THIRD MAN BOOKS ANNOUNCES TWO NEW TITLES: BOBBY GILLESPIE’S TENEMENT KID & WILL SERGEANT’S BUNNYMAN: POST-WAR KID TO POST-PUNK GUITARIST OF ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN, PRIMAL SCREAM FRONTMAN & ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN GUITARIST MEMORIALIZE THEIR STORIED LIVES AND CAREERS WITH REVELATORY MEMOIRS, BOTH DUE IN STORES THIS FALL, GILLESPIE’S COLLABORATIVE ALBUM WITH JEHNNY BETH, UTOPIAN ASHES, OUT JULY 2
Third Man Books has announced new books from two of the foremost icons in British rock history — Bobby Gillespie’s Tenement Kid and Will Sergeant’s Bunnyman: Post-War Kid to Post-Punk Guitarist of Echo and the Bunnymen. Tenement Kid will arrive in stores this October, while Bunnyman will follow shortly afterward in November. Find pre-orders for Tenement Kid HERE, and for Bunnyman HERE.
Each title marks the first time that either musician — Gillespie being the beloved frontman of Primal Scream, and Sergeant being Echo and the Bunnymen’s groundbreaking original (and current) guitarist — has captured the details of their storied lives and musical careers in writing. Bunnyman is noteworthy as the first authorized written history of Echo and the Bunnymen by a member of the band, and each book translates its author’s unique voice, singular vision and incomparable life into an exciting, revelatory read.
Tenement Kid is but the latest landmark in a banner year for Gillespie, whose Utopian Ashes — a collaborative album with Savages vocalist and solo artist Jehnny Beth — arrives July 2 on Third Man Records.
About Tenement Kid
Fizzing with an infectious passion for the magic of rock music, Bobby Gillespie’s vivid and evocative new memoir, TENEMENT KID (Third Man Books | Oct. 2021), traces the Primal Scream frontman’s path from a post-war Glasgow tenement to the release of Screamadelica, the bandߣs psychedelic award-winning masterpiece that helped usher in the 1990s.
So much more than a rockstar’s memoir, Tenement Kid is also a book filled with the joy and wonder of a rock’n’roll apostle who radically reshaped the future sounds of fin de siècle British pop. Structured in four parts, Tenement Kid builds like a breakbeat crescendo from Gillespie’s working-class Glaswegian upbringing to the Second Summer of Love that saw the ’80s bleed into the ’90s and a new kind of electronic soul music starting to pulse through the Great Britain’s consciousness. In this book, Gillespie takes us through the release of Screamadelica and the tour that followed as Primal Scream become the most innovative British band of the new decade.
Published thirty years after the release of that seminal album, Tenement Kid cuts a righteous path through a decade lost to Thatcherism and saved by acid house. It’s a joyful, celebratory, and beautifully written book which will remind us of better times, just as we hope those better times might be returning.
Praise for Bobby Gillespie
Dance music threw open new wardrobes for British indieland an inveterate dresser-up like Bobby Gillespie could, and did, take full advantage – Pitchfork
A major influence on so many people; musicians and fans alike. – Rolling Stone
The length of Bobby Gillespie’s ambitions has never been a surprise. Who knew that the drummer in the Jesus and Mary Chain would go on to enjoy three decades in rock’n’roll and surpass the Stones at their own game? Bob did. – The Guardian
About Bunnyman
Post-War Kid to Post-Punk Guitarist of Echo and the Bunnymen
If songs like Bring on the Dancing Horses and Lips like Sugar don’t ring a bell, youߣll find Echo and the Bunnymen all over the soundtracks of television shows like Stranger Things and movies such as The Lost Boys, Pretty in Pink, Donnie Darko, and more. Will Sergeant, a founding member of the seminal post-punk band, tells the first authorized account of his and the band’s history in BUNNYMAN: Post-War Kid to Post-Punk Guitarist of Echo and the Bunnymen.
With wit and heart, Sergeant provides a detailed, first-hand account of the birth of the legendary post-punk band, as well as a social and musical history of post-WWII England, the effects of Thatcher-ism, English rock, the beginnings of punk.
It is a heady time of power cuts, strikes, flying pickets, bread shortages, skinhead gangs, IRA bomb scares, nuclear war fears, rock gigs, glam clothes, drowned motorbikes, explosives, dead-end jobs and the usual school lessons of chicken strangulation, Sergeant writes. With the help of music, I manage to navigate myself through the sinking sand of prog rock and into the safety of punk. My boots still muddy with a bad attitude, I head into the winter of discontent to become a post-punk trailblazer worshipped all over the world as a god. Well? An inventive and influential guitarist of some note at the very least.
Will Sergeant is best known for his work as songwriter and guitarist with Echo & The Bunnymen with whom he has recorded and performed world-wide for thirty years. He also has long-term ties with the experimental side of life, in the fields of performance, recording and the visual arts. He has produced solo and collaborative works since the 1980s, His first major solo art show My Own Worst Enemy debuted at the Liverpool Penny Lane Gallery in 2011 and at the Substrate Gallery in Los Angeles, California, 2012.
