Un chaval del barrio

Tenement Kid is the autobiography of Bobby Gillespie, the undisputed benchmark of independent British rock in the late 1980s and 1990s as the frontman of Primal Scream, who with his 1991 album Screamadelica -for many one of the best of of all time- redefined the keys to fin-de-siècle rock with their overtly hedonistic spirit, in keeping with the British club rave scene and designer drugs like ecstasy, then in full swing. Born into a militant, working-class family in Glasgow in the summer of 1961, Gillespie grew up in the troubled neighborhood of Springburn shortly before it was dismantled. At the age of sixteen he dropped out of school and began working as a lithographer's apprentice, and when he discovered the Clash and the Sex Pistols he was imbued with rock and punk, which for the young man meant an iconoclastic vision of class rebellion and the They urged him to forge himself as an artist. He took his first steps with Altered Images -whom he accompanied as a roadie for opening acts for Siouxsie & The Banshees-, played keyboards in the first formation of The Wake and drums with the Jesus and Mary Chain during the time of the essential Psychocandy, to later lead his own group: Primal Scream. Structured in four blocks, Un chaval del barrio is constructed as a crescendo drum roll that explodes in the last part, with the arrival of the Second Summer of Love in the late eighties and the advent of club culture and acid house , a spirit that Primal Scream caught on to forge one of the most influential albums of the nineties and the spearhead of Alan McGee's prestigious Creation Records label. As a climax, the book recounts the riotous summer tour of 1991 that preceded the release of Screamadelica. A Kid From The Neighborhood is a book full of joy, wonder, passion and anger from an apostle of rock who helped radically reshape the future of the sound of British popular music. Published thirty years after this milestone in music history, Gillespie recounts the vicissitudes of a decade that ruined Margaret Thatcher and saved acid house.