Book review: My Family and Other Rock Stars by Tiffany Murray

Sarah Hill

My Family and Other Rock Stars offers a catalogue of gentle British eccentricities, a snapshot of musical culture in the 1970s, and a field guide to the lanes and byways of Monmouthshire in the company of an indelible cast of characters, many of them four-legged.

Narrated in the voice of Tiffany Murray’s younger self, this is a surprising and moving sort-of-memoir, amplified with generous assistance by her mother Joan, whose kitchens in and near Rockfield Studios are the hub around which the action unfolds, and whose reminiscences and recipes anchor the book in Murray’s present.

For the generation of people who were children in the early 1970s, there is detail to delight, with plenty of subtle cultural details to allure fans of British rock music. I have not put Joan’s recipes to the test, but fans of Cordon Bleu cooking will no doubt revel in the scarcity of measurement detail and band-pleasing adaptations that pepper the book.

Big stories

As a popologist, I will admit that I savoured Murray’s memories of the bands that passed through Monmouthshire. There are some ‘big stories’ here – Queen recording ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, most notably – but there is an everyday-ness to many of the others: the young Tiffany is surrounded by the famous and not-so-famous, but privately has an awakening with Elvis on 45, discovers her mother’s stash of blues records that a Texas cattle farmer had sent her, misses David Cassidy’s visit to the studio, gets autographs from all of Showaddywaddy, but studiously avoids looking at actual David Bowie when serving him a plate of food.

Whether or not any of these names mean anything to the individual reader, Murray offers a bit of context at the start of each chapter, listing the bands that recorded at Rockfield in any given month, and a playlist of tracks that were in and on the air.

Action

Like any young child would do when surrounded by creative people, Murray imagines herself taking part in the action, such as when Rush visited the studio in the summer of 1977:

“On Jubilee Day in early June, [Mum] left out coronation chicken vol-au-vents, cucumber sandwiches with no crusts, little red jellies and a shop-bought McVitie’s Jamaica cake. She said as they’re Canadian, they might know about the Queen, but I think Rush might be confused by the Jubilee, red jellies and the nodding horses of Rockfield. Maybe that’s why they’re walking about the courtyard right now, hitting blocks of wood.

“The wood block’s hard knocks echo. Because of years of watching Music Time on the telly, I know if you take the rubber ball off the end of the stick to hit the block, it will make a crack! sound. This is the sort of percussion I play at the Primrose Cottage kitchen table with Fritz’s friends, so I might ask Rush if I can bop or thonk something with the off-beat Fritz taught me. I can play tambourine, maracas, claves, rhythm sticks, bongos and castanets that sound like the magpies in the woods.

Rush only have that wood block, though. I have more.”

For anyone who has ever seen a picture of Rush drummer Neal Peart’s kit, this is quite the most wonderful collection of sentences.

Chaotic

But rock stars are only half of the story here, for this is really a book about growing up as an only child with a hard-working mother, some grandparents, assorted friends, and a beloved father figure. The domestic scenes in My Family and Other Rock Stars are in turns chaotic and bittersweet, mysterious and familiar, and most involve a soundtrack that shows Murray’s musical taste slowly being shaped by, and ultimately shared with, her mother’s partner Fritz.

Generations are key to much of the action in My Family and Other Rock Stars – marking musical taste, naturally, but also familial expectations, studio etiquette, and simply growing up – so the moments when Fritz tells Murray something about music, or they listen to a recording together are particularly poignant. This is especially so in the case of The Band, whose recorded music makes several appearances in the narrative, and who appear on stage in a beautifully moving coda.

This is a memoir brimming with beauty and humour, sure to have readers queueing up the Horslips, searching in vain for the Fritz Fryer-produced version of Squeeze’s ‘Take Me I’m Yours’, and revelling in the richness of 1970s rock music.

Tiffany Murray’s My Family and Other Rock Stars is published by Hachette UK. It is available from all good bookshops.