Never Mind The Bollocks: Women Rewrite Rock

by Amy Raphael

Book by Amy Raphael

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Feminism, Womens

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this collection of monologues-by-way-of-interview because it features pieces by some awesome alterna-babes from back in the day, such as Tanya Donnelly from Belly, Liz Phair, both girls from Veruca Salt, Bjork, Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth, Courtney Love, Kristin Hersh from Throwing Muses, and the girl from Echobelly. This is a British book so I skipped over a few chapters by/about some bands I don't know/care about (Huggy Bear, the Raincoats, and Sister George). I got kind of mad reading the introduction because it made me think about how the first albums (Star, Exile in Guyville, and American Thighs, respectively) by the first three artists mentioned above, among others, should be considered the pinacle of music made by female-fronted bands--yet they are still pretty obscure--and how instead, anytime the lame topic "women in rock" comes up, you still hear the same old shit: Blondie, the Pretenders, Pat Benetar, and Janis Joplin, none of whom I've ever given a fuck about.

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made me fall in love with music.

I know, I know. That is pretty cheesy. But it is completely and 100% true. Before this book, I had never heard of Veruca Salt or Belly, I thought Bjork was a weirdo and Liz phair was a has-been.

Now?

Veruca Salt is one of my favorite hard-rock bands of all time, surpassing all those male-fronted bands out there. Tanya Donnelly and Kristen Hersh are truly my muses. Liz Phair is a genius. Bjork is still a weirdo, but she rocks.

These interviews are amazingly raw and honest, and reading them helped me understand a lot of things about myself. Girls can be loud and they can swear and drink and make rackety music and they can be better than the boys. Girls can make a difference.

This is my favorite music book of all time, since it actually makes you want to get inside these ladies' heads and swim in their thoughts and hopes and dreams. Every interview is worth reading, and they offer insights on feminism, motherhood, and homosexuality that I hadn't gotten the chance to ever see before.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The chapter on Kristin Hersh by itself merits 5 stars, and the ones on Huggy Bear and The Raincoats -- two of the most important female-fronted punk bands in English music history -- get the opportunity to talk music, revolution and politics. It's a brilliant read, and even Courtney Love's chapter is inspiring and coherent.

[Alex Ankarr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the Courtney interview, others variable.

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant and inspiring. Anyone wanna start a band?

[sardonic · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a lot of vulnerability and love in this book. There is a quote from Courtney Love on the cover where she claims that if she had read this book at 14 her entire life would have been different. I don't think I could make any such claim, mostly because I never read non-fiction at that age, but also because I was so preoccupied with what my life could be once I was all grown up that this book probably would have left me all twisted up with jealous rage.

The book is a series of interviews with various female rock musicians discussing gender, music, and other facets of their lives. The interviews are presented as monologues, which I think was a really smart decision and leads to a really enjoyable reading experience. Overall, Raphael does a great job of capturing a moment in culture and introducing the historical and cultural context.

On a personal level, I am reading this book in my late twenties (GOSH, isn't that a fun little phrase to write out?) and I am deeply appreciative of these women's bravery, honesty, and realness. I will say that I wish I had read it sooner. While frustrating, it is also deeply comforting to be able to reach out across the decades and see something so intimately relatable reflected back. We are still working through the same problems and raging against the same oppressive systems. An excerpt from the conversation with Huggy Bear:

Jo: I dunno who our audience are. Aliens. You start up conversations with people at shows and you realise how isolated everybody is: not just here and now and from each other, but from the past as well. We all have to learn everything for the first time because we haven't got a sense of history[...]
Jo: That was one inspiring thing we found in America, this feeling that a town would have, first of all a punk rock community, then fanzines that mythologised and criticised the scene and also this thing of elders - the older kids who take responsibility for shaking the scene up, running record labels to put out music from their scene, passing down information to the younger kids.
Karen: This is true activity, true revolution, because it recognises revolution as a continual process which needs history to stop you taking two steps forward, one step back.

Our cultural memory is under attack. Huggy Bear is pretentious in the most Tumblr of ways, name dropping Monique Wittig and Joan of Arc. There are other interesting references throughout the book. I had a dream about Euripides just before I read Courtney Love's chapter where she references Medea while discussing motherhood and being a muse. The interviewer's numerous meetings with her (she kept pushing them back, she takes a lot of care to present a very busy life) took place just before and just after Kurt Cobain's passing, he even makes an appearance and Raphael makes sure (not that he really needs that much help) to portray him as the put upon husband and father, sick of Courtney's shit. It makes Raphael's tone of obvious and utter disdain for Love a little shocking. Surely no one could so unlikeable as to not be afforded even a shred of consideration for their grief? There is a quote from Cobain in the intro, "The future of rock belongs to women" Raphael is quick to tell us that this quote is sourced from just a few months before his suicide. I think Raphael's treatment of the situation was exploitative.

I'm still upset about the sneak attack Isr*eli. At least she was critical of the IOF (in which she served and she speaks about her time in a dismissively casual tone). Besides that I think the author was guilty of something nearly all the women discussed: trying to be one of the boys. I think in an attempt to provide an objective peek into these women's worlds she ended up reproducing the gaze these women were waging a war against. She uses some variation of "knowingly manipulative" to describe at least two of her subjects (Tanya Donnelly talks about this concept of manipulation directly, she talks frankly about the eerie and unnatural elements of performing on stage in front of a crowd, and wonders why more female performers don't engage with the performer/audience power dynamic) and she describes Riot Grrrl as "punk with politics" (what, lmao). I think a refusal to engage with the political roots of punk (although N of U is mentioned once or twice) hindered not only the press at the time's ability to seriously engage with Riot Grrrl but also maybe the grrrls themselves.

P.S. I almost forgot to say, I am now absolutely obsessed with finding recordings of the music Pam Hogg talks about making in this book with the band Doll. It doesn't seem to be on the internet, at least not on YouTube or on the first page of the Google search. Here's a fun little quote from her monologue "It was about me splitting up with Mary and then meeting some else when I was too vulnerable. It was about someone offering everything and then when I'd succumbed, taking it all away."

[Zoe Zisook · Rating 5 out of 5]

literally amazing! so inspiring to hear all the stories

[Aoife Lennon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this very interesting, but could not read one of the interviews, because there were a few pages ripped out! Grrrr......spoiled my enjoyment slightly of a very good library book!

[Ocean · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've finished this beautiful book today after receiving it for christmas and it was a fascinating read.
The book is composed of twelve interviews of some of the most influential women in rock from the nineties. However they aren't your tipycal interviews, it is not presented in a questions and answers type format instead each reads like a small essay. Yet it feels like the singers/musicians are directly talking to you, telling the reader about their experiences in the industry as well as a short bit on their upbringing and musical influences.
I truly appreciate the diversity in the interviewees, in race, sexual orientation and country of origin, which allowed to show a true panel of experiences in what technically is a feminist social study. It was wonderful to broaden my horizon and discover new subgenres (queercore) as well as new riot grrrl, (and punk/grunge feminist bands more generally). I wholefully let myself be inspired by the journeys told here, the strong will, the mad energy these women have, the true support of talent in each other and the refusal of society's rules and bias toward women. It's a beautiful thing to witness.

VIVA ROCK DIVAS!

[Aimee · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book to read anachronistically in 2024 for a number of reasons; the difference in feminist rhetoric and ideas in 30 years, the ability to see these bands when they were in their youth but also to be able to see them now was a strange melancholic sort of feeling, and the ways in which the music industry has changed/female musicianship today, etc. etc. The book is a treasure trove of musical references to look up and get lost in and that also was intriguing to see which bands continue to be touchstones of the era and which have somewhat faded into obscurity. While I like the premise of the book and of giving female voices autonomy at a time when music journalism was a bit of a boring boys club (probably still is), the book couldn’t help feeling a little disjointed. It read a bit more like a long journalistic piece than a book, and at times I didn’t feel I got the full sense of an artist before their allotted 10-20 pages came to an end. A worthwhile book for reference and an endearing piece of music history.

[Petty Lisbon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the chapters by people I knew before (so basically all of the 90's women) but that was over 4 years ago and I thought it was time to reread this. I think just giving them full essays to talk about whatever they wanted was an interesting idea, although the ones who needed editing (Bjork, Courtney Love) just gave incoherent pages filled with rambling. I liked reading about people who I didn't know that much about before, like the women of Belly, Throwing Muses, Echobelly, and Veruca Salt. I'm not sure why Pam Hogg was included if I can't find anything about her band online.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

All of the bands and musicians I loved in college, when I was into the Riot Girl scene. Really great perspective on ALL genres of female musicians, it made me respect some of the softer styles that I wasn’t into.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is incredible. I've read through these are interviews more than once. All of these women deserve an in depth book about their work, but for most of them, books like this are the best we'll get.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was ok. It was funny since it was written in the 90s and seeing where some of these performers have gone.

[Mads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finished this in bits and pieces, and I think that's what made it as good as it was. Small interesting looks into the history of women in music.

[Kai · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never mind the bollocks by the_sinking_ship

[Marissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was funny to read this book now, since Melodee read it during our first year of college and we spent so much time talking about all the gossip in it. Anyway, I think a lot of the intros in this book were kind of cheesy and it is a somewhat odd assortment of women she ended up with, but what is really great about the book is that she gave the musicians she talked to the opportunity to speak directly to the audience, write what they wanted, answer the questions they wanted, etc. and you get a real sense of their personalities and backgrounds. Usually with a standard interview format everything is fairly limited to sound bytes and set-up, structured blandness. This book is unique in that you get a feeling for who these women are as people and for that it's very worth reading.

[AnitaDurt · Rating 5 out of 5]

i read this early in my feminist consciousness and re-read several times. great interviews that introduced me to new music that i still love today- huggy bear being the most inspiring out of the bunch. the interview with courtney love is probably really different from her current interviews, back when she seemed to give a shit about feminism.

[Stef · Rating 3 out of 5]

Never Mind The Bollocks was a good book which had in depth interviews with some of the great's of music history (Courtney Love, Kristin Hersh, Kim Deal). My only issue is that it focused manly on the 90s and had long interviews with some questionable bands that I wouldn't have thought would be included. Otherwise good read if you can find it.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

A definite candidate for worst title ever.

The concept of monologues - letting the women speak for themselves - was interesting, but Raphael is clearly asking questions and prompting topics, resulting in a lack of natural flow.

I really like a lot of the music these women make and haven't read much about them elsewhere, so I appreciated learning a bit about them.

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of interesting "women in rock" are interviewed in here, including Bjork, Kristin Hersh, Kim Gordon, and the ubiquitous Courtney Love.

[Larry-bob Roberts]

Initially published in England as "Never Mind the Bollocks: Women Rewrite Rock", then republished in the U.S. as "Grrrls: Viva Rock Divas." A series of interviews with women rock musicians.

[Tracy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I rediscovered Hole and downloaded Veruca Salt

[Lilith · Rating 4 out of 5]

louise post if you're reading this do u wanna hang out on thursday im free on thursday if you wanna hang out on thursday which is when i am free