Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Faith No More keyboardist Bottum recalls coming-of-age as a gay punk rocker in San Francisco in his punchy debut. Finding his hometown of Los Angeles "lifeless as a raisin," a 19-year-old Bottum relocated to San Francisco in 1982. There, he nurtured his passion for punk music with like-minded artists and formed the '80s alternative metal group Faith No More. Bottum's account toggles between wild-eyed memories of his adolescent antics, including drinking, smoking, and stealing the family car for joyrides, and graver adult dalliances with hard drugs alongside prefame Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain. (The three nearly attended rehab together before Love and Cobain bowed out at the last minute.) Meanwhile, Bottum reflects on his formative sexual experiences with older men (a therapist categorizes them as molestation, but Bottum insists "it was real and consensual"), provides gossipy backstage anecdotes about touring with Metallica and Guns N' Roses, and sweetly lionizes his sisters, whose support he credits with lifting him from rock bottom on multiple occasions. Far from a milquetoast music bio--one of the most memorable scenes features Bottum and his friends vomiting pea soup--this lively self-portrait has spirit to spare. It's a riot. Agent: David Dunton, Harvey Klinger Literary. (Nov.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
As much a love letter to a San Francisco that no longer exists as a reflection on his own life, Bottum's memoir is bound to elicit nostalgia among fans of a certain age. Bottum's musical career was launched in 1981 as the keyboardist for the rock band Faith No More, which never really fit into the hair-metal aesthetic that dominated rock music at the time. Accounts of Bottum's time with the band, his coming into his own identity as a gay man during the height of the AIDS crisis, and his struggles with and eventual recovery from addiction form the bulk of a narrative marked by chaos and loss, but also a great deal of sweetness. Although Bottum is still active as a musician, songwriter, and composer, it seems fitting that this memoir ends in the mid-1990s, just as his new band Imperial Teen was getting started. At that time, the San Francisco he fell in love with, and that shaped so much of his identity, had begun to fade, while Bottum himself had found some measure of peace. VERDICT Affecting, reflective, and unflinching. For Faith No More and Imperial Teen fans.--Genevieve Williams
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An alt-rock sideman recalls navigating queerness, heroin, and a now-vanished San Francisco bohemia. Bottum could easily have delivered a memoir heavy on name-dropping and celebrity dish: He was a songwriter and keyboardist in Faith No More, a funk-punk outfit that enjoyed unusual success in the late '80s, as MTV segued from hair metal to the punk revival. The band toured heavily, and Bottum was close friends with Hole frontwoman Courtney Love (who briefly fronted Faith No More) and her husband, Nirvana's Kurt Cobain. Instead, Bottum opts to tell a more intimate and much richer story, where details about fame are secondary to his desperate search for a found family. Growing up in Los Angeles, he chafed against middle-class convention, a feeling that intensified once he acknowledged he was gay. Moving to San Francisco, he found a community and a band, and much of the book's best writing reflects an urge to capture the disappeared landmarks of his youth, from group houses to hole-in-the-wall clubs. ("Names like these no longer exist. These spaces don't exist. The impetus to create them doesn't exist.") But it's also where he discovered heroin, and his habit only intensified as Faith No More's fortunes increased. So Bottum's predominant feeling about success is revulsion: He witnessed rampant misogyny when his band opened for Guns N' Roses and saw how the stress of fame fed Cobain's drug habit and led to his eventual suicide. There are places where Bottum is overly strenuous about avoiding rock-memoir convention (he seems allergic to sharing last names), and the prose is sometimes clotted and pretentious. ("We heralded loudly in a cacophony of strength and powerful prowess.") But Bottum's candor is refreshing, and the book serves as a vibrant snapshot of a time when San Francisco was better known as a creative haven than a tech-bro bunkhouse. A melancholy tribute to punky, grassroots community-building. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
