Sleevenotes

by Bob Stanley

Genres: Music, Biography, Nonfiction

112 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2019

About the author

Bob Stanley has worked as a music journalist, a DJ, and a record label owner and is the cofounder and keyboard player for the band Saint Etienne. He lives in London.

Reviews

[Gary Fowles · Rating 5 out of 5]

At just 100 pages this is a very quick read but just as you can't judge an album by its running time you can't judge a book by its word count. Anyone familiar with Bob Stanley will know that he has a love of pop music, football, faded Englishness and writing. All of those topics are hit upon in Sleevenotes, along with personal memories of recording in Malmö, working for Sock Shop and stealing money to fund his record buying habit.
This is the sort of book that will have you digging out forgotten records from your collection as well as laughing like a maniac on your morning commute. Joy.

[jab bers · Rating 4 out of 5]

dope in an obsessive st etienne fan way

[William Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the same way that the best pop songs are sub 3 minutes long, so the best books are sub 110 pages.

[Jonathan Norton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent. It could have gone on twice as long, but this is still a perfect evocation of pop music and its fans against the backstory of Britain changing since 1970.

[Sue Barbosa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part memoir, part record anthology, I enjoyed this novella which tells of Bob’s youth in Redhill, Peterborough, at college and in his first job doing the books for Sock Shop in Battersea.

Always interesting to learn about someone’s musical influences butI would have liked to learn more about how he met Pete Wiggs and Sarah Cracknell and started forming St Etienne.

[Alex Sarll]

Compared to the St Etienne man's mammoth history of pop, Yeah Yeah Yeah, this pocket-sized volume feels like the merest appendix. Which makes a sort of sense; he says it's the closest he ever expects to come to writing a memoir, and he's never been a man to think one human life could compare in breadth or import to the majesty of pop. Still, if you also lived a life whose early stages included a lot of hunting down weird music in the provinces and suburbs, and then having to find other people who cared about it, there's plenty to empathise with here. The glimpses of the rest of his life are minimal, but often amusing, especially as regards weekend jobs before he started making music pay. And though each chapter is named for a St Etienne song, the light shed on the music is often oblique at best, even if the mood feels right. This may be for the best: more than once he talks about the importance of letting people have their own version of songs (it's why St Et never print lyrics), and I was aghast to learn that in getting excited whenever I see Mario's Cafe in Kentish Town – including this Saturday just gone – I have in fact been taken for a mug as surely as anyone who thought the Winchester in Shaun Of The Dead was actually based on the Winchester.

[Esther · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up while browsing the incredible selection of books at the bookshop at Salts Mill. Context and background to many Saint Etienne songs. A little gem.

[Derek Bell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully written and evocative quick trip through Bob Stanley's childhood and youth and the role of music through his life.

[John B · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 'Sleevenotes' series is intended to show the inspiration and meaning behind a selection of tracks from a musician's back catalogue. The chapter titles of this slim volume are indeed the titles of various Saint Etienne tracks, but in most cases Bob Stanley uses them just as a peg on which he can relate a selection of his life experiences. There are some interesting anecdotes, interspersed with comments on non-league football, politics and town planning, but we get to hear little about his song-writing process, how he works with his fellow bandmates (they only get passing references), or what message he wanted to try to convey with each track. Perhaps in some ways this was wise - even great tracks may have quite banal origins (Hobart Paving, for instance). As someone who doesn't even like his lyrics to be published, he realises that the images that a song creates in the mind of the listener may be spoilt by knowing too much. Sometimes the mystery is more important than the explanation. It's an enjoyable read, even if we might be left feeling that it doesn't quite fulfil the intended remit.

[Chris Browning · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very entertaining and better than most memoirs because Stanley has a good understanding of the acceptable parameters of nostalgia, and is clever enough to question some of the cliches around it (while admitting his own weaknesses as somewhat indulgent). It’s all the better for being done as brief vignettes, and although it oddly slightly loses its way once Stanley finds fame it’s much better than most other memoirs of this kind. And it’s nice to know his fondness of Saltaire predates his actually moving there

[Kristian Gunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a charming little book. Bob is a wonderful writer.

[Mario Carranza · Rating 3 out of 5]

Being a Saint Etienne fan, this is a must read. So much information and insights on Bob’s beginnings on music. A perfect guide and a lighter version of Hey, hey, hey. I would have liked though some more anecdotes about the band but anyway, and ingesting reading.