When I Grow Up, a Memoir – Juliana Hatfield

I’ve recently gotten back into reading after plowing through two books by Marianne Faithfull.  For years I’d been under the impression that fiction was better than non-fiction due to the fact that the story being told was malleable.  An author of fiction could go to painstaking efforts to craft a story that was planned perfectly from start to finish and presented in the same way that a host or hostess would plan a menu and set a dinner table.  But after discovering several rock memoirs, such as Black Postcards by Dean Wareham and A Bit of a Blur, by Alex James, I’m convinced that the best stories are the ones that have actually happened and that give insight into a particular individual, event, or time frame, rather than sifting through pages filled with carefully constructed characters used to foil each other or convey some sort of symbolic significance. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, in fact, here’s a secret:  Nothing is better than eating a Henry James novel)

Juliana Hatfield’s memoir, When I Grow Up, is a great example of a book giving insight into a woman whose career I’ve followed since her first solo CD, Hey Babe, was released in 1991.  In a way, it also chronicles the rise and fall of “alternative/pop” throughout the early ’90s and up until 2007/8.

The book moves back and forth through time starting with a tour diary from around 2003/4 with Juliana’s newly formed band, Some Girls, and is interspersed with vignettes from her childhood, the beginnings of her first band, the Blake Babies, and the rise and fall of her solo career.  What I really loved, and as someone who loves music I can admit I never gave much thought to, was the tour diary entries that described how certain events, within and beyond Juliana’s control, would affect a concert.  Whether it’s an overzealous fan who stands in front of the stage and videotapes her to not having a good meal prior to a show after driving all day, to a midriff baring top she decides to wear on stage that suddenly makes her feel uncomfortable; there really are a lot of stars that need to align in order to feel that a show is going well.  She often talks about wanting to get into a place where she loses herself onstage, yet still seems hesitant and guarded.  It’s refreshing that she’s so objective as to admit when she’s being a bitch, and even though I would heartily recommend the book to other music fans, I still think the book is slightly guarded, as if the tone it was written in is something like, “I’m-going-to-tell-you-this-but-I-don’t-know-why-but-whatever” kindaof way.  Maybe it’s rock attitude, maybe I’m misreading.  In the end I came away with having read a book that, at it’s most simplest, is a search to be relevant, and finding relevance in the world.

Note:  If you like Juliana, pick up her new CD How to Walk Away.  It’s her best work in years, and having read the book and heard the CD, it’s a great introduction or reintroduced to someone who’s been a constant voice music over the past twenty years.

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