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My Rock 'n' Roll Friend

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An exploration of female friendship and women in music, from the iconic singer-songwriter and bestselling author of Another Planet and Bedsit Disco Queen

In 1983, backstage at the Lyceum in London, Tracey Thorn and Lindy Morrison first met. Tracey's music career was just beginning, while Lindy, drummer for The Go-Betweens, was ten years her senior. They became confidantes, comrades and best friends, a relationship cemented by gossip and feminism, books and gigs and rock 'n' roll love affairs.

Morrison - a headstrong heroine blazing her way through a male-dominated industry - came to be a kind of mentor to Thorn. They shared the joy and the struggle of being women in a band, trying to outwit and face down a chauvinist music media.

In My Rock 'n' Roll Friend Thorn takes stock of thirty-seven years of friendship, teasing out the details of connection and affection between two women who seem to be either complete opposites or mirror images of each other. This important book asks what people see, who does the looking, and ultimately who writes women out of - and back into - history.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2021

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Tracey Thorn

9 books169 followers

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 129 reviews
Profile Image for Kate Dansette.
69 reviews5 followers
June 3, 2021
This book SKEWERS indie men and I am 100% here for it.
Profile Image for Lawrence.
174 reviews7 followers
May 18, 2021
By literally everyone's account, The Go-Betweens sold barely any records in their initial incarnation, so it's some wonder that there are now three very good books you can choose between if you want some kind of version of their history. There's David Nichols' excellent late 90s (updated in the mid-00s) book The Go-Betweens and Robert Forster's (kinda) tell-all autobiography Grant & I: Inside and Outside the Go-Betweens. The first of these is a pretty straight bio of the band, and the latter primarily focusses on the relationship between himself and his co-frontman Grant McLennan, positioning the "band" as primarily a vehicle for the songwriting duo. Any fan of the band knows that, The Go-Betweens' history is far more complex than that. The first stable lineup of the band (described, amusingly, in the runout groove of Send Me a Lullaby as "two wimps and a witch") also included mercurial drummer Lindy Morrison. Six years older, and with an entire life of travel and political activism behind her, she'd previously played in punk band Zero before joining the band and entering into a romantic relationship with Forster.

This book, written beautifully by Everything But the Girl's Tracey Thorn, is primarily a biography of Morrisson, but also seeks to rebalance the prevailing narrative of The Go-Betweens as being a merely a duo of Forster and McLennan. It's also, more broadly, a treatise on the erasure of the contribution of women in music. Thorn, a lifelong friend of Morrisson's since a chance meeting in a dressing room in 1983, has access to decades of letters, clippings and - obviously - memories, and the glue of their friendship, and the strength of their two personalities, is what holds this narrative together.

It's hard to "sell" this book. It's either going to be your thing, or it isn't. A musician writing a biography of the drummer of a band that hardly sold any records is unlikely to race up the bestsellers list. But if you're even casually acquainted with The Go-Betweens, or if you enjoy musical biographies, or enjoyed Thorn's other books, Bedsit Disco Queen: How I Grew Up and Tried to Be a Pop Star or Another Planet: A Teenager in Suburbia then I'd highly recommend giving this a go. Lindy Morrison is a fascinating character, a great drummer and a huge part of what made The Go-Betweens such an incredible band.
Profile Image for Susanna Winter.
77 reviews1 follower
April 16, 2021
"I can't help thinking of the voices we miss, the art that doesn't happen, the work that women don't make because they underestimate themselves".
Absorbing, angry, perceptive. Lots of insight into a long-lasting and necessary friendship. Great writing as always.
63 reviews
January 3, 2022
A beautifully written celebration of female friendship, music, love, and feminism. Of being too loud, too emotional, and too much. This is a big furious fuck you to all the fools who can’t seem to stop forgetting that the women were there too, and far out I really loved it. (I also want Tracey and Lindy to be my friends. Or to adopt me as a niece or something. Will be happy with either scenario)
Profile Image for Jan Jackson.
50 reviews7 followers
April 16, 2021
Marvellous. Angry, loving, and righteous. A book about women, friendship, and the safe shores in a shared sea of troubles.

The Go-Betweens are better regarded now than they were (I came to them late - almost two decades after they split), having lived on the fringes of 80s pop for 5 years. This is a book about life in the music business - and the unholy grind that goes along with that. But it’s also a book about rewriting a history. A history that edited women into also-rans. And - as this well-written and honest book makes clear - Lindy Morrison was never an also-ran. She was an energy. An honesty. An uncompromising force. The drummer is the band. Who was treated shabbily by the men in the band.

This is a great read. A truthful, open, honest, read. It’s a book of a life, and a message. Women deserve better from us men.
5 reviews
April 4, 2021
Bow down

A hymn to the drummer of one of my favourite bands by the singer of another of my favourites bands. But much more than that. It speaks of how women are sidelined when myths are made of and by men. And of how women are meant to fit into tidy roles, even in Rock and Roll bands
Profile Image for Zora.
260 reviews22 followers
June 6, 2021
I needed no convincing that Lindy Morrison is worthy of a biography or memoir, but I am so glad it was her long time friend Tracey Thorn who wrote it. This was just fabulous, and so feminist, and well done. A treat from start to finish, reducing me to cliches of appreciation.
2,750 reviews68 followers
June 20, 2021

Part Richard Lowenstein movie, part feminist biography, with a sprinkling of rockstardom, Thorn has pulled off a nice balance in this portrayal of her long-time friend Lindy Morrison, the former drummer of The Go-Betweens.

She pieces her life together growing up in within a privileged and palatial household in Brisbane, (daughter of a GP, privately educated etc) and then her waking consciousness, her tempestuous relationship with an Aboriginal, Black Panther, activist leader, Denis Walker, and having to endure the corruption and oppression of living under the right wing hillbilly dictator Joh Bjelke-Petersen.

We see how often her role within in the band was diminished and underplayed, seemingly at every turn, the ways she was patronised and belittled by those younger and less experienced and often less smart than her. The Go-Betweens never really made it, even in their homeland they weren’t quite as acclaimed or successful as some retrospective accounts would have us believe.

But this is about a lot more than her part in a mediocre band, this is about identity, overcoming adversity and above all friendship, and how it changes, as well as the challenges and obstacles that time and distance can put in its way, and about the ways we can overcome those issues to maintain those friendships.

Thorn’s approach is confessional and intimate, frank and critical, and at no point does she come anywhere near to cloying or nauseating, yes this is an extended love letter, but she isn’t afraid to be critical of her dear friend either, revealing her many flaws and contradictions too, which gives this well-rounded feel.
Profile Image for Alice-Elizabeth (Prolific Reader Alice).
1,162 reviews165 followers
June 6, 2021
Eurovisionathon challenge square: UK

This is a memoir about Lindy Morrison who was in a popular band called The Go-Betweens and the author Tracey knew her closely. It was an interesting insight into what the music industry was like with all the various ups and downs such as band break-ups and reaching chart success. Although I did enjoy it in places, it didn't fully hook me as much as I was hoping for.
Profile Image for Kelly Douglas.
13 reviews
April 24, 2021
I read this book in record time (in about two weeks) which for me is very, very quickly. It's such a fresh, daring book that celebrates and analyses female friendship and identity as well as writing Lindy Morrison into the Australian Music history book where she bloody belongs!
Profile Image for JennyM.
46 reviews1 follower
April 10, 2021
Absorbing memoir of Lindy Morrison, a woman who’s arguably far more interesting than the group she was in and the music they created.

‘My Rock n Roll Friend’ could read as a paean to many a jobbing band who fizzled on the fringes of success whilst doggedly touring endless not-so-big venues year upon year, “There’s supposed to be an arc of progress, but quite often there isn’t”.

Peppered with anecdotes and memories of their decades-long friendship, Thorn’s writing truly comes alive when documenting how Lindy’s contribution to The Go-Betweens was reduced to a ‘hired hand’ by music journalists; almost written out of the band’s legacy and growing mythological status post-split, the trio often described as ‘Two Wimps and a Witch’ is brutally chopped to simply ‘Two friends’ - full stop.

A compelling read, not only as a document on a remarkable individual, but as an informative essay depicting how women are often written out of the history of culture.
Profile Image for Charlotte Thompson.
24 reviews
January 31, 2023
Thorn’s writing flows easily describing the highs and lows of Lindy’s fascinating life. This book really highlights sexism in the music industry and life in general ,and the female rage in response. I did enjoy the book overall but some chapters were a bit dragged out/repetitive and some less interesting than others.
Profile Image for Jim Parker.
329 reviews23 followers
May 16, 2021
‘The drummer IS the band.’ That quote from a LA rock writer’s reluctant review of The Go Between’s comeback album about 20 years ago does justice to the unheralded contribution of Lindy Morrison to that often feted but largely unheard band. (I was a big fan, having seen them in London around the time of Liberty Belle).

The drummer quote appears late in this volume by Tracey Thorn, singer with UK indie pop group Everything But the Girl, about her near four-decade relationship with Morrison, whom she first met backstage at a gig in the UK around 1983.

Thorn set out to right the record about Lindy’s contribution, not only to The Go Betweens, but to the cause of women in art and music - not just as muses or girlfriends but as co-creators and life forces in their own right. And Lindy Morrison is certainly that.

The book also serves as a corrective to the increasing volume of material about The Go Betweens’ growing legend - as an obscure, arty trio from late 70s Brisbane who became the Velvet Underground of their generation - the band that all the critics wax lyrical about in retrospect but which very few people at the time actually listened to.

Only last year, I read ‘Grant and I’, the Go Betweens bio written by Robert Forster about his relationship with Grant McLennan, his co-songwriter. Added to that was ‘Right Here’, a feature film documentary about the band. While these and other works play tribute to Morrison’s unique drumming style and large-than-life persona, Thorn believes none captures the absolutely central role she played in the band’s heyday.

Morrison was about seven years older than the two ‘boys’, who are my contemporaries (born 58-59). She had had a whole life in the counter-culture movement in Brisbane in the early 70s, as an Aboriginal rights activist and as a world traveller. Robert was a virgin when she met him and had never been anywhere but his hometown.

So Thorn celebrates and captures the life-affirming force that is Morrison and the bitterness she now feels at the downplaying of her contributions. The two, having lost touch when they had children in the early 90s, reconnect in Sydney in 2019. Thorn comes back to visit Lindy at her Clovelly home and they go through all their old letters to each other and other memorabilia.

Within minutes of a jet-lagged Thorn arriving, Lindy falls immediately back into the rhythms of their relationship, affectionately bossing her and being utterly frank about everything (a contrast to Thorn’s natural English reserve).

So this is a crackingly good rock’n’roll story, a righteously-worded feminist righting of wrongs, but most of all a joyous celebration of friendship.

Highly recommended.
Profile Image for Andrea Hurt.
74 reviews
September 13, 2021
I remember reading that Viv Albertine (The Slits) went to an exhibition on punk in London. Outraged that women's stories were nowhere to be found, she grabbed a pen and wrote on the walls. Adding the women back into this history of punk. Tracey Thorn tackles the topic of women's artistic and creative output being erased from history through the case study of her friend Lindy Morrison. I am a fan of The Go-Betweens. In many ways this book is the companion piece to Robert Forster's book Grant & I. The dysfunction of band dynamics has been written about in magazines and books for years. Tracey tells a good story. There are some exquisitely written passages, summing up women who are 'too much' for people to deal with. Her honesty relaying the struggle within her own marriage and blistering exploration of women erased or given second place to men. When titles such as lover, mother or wife take precedence over singer, song writer, musician. Women judged through the lens of domesticity.

At times I feel she veers into strange territory, like a drunken screaming match at a pub. Defending her friend against the men who did her wrong. And as shit as their behaviour was within the band, this is not unique to gender. I was thinking about bands that have fallen apart, or musicians who have left successful bands due to 'creative differences'. I thought of Janet leaving Sleater Kinney. Relegated to having less creative input into the musical direction of the band she chose to leave. I feel that SK lost a special part of their chemistry. And the loss of Lindy is similar. There is a special spark that makes a band great. The whole that is greater than the sum of it's parts. This book explores the venn diagram where band dynamics and gender politics collide.

Profile Image for Stagger Lee.
201 reviews4 followers
April 29, 2021
15. Tracey Thorn - My Rock N Roll Friend

Finished this in two sittings, split up by a shopping trip.

It wasn't quite what I expected (which was a book almost wholly about the way the story of The Go-Betweens became a story of two men, even though Lindy Morrison was on every album of the original phase and played a big part of what made them special) but that is an important part of it, and it's made me reassess Forster's own book about it all

But it's also about friendship, between women especially, and about women being silenced, about subtle forms of misogyny, about a life lived honestly.

It's really moving in places, very funny, full of wisdom. Thorn is a great writer - the conversational tone carries within it a lot of artistry and knowledge worn lightly.

Highly recommended.


"To spin the web and not be caught in it, to create the world, to create your own life, to rule your fate, to name the grandmothers as well as the fathers, to draw nets and not straight lines, to be a maker as well as a cleaner, to be able to sing and not be silenced, to take down the veil and appear: all these are the banners on the laundry line I hang out." - Rebecca Solnit
206 reviews2 followers
April 11, 2021
Right now.

As one of the ‘Three German students’ who loved this band in the 80s I was interested to read this story about the inside from the drummer. Well it made me think. I listened to the albums when the band reformed in the 90s but they weren’t the same. Of course not, that was just the two wimps without the witch. Revealing and painful reading about growing up in Australia in the 60s and the letters to herself setting out her insecurities. Then the 70s in Queensland and the fascist PM, punk, Aboriginal Rights and other parts of Lindy’s story. I hadn’t imagined the sheer drudgery and bull ness of being in an unsuccessful band trying to make it, contrasts with the stories of the Beatles in Hamburg, but what would they have been if they did not succeed.

What made me think most, and Tracy Thorn’s reason for writing it, is the treatment of a woman in a band at the time, and now the rewriting of history about it. Read this.
Profile Image for David Ellcock.
146 reviews
April 26, 2021
I’m going to cheat and quote my friend Susanna’s review, as it’s spot on:

‘“I can't help thinking of the voices we miss, the art that doesn't happen, the work that women don't make because they underestimate themselves".

‘Absorbing, angry, perceptive. Lots of insight into a long-lasting and necessary friendship. Great writing as always.’
Profile Image for Jonathon Hagger.
274 reviews3 followers
February 28, 2022
The book is neither good nor bad. It just is. It is the story if friendship and both finding and rejecting feminism. The two end of the book, start and finish, are superb however the middle section doesn’t carry as well in my view.
Profile Image for Kirsten.
493 reviews9 followers
June 21, 2021
A fascinating and heartfelt book that puts Lindy Morrison right back where she belongs, as the pivotal third member of The Go-Betweens. Thorn delicately unravels her almost 40 year friendship with Morrison and examines the artefacts of her creative, well-travelled and well-lived life. The result is a story that is absorbing and entertaining but also rage-inducing and sometimes quite sad. I loved every word of it.

A perfect companion to this book is a recent episode of Zan Rowe’s ABC Radio Take Five podcast in which Lindy Morrison reflects on her life through 5 songs. https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs...





Profile Image for Ayelet Yagil.
3 reviews
May 7, 2025
This memoir is like no other rock book I have read before -- it is a study of friendship, of respect, of giving credit, long overdue, to someone seemingly bereft of it. And it is a snapshot of female camaraderie.

Lindy Morrison, the drummer and backbone of the Go-Betweens, a beloved yet relatively minor Australian indie band, is a singular character, and Tracey Thorn admires her for it, enough to make her the subject of her latest book. The fact that the former is lesser known than the one painting her portrait makes it all the more interesting.

Prior to picking up the drumsticks, she was a social worker, providing legal assistance to the Indigenous population and sharing her life with Australian Black Panther activist Denis Walker. But all this is of little importance to the fans and music journalists who want to know all about their new favorite band - mainly about the two frontmen. Morrison herself keeps mum about this, so as not to give away her age. "She is all experience to their innocence. She has such a rich tale to tell, if anyone would ever think to ask her". Thank heavens Tracey Thorn did.
Profile Image for Terry Wheeler.
51 reviews7 followers
September 3, 2024


This book surprised me in so many ways.

It’s so well thought out and written.

There are very few books on friendship - they seem an unlikely pairing Tracey Thorn and Lindy Morrison. Both from rock bands but there’s an age and personality difference. Yet they share an honesty that shines through here.

For Go-Betweens’ fans this book provides material you won’t find in Robert Forster’s ‘Grant & I’.

It is also quite revealing about the seventies in
Brisbane. Gerard Lee’s magnificent and long out of print stellar novel of those times ‘True Love and How to Get It’ is even resurrected from oblivion.

So many surprises - it’s in my to be read again shelf. Great book.

Even inspired a poem:

petrie terrace

she’s news
to those

who need
an education

always wear

shoes you
can run in

if you’re
lucky she’ll

wash your hair

when the cops
knock the door

down be ready
to leap
Profile Image for Lottie.
104 reviews
July 16, 2023
I enjoyed the premise of this book more than the execution. I loved the overarching themes of feminism, women in creative industries, female friendships, and empowerment, etc. However, I often felt out of the loop and couldn't relate to the oddly specific references and details within the plot. I felt as if I needed to have been one of the characters ( or at least extremely well-versed in 80's Australian/British rock bands) to fully appreciate what the author was saying. Overall, it was fun to read something different and explore the music industry through a powerful female lens.
259 reviews2 followers
September 27, 2022
Tracey Thorn is a good author , but this was a little thin . Well written, however it struggles to draw a full picture of the female drummer of the Go-Between's , a friend of the authors over several decades . Unfortunately the picture painted of its subject does not always come across as a pleasant one .

The book also seems determined to prove she was poorly treated due to her sex , which may or may not be the case (as this is only from one perspective ) .

Not overly engaging .
Profile Image for Louise Perkinton.
64 reviews4 followers
May 20, 2021
I have read most of Tracey Thorn’s books, this is certainly different but still gives a really good insight into life in the music business through her fellow musician. I really like her honest writing style and enjoyed this book.
Profile Image for Mia.
441 reviews38 followers
December 12, 2021
this was everything i wanted and more. it was as if tracey thorn had heard my silent wish to learn more about lindy morrison - not just as her time in the go-betweens as its drummer, but the other facets of her life that immediately made her appeal to me as a person: her outspoken nature, her defiance, her social work helping indigenous australians, the punk groups she had a stint in prior to meeting robert forster. thorn tells both her story and the story of their friendship so beautifully, so tenderly, but doesn't hold back either.

revisionist history has always interested me. my rock 'n' roll friend made me realise just how much lindy's story has been erased or diminished in the broader narrative of the go-betweens, always told through a male lens or from the vantage point of a snobbish music journalist. i really enjoyed having the record set straight - tracey thorn drags a great deal of Indie Men (tm) over the span of this book, especially lindy's own bandmates, and it makes you realise how much of that scene is dominated by masculinity, even if it's not the ideas of overt machismo and toughness that such a word conjures. it's a more subtle masculinity, one that quietly but undeniably dominates and sidelines the stories of so many women in the music industry. this book was a big middle finger to all of that, and i relished it immensely.

ultimately, my rock 'n' roll friend has done for me at eighteen what just kids did for me when i was thirteen. it tells a tale of inspiring women, blazing their own trail in a world where the odds are constantly stacked against them. given that the go-betweens aren't as firmly embedded in the history of popular music as other groups are, it makes me a little sad that not many people will pick this up, because it's a story about friendship and art and love, refracted through a feminist light. it makes you stop and think about your favourite artists, both in and outside of the music business. how many of them are women? how many of those women have been overlooked, or rejected? (spoiler: probably all of them.) but most importantly - have i been getting the full story?
Profile Image for Emma Harrison.
59 reviews2 followers
February 6, 2024
i had never heard of the band ‘the go betweens,’ so that’s not really what enticed me to read this; it was more the story of female friendship in the music industry in 80s london, which was dominated by men. despite having never heard of the band or lindy morrison, i found this an easy read with all the interesting stories of womanhood, female friendship and just the general backdrop of the UK indie music scene back in the day.
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