Under A Rock
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- £12.99
Publisher Description
ONE OF WATERSTONES BEST ENTERTAINMENT BOOKS OF 2024
'Sometimes fate deals up a wild card. There's a lot to be said for one of these wild cards and from what I've learned over the fifty or so years of our friendship, Chris is a card from the unexpected deck' - from the foreword by Debbie Harry
Musician, photographer, storyteller, and longtime partner to Debbie Harry, Chris Stein defined the sound of an era, catapulting the icon band Blondie to #1 and selling over 20 million copies of Parallel Lines.
In this no-holds-barred autobiography, Stein reveals himself-this time not in songwriting or photography, which he's previously been known for, but in words. From a Brooklyn boyhood, a move across the river to the gritty and fecund East Village in the late 1970s allowed Stein to tap the explosive creativity that defined the era in the city. It was a time when David Bowie and the Ramones were also making music, when Andy Warhol was still alive and promoting Jean-Michel Basquiat's work, when cool was defined not by where you came from but by what you could contribute to culture.
UNDER A ROCK is a plunge into that vanished time period, and into the moments that turned the fresh sound and new look of punk and new wave into a giant artistic and commercial sensation. Stein takes us there in this revelatory, propulsive, distinctive memoir.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Blondie guitarist Stein (Point of View) chronicles in this knockabout personal history the colorful scenesters, grueling gigs, and desperate scrounging for drugs that have marked his musical career. Among other episodes, he recalls a Brooklyn boyhood in the 1950s and '60s ; coming-of-age as a hippie; his musical and romantic linkup with Blondie front-woman Debbie Harry in the early 1970s; the band's breakthrough with such hits as 1979's "Heart of Glass"; and the exhausting tours, creative tensions, and escalating drug use that partly led to the band's 1982 breakup. The last chapters slow down to cover Blondie's return to touring after a 17-year hiatus along with Stein's marriage and family life. The atmospheric narrative immerses readers in gonzo celebrity cameos ("Phil came to the door... performatively drunk and doing a W.C. Fields voice"), grungy punk tableaux, and rock star excesses, though Stein keeps a clear eye on the consequences of such a lifestyle. In the book's heartbreaking epilogue, he discusses his teenage daughter's death from a heroin overdose in 2023 ("I thought that I presented my own drug experiences in a negative light to our kids... I'm wracked with guilt that any discussions might have been misconstrued"). The result is a candid if somewhat chaotic account of life in the spotlight.
