1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left

Robyn Hitchcock is a British singer-songwriter whose influence on other musicians is legendary. He’s finally earning his due, and this memoir can only assist in that recognition. The seminal title year is mostly spent at a British boarding school, but not one with the horrors we’ve often heard about; Robyn isn’t beaten up or abused. It’s a school where records are played nearly continually and it only takes one listen before he’s intrigued: who is this singer, this stellar songwriter?

Soon, he’s carrying two of Dylan’s albums with him everywhere. And then, he is given his first guitar… I’m struck by how Robyn is exposed to contemporary music (Beatles, Hendrix, Pink Floyd) in “a cellar that’s been there since 1382, a mere 585 years ago,” the new resonating among ancient stones, even though “to us, everyone over thirty is just gray sludge.”

He artfully weaves in descriptions of his family, the books that influenced him at that time, and compassionate understanding of how World War II was still affecting the adults around him. Read this memoir not for nostalgia or name-dropping (although it’s fun to witness an early sighting of Brian Eno) but for “What happened to me on the cusp of childhood and adolescence. It left me with a toddler’s soul and a middle-aged mind.”