FINGERS CROSSED

A sharply honed memoir of life in the musical trenches.

“I fell into music, grabbed onto it like a lifeline,” writes Berenyi, who was raised by two eccentric parents—one a Japanese actor, the other a Hungarian exile, a journalist who thought nothing of rewriting magazine articles in the many languages he spoke and presenting them as his own work to English editors. The author’s mother was partially engaged, while father was a philanderer fond of taking Berenyi to bars where the “proprietor is willing to ignore the inappropriate parenting and turns a blind eye to the orange-squash-and-vodka cocktail that Dad deems appropriate sustenance for an eight-year-old.” The author describes enduring sexual abuse as a child, and, she writes, “it took me a very long time to learn that sex is not something that you offer up to people as a way to appease them or make them like you or stop them from being nasty to you.” In high school, Berenyi formed the band Lush with classmate Emma Anderson. They played their first gig on March 6, 1988, when she was 21, and hit the ground running. The author was soon front and center, “a half-competent guitarist with the odd backing vocal to chime in on.” For all that, crowds and critics alike were impressed. One of those critics coined the term shoegaze, since the players were always looking at the floor—not out of shyness, however, but because lyrics and set lists were taped to it. In a memoir that nicely brackets Viv Albertine’s Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys, Berenyi recounts the inevitable trajectory: success and failure, hits and flops, professional jealousies, failed relationships, bad management, and the breakup of the band after a member’s death.

Often harrowing, often cautionary, and an altogether fine, self-aware study of a life in rock.