BOOK REVIEW: My My! ABBA Through the Ages by Giles Smith

This article was originally published in The Big Issue in June 2024. 

My My! ABBA Through the Ages, Giles Smith, out now, Gallery UK, £18.40

It’s perhaps easy to forget that ABBA’s now immovable status as one of the greatest acts in pop history wasn’t always a matter of consensus.

Prior to the critical rehabilitation that began – gradually, cautiously - in the early ‘90s, ABBA were generally discarded as a lazy punchline for every sniggering joke about ‘70s kitsch. Terminally naff, hopelessly uncool, they were considered at best a ‘guilty pleasure’ couched in face-saving irony.

These days, anyone who still subscribes to that objectively wrong opinion is regarded with pity and suspicion, but how did we get here? How did ABBA defy the naysayers and emerge triumphant as a universally beloved treasure?

As the witty and perceptive music critic Giles Smith points out in this enjoyable semi-autobiographical meditation on what it means to be an ABBA fan, ABBA themselves did nothing to encourage their revival. They split without fanfare in 1982, quietly got on with their lives, and just watched from the sidelines as everyone eventually realised that they deserve our utmost respect.

Smith was twelve and immediately smitten when he watched ABBA win Eurovision in 1974, but over the next few years he gradually became aware that here was a love that dare not speak its name within earshot of ‘credible’ music fans. 

He understood why hipsters felt that way – the outfits, the grinning, the occasional lapses into outright shlock - but he still couldn’t quite work out why ABBA were always written off as mechanical purveyors of commercial pop.

No one ever criticised the Beatles, the Beach Boys and Phil Spector – three of ABBA’s main influences – for being commercial, so why weren’t these self-evident pop geniuses afforded any respect during their chart-topping imperial phase?

Short answer: rock critic snobbery, sexism and casual xenophobia. ABBA didn’t fit into the ‘authentic’ Anglo-American narrative.

That said, Smith’s penetrating odyssey isn’t defensive in the slightest. It’s written with love and wry self-awareness, it analyses some of ABBA’s signature songs in commanding, rapturous detail while affectionately needling some of their more questionable decisions. 

This is a book written by an ABBA fan, a pop fan, someone who understands what it means to be in thrall to this music and the absolutely vital minutiae surrounding it.

It’s ABBA gold.

BOOK REVIEW: Postcards from Scotland: Scottish Independent Music 1983 - 1995 by Grant McPhee

This article was originally published in The Big Issue in July 2024.

Postcards from Scotland: Scottish Independent Music 1983 - 1995, Grant McPhee, out now, Omnibus Press, £18.39

1984: The Year Pop Went Queer, Ian Wade, out now, Nine Eight Books, £16.49

The esteemed music journalist Simon Reynolds once said, “Indie music as we know it was invented in Scotland.”

He wasn’t wrong, and here’s the hefty oral history to prove it. Curated by filmmaker Grant McPhee, director of the essential Scottish music documentaries Big Gold Dream and Teenage Superstars, it’s the definitive account of a seminal period in pop history.

This is the story of a hugely creative and incestuous scene nominally led by the likes of the Jesus and Mary Chain, Teenage Fanclub, BMX Bandits, the Pastels, Primal Scream, and the Shop Assistants.

But to McPhee’s eternal credit, there are no footnotes or also-rans here – practically every Scottish indie act who released a record during this fertile epoch receives their due. The circle wouldn’t be complete without contributions from the Jasmine Minks or Meat Whiplash, or even Nocturnal Vermin and their bizarrely prescient ‘tribute’ to budding MSP classmate John Swinney.

It’s a Byzantine saga involving hundreds of musicians and ever-changing line-ups, so much so it sometimes resembles Monty Python’s Rock Notes sketch. McPhee – who provides context via clear-eyed chapter intros and outros - is aware of this, drily noting at one point that the sprawling rock family tree he’s dealing with “would send shivers down Pete Frame’s spine.”

Nevertheless, he makes compelling sense of it all. A labour of love, it’s a sometimes funny, sometimes bittersweet tribute to a gawky generation of like-minded dreamers who fully embraced the post-punk DIY ethos. They all left something indelible behind.

BOOK REVIEW: 1984: The Year Pop Went Queer by Ian Wade

This article was originally published in The Big Issue in August 2024.

1984: The Year Pop Went Queer, Ian Wade, out now, Nine Eight Books, £16.49

A resonant ode to the gay pop revolutionaries who ruled the UK charts during a particularly bleak era for marginalised sectors of society, 1984: The Year Pop Went Queer by music journalist Ian Wade does what all the best pop books do – it celebrates the music and the artists who made it while doubling up as an acute piece of social history.

Wade argues that 1984 was a pivotal year in terms of gay visibility within the mainstream. This, of course, was the year of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, co-architects with producer Trevor Horn of the literally orgasmic punk-disco behemoth Relax – in Wade’s words, “possibly the most homosexual record ever made.”

Frankie revelled in uncompromising provocation via their tough underground gay club scene aesthetic. The Village People’s leatherman looked positively quaint by comparison.

It’s a recurring theme throughout the book – in 1984, many queer artists finally felt able to express themselves openly while selling loads of amazing, accessible pop records to gay and straight audiences alike.

Lest we forget, this remarkable feat, this bold, subversive political statement, took place against a hostile backdrop of virulent homophobia drummed up by Thatcher’s government and its right-wing tabloid media lackeys. The tragedy and injustice of the AIDS epidemic informs every single page of this saga.

It also explicitly foreshadows the bigotry directed towards the trans community in this supposedly enlightened day and age,

Frankie aside, Wade devotes comprehensive chapters to key zeitgeist-defining heroes such as Wham!, Pet Shop Boys and Bronski Beat, as well as LGBTQ+ allies Cyndi Lauper and Madonna. He also writes sensitively about the gay pop stars who worried – for various entirely understandable reasons – about the repercussions of coming out publically.

A warm, perceptive, frank and funny writer, Wade states his case persuasively in this rather marvellous book. Pop, as he so rightly declares, is important.

BOOK REVIEW: Under a Rock: A Memoir by Chris Stein

This article was originally published in The Big Issue in June 2024.

Under A Rock: A Memoir, Chris Stein, out now, Little, Brown, £18.89

Chris Stein is a rock ‘n’ roll Zelig. In his likeable memoir, the Blondie co-founder displays an uncanny knack for turning up at pivotal moments in pop culture history.

Even before he formed a romantic/creative relationship with Debbie Harry, he’d attended a Central Park Be-In during the Summer of Love, hung out at Haight-Ashbury, been knocked sideways by the Velvet Underground live, and witnessed Hendrix et al at Woodstock. 

Later on, we’re treated to memorable cameos from the likes of David Bowie, William Burroughs, Jean-Michel Basquiat and a predictably gun-toting Phil Spector.

Blessed with a seemingly photographic memory, Stein recounts these extraordinary incidents in an endearingly dry-witted style. His prose is crisp and conversational, his stories rich in evocative detail. You can practically taste New York’s bohemian/Taxi Driver-esque Lower East Side during those particular chapters.

Stein also shares admirably candid accounts of the years he lost to heroin addiction, and the tensions within Blondie during their imperial phase.

Still, he never comes across as someone with an axe to grind. He’s philosophical, generous, self-aware, a decent human being.

BOOK REVIEW: Entrances and Exits by Michael Richards

This article was originally published in The Big Issue in June 2024.

Entrances and Exits, Michael Richards, out now, Permuted Press, £22

Michael Richards will forever be associated with Kramer, the wildly eccentric ‘hipster doofus’ character he inhabited so exquisitely for nine years on Seinfeld, one of the greatest and most successful TV sitcoms of all time.

On a far less stellar note, he’ll also be remembered for a notorious incident at an L.A. comedy club in 2006, when he lost his temper and hurled racist abuse at some hecklers.

In his often fascinating, often frustrating memoir, Richards attempts to present an honest account of himself. To a certain extent he succeeds.

At best, he comes across as a sensitive, cultured, offbeat soul with an acute understanding of the cosmic art of comedy. Enter: Kramer. Working on Seinfeld was clearly one of the happiest times of his life, a time when he could give full vent to his prodigious comic genius. 

Like all great clowns, Richards takes his work seriously, and the chapters devoted to his meticulous Method-influenced approach to playing Kramer leap off the page with a kind of joyous intensity worthy of the K-Man himself.

Unfortunately, the good stuff – basically everything pertaining to his comedy career - is surrounded by page after page of Richards’ long-winded spiritual/philosophical musings, an interminable section on his army service (where he goes out of his way to prove his non-racist credentials), and various other inessential diversions.

The book also flounders when he addresses his public meltdown. It’s awkwardly foreshadowed throughout, with Richards repeatedly describing himself as an improvisational performer driven by irrational impulses, a “Dionysian” clown. He also admits to a lifelong struggle with anger management.

One sympathises with his difficult family background, a complex subject he writes about movingly. It helps to explain his insecurity and anxiety. However, while he’s genuinely appalled by what he said that night, he never addresses why he went there. Why did he resort to racist abuse? That’s not just an irrational impulse, it came from somewhere.

The hecklers told Richards he wasn’t funny, which is probably the worst thing you can say to someone who’s based most of their self-worth on making people laugh. So he lashed out with the worst things he could say to a person of colour. He knows that was wrong, but that’s all he’s really prepared to say. Maybe it’s all he can say.

Richards, to his credit, doesn’t ask for forgiveness and never wallows in self-pity. I hope he finds peace within himself one day. This uneven book suggests he’s still got some way to go.