‘Memoirists rarely begin their work with a stroke of genuine inspiration, and Robyn Hitchcock’s ingenious idea to limit his account of his life to the titular year gives this sharp, funny, finely written book an unusually keen, wistful intensity without sacrificing its sense of the breath-taking sweep of time. I absolutely adored every line of 1967 and every moment I spent reading it’ MICHAEL CHABON
‘1967 . . . in which our hero looks down from the future at his squeaky realm of boyhood, a world of dayglo sunsets, and would-be denizens of music and the mind. Cometh the year, cometh the groover’ JOHNNY MARR
‘Page Turner could be the name of a lead singer in a sixties psychedelic band, but it’s not – it’s a description of Robyn Hitchcock’s tender and hilarious memoir’ JOE BOYD
A bright, obsessive compulsive boy is shipped off to a hothouse academic boarding school just before he reaches his thirteenth birthday; just as Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited starts to bite, and the Beatles’ Revolver explodes.
In January 1966, Robyn Hitchcock is still a boy pining for his green Dalek sponge and his family’s comforting au pair, Teresa. By December 1967, he’s mutated into a 6 ft 2-inch rabid Bob Dylan fan, whose two ambitions in life are to get really stoned and move to Nashville.
In between, as the hippie revolution blossoms in the world outside, Hitchcock adjusts to the hierarchical, homoerotic world of Winchester (think Gormenghast via Evelyn Waugh), threading a path through teachers with arrested development, some oafish peers and a sullen old maid – a very English freak show. On the way he befriends a cadre of bat-winged teenage prodigies and meets their local guru, the young Brian Eno. And his home life isn’t any more normal . . .
At the end of 1967, all the ingredients are in place that will make Robyn Hitchcock a songwriter for life. But then again, does 1967 ever really end?
‘1967 . . . in which our hero looks down from the future at his squeaky realm of boyhood, a world of dayglo sunsets, and would-be denizens of music and the mind. Cometh the year, cometh the groover’ JOHNNY MARR
‘Page Turner could be the name of a lead singer in a sixties psychedelic band, but it’s not – it’s a description of Robyn Hitchcock’s tender and hilarious memoir’ JOE BOYD
A bright, obsessive compulsive boy is shipped off to a hothouse academic boarding school just before he reaches his thirteenth birthday; just as Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited starts to bite, and the Beatles’ Revolver explodes.
In January 1966, Robyn Hitchcock is still a boy pining for his green Dalek sponge and his family’s comforting au pair, Teresa. By December 1967, he’s mutated into a 6 ft 2-inch rabid Bob Dylan fan, whose two ambitions in life are to get really stoned and move to Nashville.
In between, as the hippie revolution blossoms in the world outside, Hitchcock adjusts to the hierarchical, homoerotic world of Winchester (think Gormenghast via Evelyn Waugh), threading a path through teachers with arrested development, some oafish peers and a sullen old maid – a very English freak show. On the way he befriends a cadre of bat-winged teenage prodigies and meets their local guru, the young Brian Eno. And his home life isn’t any more normal . . .
At the end of 1967, all the ingredients are in place that will make Robyn Hitchcock a songwriter for life. But then again, does 1967 ever really end?
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Reviews
Witty
One could never accuse cult UK songwriter Robyn Hitchcock of being boring, and throughout 1967, he constantly surprises . . . poignant yet affable'
1967 is evocative and eccentric. Even non-fans would find it entertaining . . . When it comes to
writing a page-turner, Hitchcock passes the exam with flying colours
Hitchcock skilfully brings to life the turning point, for the younger generation at least, which was 1967 as post war Britain with its slightly curled egg and cress sandwiches took flight on psychedelic wings. Like a hipper version of Anthony Buckeridge's schoolboy hero, Jennings, he adroitly describes the faintly
homoerotic undertones of boarding school life while his accounts of the records and musicians he discovers vividly capture the excitement and adventure of the music of the time. That he does so in his unique style, droll and with the occasional whiff of whimsy and surrealism, familiar to anyone who has seen him live, is the icing on the cake. One can easily picture him telling any of these tales in between songs on stage . . . a delightful read
Wonderfully surreal turns
Delightful . . . Dense with time-travel reminiscence and sharp musical analysis, 1967 comes closer than most to showing how music can switch on the lights, switch on a life
***** It's funny and sparkling with a wild, questioning energy . . . One of the joys of this charming and compulsively perceptive work is the way the past loops, fountain-like, into the present and back; and how sharp his sense of the source remains. It is a kind of time-travel
1967 is written in the bright, avuncular, conversational tone familiar from Hitchcock's stage patter at live shows, his social media presence and his Patreon page - the latter well worth investigating as for a reasonable sum patrons are given access to unreleased tracks, exclusive videos and assorted illuminating ramblings. This approachability results in a light read whose effect is nevertheless profound, urging the reader to evaluate their own relationship to time and consider fresh ideas regarding how it might be processed and catalogued