When I Grow up: A Memoir

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 336 pages
• Published by: Wiley September 22, 2008
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0470189592
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0470189597
• Book Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Weighs: 1.2 pounds

Product Description
Ask a young girl what she wants to be when she grows up, and there's a good chance she'll say "rock star." Ask a rock star what she wants to be when she grows up, and it gets a bit more complicated.

By the early nineties, singer/songwriter and former Blake Babies member Juliana Hatfield was in a position most aspiring alternative rockers can only dream of: Her solo career was taking off. She was on the cover of Spin and Sassy. Ben Stiller directed the video for her song "Spin the Bottle" from the Reality Bites film soundtrack. She was a featured guest on My So-Called Life. Then, after canceling a European tour to treat severe depression and failing to produce another "hit," she was dropped by her record label and spent a decade releasing well-reviewed albums on indie labels and performing in ever-smaller clubs. A few years ago, now in her thirties, she found herself quietly reading the New Yorker on a filthy couch in the tiny dressing room of a punk club, and asked herself, "Why am I still doing this?"

By turns wryly funny and woundingly sincere, When I Grow Up takes readers behind the scenes of rock life as Hatfield recounts her best and worst days, the origins of her songs, the source of her woes, and her quest to find a new purpose in life. Writing with the same talent for lyricism and poetry found in her songs, Hatfield has produced an engaging literary memoir that will resonate with anyone who's lost faith in a dream.

From the Inside Flap


Ask a young girl what she wants to be when she grows up, and there's a good chance she'll say "a rock star." Ask a rock star what she wants to be when she grows up, and it gets a bit more complicated . . .

By the early nineties, singer-songwriter and former Blake Babies member Juliana Hatfield was in a position most aspiring alternative rockers only dream of: Her solo career was taking off. She was on the cover of Spin and Sassy. Ben Stiller directed the video for her song "Spin the Bottle" from the Reality Bites film soundtrack. She was a featured guest on My So-Called Life. Then, after canceling a European tour to treat severe depression and failing to produce another "hit," she spent a decade releasing well reviewed albums on indie labels and performing in ever-smaller clubs. A few years ago, then in her thirties, she found herself quietly reading the New Yorker on a filthy couch in the tiny dressing room of a punk club, and asked herself, "Why am I still doing this?"

By turns wryly funny and woundingly sincere, When I Grow Up takes readers behind the scenes of rock life as Hatfield recounts her best and worst days, the origins of her songs, the source of her woes, and her quest to find a new purpose in life.

No longer willing to play a kid's game by kid's rules, Hatfield resolved to take a year off and experiment with being a civilian. No performing or songwriting, and lots of everything else. When the year had gone by, rather than making her decide to pack it in and retire to a life of anonymous respectability, it reawakened her creative passion. She resolved to take charge of her career like a grown-up and write the great, untapped songs that she knew were still in her. This newfound determination led directly to her eagerly awaited new album, aptly named How to Walk Away, the most energetic, polished, and creative work of her music career.

When I Grow Up is more than a musician's memoir; it is a rich and revealing tour through an extraordinary mind. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes somber, and always insightful, it is rewarding reading not only for her fans, but for anyone who enjoys a truthful, gorgeously written, real-life story of success, struggle, and rebirth.

Reader Reviews
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?) A disclaimer: I've been madly in love with Juliana Hatfield's music since I was in high school, in the "find an excuse to leave work at ten in the morning and buy her new album the day it comes out when the stores open" sort of way. This makes it highly unlikely that I'm capable of delivering a fully unbiased view of this book. Having gotten that out of the way, "When I Grow Up" is a refreshing snapshot of a musician whose career, by all commercial measures, has been on the decline for well over a decade. Hatfield does not present the sort of tawdry, polished trash that most memoirs by rock artists put out-- there's no ghost writer, there's no glamor. But there is something entirely different-- a lot of grit, a lot of hope and a lot of fragility. Splitting the chapters largely between non-linear biographical reflections and a detailed account of her US tour promoting Gold Stars 1992-2002, it's largely a story of a shy and somewhat neurotic young woman thrust into a dirty, grimy world of touring rock clubs-- unclean hotels, poor sound systems and creepy fans. And as a fan of Hatfield's music, it's entirely what I'd hope it would be-- well written, engaging and brutally honest. Hatfield does not hide from herself, from her failings, weaknesses and problems, but rather presents them, not as some romanticized presentation of the perils of the rock and roll life, but rather as the everyday troubles of someone trying to live their life and get past their own frailties. I've been trying to think, as I set out to write this review, if this is something for someone who isn't into Hatfield's music, and I think the answer is a distinct maybe. What she presents is something we don't get a lot of: the point of view of the person who's fallen out of favor. Juliana Hatfield is someone who has survived as a musician but she hasn't exactly thrived. This book is being released to coincide with Hatfield's latest record, the polished How to Walk Away, a superb effort in its own right, but I'd suggest that a better soundtrack could be found with 1997's Please Do Not Disturb, written shortly after the non-release of "God's Foot", that record very much captures the feel of this text. Bottom line-- this is a well written and interesting portrait of life as a musician. She doesn't pull any punches and it was everything that her music, painfully honest in a way I'd expect from Hatfield (this is someone who posited, "it's a miracle I'm even here, you're over me" on perhaps her rawest record, 2006's Made in China). Memoirs rarely live up to expectations, they seem too careful. This one is very much what I would have hoped for it.