

Hymn to Her: Women Musicians Talk, by Karen O'Brien, published by Virago (Pounds 9.99). Never Mind the Bollocks: Women Rewrite Rock, by Amy Raphael (Virago, Pounds 9.99). The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion and Rock`n'Roll, by Simon Reynolds and Joy Press (Serpent's Tail, Pounds 14.99)

Kirsty's interview with Karen

Style [ Standard ] [ Cool Blue ] [ Tropical ]

I am Woman hear me Raw

From Yoko Ono to Courtney Love, the riot grrls get a few things off their chests in a trio of new books.

Related Pages: