[This review was originally published 5/10/2010 on my old blog, Skratchdisc.]
JULIANA HATFIELD is best known as the wispy-voiced alternative rock gal who belted out “Spin the Bottle” and “My Sister” in the early ’90s. She’s been putting out records fairly steadily since then, but once her major label deal ran out of gas, she was on her own and her visibility lessened considerably. Still, she’s bravely released albums on various labels, including her own Ye Olde Records, and has consistently done her own thing. Yet Juliana had many demons to deal with over the years, and that’s what led her to pen When I Grow Up.
The memoir, published by Wiley last year, is a stark, unexaggerated look at her life touring to support her various solo releases (since her first band, Blake Babies), and details the issues she’s faced, from standard “boy issues” to deeper problems like anorexia and severe shyness. What’s best about this book is that Hatfield doesn’t hold anything back. One moment she’s supremely irritated by a pushy fan trying to get a picture, the next moment she’s lamenting a crappy hotel room, the next she’s trying to combat loneliness despite being surrounded by friends and fans. It’s not that she’s a bitch, it’s just that she’s only outgoing when she’s performing. So she doesn’t color anything overly rosy, and that doesn’t mean the book is a big downer, though about midway through I was starting to wonder when – or if – she was gonna find the light at the end of the tunnel. She does, finally, and by then you feel like you wish you knew her as just a person and not the woman sporting the SG onstage.
After not having heard any of her records for a decade or so, I felt like I really wanted to track down a few of her releases to pay a little more attention to what she’s actually saying. Though she does note somewhere in the book that words are just vehicles to drive the songs, as a songwriter myself, I can tell you that no matter how much the writer wants to chalk a song up to a silly idea or funny phrase someone spoke, there’s always something personal in there. When I Grow Up shows how a girl can become a woman without succumbing to the massive amount of BS thrown at her from birth. — Marsh Gooch
4/5 (Wiley Books, 2010)
NuDisc 