100 books like Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys.

This might be my all-time favorite memoir. Every time I sit down to write, I tend to read a few pages of it to absorb the rhythm of Patti Smith’s unadorned, lyrical writing.

Like Taylor Swift, Patti Smith is a music icon, a poet, and a genius wordsmith. For me, this book totally captured the radiant nostalgia of a bygone era and a romantic love that evolves into something more permanent and transcendent.

I feel it’s important to note that I never liked this stupid band. But Mötley Crüe's book was all guilty pleasure for me: pleasure because I knew Seattle grunge had already killed their L.A. hair-band era, and guilty because (a) there turned out to be genuinely poignant moments, which revealed that (b) I’m a snob.

This book is a fast read of a slow-motion car crash, documenting the squalid, drug-sick lives of four self-consumed dingbats who stepped in success and somehow couldn’t scrape it off their shoe. I find this book revolting and recommend it highly.   

I was very surprised by this book about Kim Gordon the bassist of the band Sonic Youth. It wasn’t what I was expecting. 

Kim Gordon was someone I always thought of as very cool and extremely reserved. In her memoir she opens up quite a bit about who she is, as opposed to the persona she had been given in the band Sonic Youth. Playing music was not her first love—it was art.

I loved reading about her artistic explorations, traveling with hippies in California, and being a free spirit. She describes tenderly her relationship with her older brother Keller who suffered from schizophrenia and was hospitalized. The Sonic Youth song, “Sister” is about him. The book also describes her painful divorce from Thurston Moore (founding member of Sonic Youth). Kim Gordon redefines herself as much more than just the bass player in a rock band.  

I happened to have spent time with Patti Schemel when my band Scarce toured for a month with Hole in 1995. Patti is the real deal when it comes to being a musician. She’s a badass on the drums, and in real life.

I really enjoyed the intimate moments she shared about Kurt Cobain. They are tender and sweet, and show a very different side of his public persona. She takes us into the back scenes of what was like to be in a band as it took off, backing up the very unpredictable Courtney Love onstage, and what it means to be a rock star.

I also loved that she spent time writing about what it was like to be a lesbian in the male-dominated rock world, where women are seen often as simply something pretty to look at.

Her personality really shines through her writing. She’s fierce, honest,… show more.

“Hello daddy, hello mom, I’m you ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb.” Cherrie Currie was the lead singer of the all-female band called The Runaways from Los Angeles, California. Cherrie, Joan Jett, Lita Ford, Jackie Fox, and Sandy West were young teenage street punks when Kim Fowley (infamous record producer) brought them all together to form their band.

The Runaways enjoy cult status to this day, and I very much enjoyed the descriptions of the places they played and shows that are legendary to this day. Cherrie shares with us the punk beginnings of this band with these fierce teenage girls who were swimming in waters a bit too deep and adult for them.

Her memoir reveals the ugly truth about how women have been taken advantage of both physically and emotionally by men. Drugs and alcohol take their toll on Cherrie, so she’s even unable to make music anymore with the band. But,… show more.

Autobiographies by genuine A-listers can prove disappointing experiences, as the superstars in question tread delicately lest they puncture their carefully cultivated public images. Not so Sir Elton John, who in Me worked closely with Guardian writer Alexis Petridis to deliver a racy, rambunctious, scurrilous account of his serial misdoings. Everyone had always known that Elton John was doing crazy shit. Nobody had grasped that he was doing quite as much as this.

Debauch, cathartic music memoirs are not limited to rock and metal stars. Former boy band member Robbie Williams was at the pinnacle of his British-pop imperial period when he gave unlimited access to the peerless Chris Heath to pen this unforgettable biography. Heath spent a full two years with Williams, capturing an impulsive, wayward yet fragile star whose chronically short attention span did not allow him even to rehearse properly for his world tours. You closed Feel feeling that you knew Williams intimately—the litmus test of a biography—and liking him a whole lot more than you had before.

It’s not an easy task to convey the carnal intensity and animal abandon of a performer whose default mode has always been unadulterated excess, but Paul Trynka’s masterful study of Iggy Pop hit the motherlode. Trynka went the extra mile and then some, tracking down hundreds of key witnesses to, and victims of, Pop’s creative chaos, and even attending his high school reunion (which is more than Iggy did). Jaw-dropping anecdotes were legion (taking a mid-gig dump behind the speakers, anyone?) and Trynka captured the driven essence of this brittle soul, perennially fighting the world while never even knowing why.

As far as I know, this is the first biography of an all-female or female-fronted band. When I saw it come out, I was thrilled but also thought: how in the world has it taken this long for someone to write a book about The Slits?!

Lucky for me (and for all of you), Zoe Howe was the one to do it because this book taught me that it’s more than possible to write about women in music (even when male journalists and music writers omit women altogether, marginalize them in print, or criticize their work). 

I’ve read this book twice. Both times, I couldn’t put it down. Alice Bag can tell a story, and my neurodivergent ass loves books parsed into bite-sized sections. Alice’s stories begin with her childhood and end with her becoming a teacher. 

I look up to Alice and relate to her a lot. We both grew up in difficult family situations; we were both ambitious teens who were able to befriend just about anybody; and then we both learned to express our creativity and exercise our demons through punk. Growing up a bit and reigning in our talents, we both became public school teachers. Not to mention, we both love to write our memoirs. It’s cool to see her grow and reflect on her experiences, and a perfect read for anyone wanting new stories about all the characters in the early LA punk sphere.