About the Book
Hitchcock's second memoir explores the formation of his seminal 1970s band the Soft Boys, and the obsessions that fuelled his early creative output
'British singer-songwriter Hitchcock wistfully reflects on boarding school and the music that shaped him in this captivating chronicle of the year he credits with sculpting his artistic sensibility . . . Readers need not be fans of Hitchcock's music to find this enchanting.' ―Publishers Weekly, on 1967
'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 breathtaking sweep of time. I absolutely adored every line of 1967 and every moment I spent reading it.' ―Michael Chabon, author of Telegraph Avenue, on 1967
STRANDED IN THE FUTURE is a kind of dystopian self-portrait. It's about obsession, and obsessive behaviour. Spanning from 1968 to 1978, it takes in the mythology surrounding Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett (though it doesn't name him) and hinges on Robyn Hitchcock's teenage girlfriend (she isn't named either). The book explores the way that Hitchcock, in his own head, linked these two figures to each other, although they never actually met.
On the way, the story mines the incremental hangover of the 1970s as Hitchcock begins to play live, teaches himself to write songs, and eventually forms the Soft Boys. There's a side order of trolleybuses too! Hitchcock's beautiful prose will resonate far beyond the fans of his music, and build on the literary following he established with his first book, 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left.
About the Author :
Robyn Hitchcock is a rock 'n' roll surrealist. Born in London in 1953, he describes his songs as "paintings you can listen to". As much a child of Dalí, de Chirico and J. G. Ballard as of his 1960s musical heroes, he is a master of the absurd, revelling in the beauty of the unexpected. His first band, the Soft Boys (1976-81), has remained an influential art-rock touchstone for generations of musicians. Hitchcock has floated at a tangent to the mainstream for five decades, and his songs have been performed by R.E.M., the Replacements, Neko Case, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Lou Barlow, Uncle Tupelo, Vic Chesnutt, Grant-Lee Phillips, Sparklehorse and Suzanne Vega with the Grateful Dead, among others. He came of age in the 1960s while he attended Winchester College, an eccentric hothouse boarding school in the south of England. Hitchcock lives in Nashville with his wife Emma Swift and their two cats, Ringo and Tubby. Robyn Hitchcock is a rock 'n' roll surrealist. Born in London in 1953, he describes his songs as "paintings you can listen to". As much a child of Dalí, de Chirico and J. G. Ballard as of his 1960s musical heroes, he is a master of the absurd, revelling in the beauty of the unexpected. His first band, the Soft Boys (1976-81), has remained an influential art-rock touchstone for generations of musicians. Hitchcock has floated at a tangent to the mainstream for five decades, and his songs have been performed by R.E.M., the Replacements, Neko Case, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Lou Barlow, Uncle Tupelo, Vic Chesnutt, Grant-Lee Phillips, Sparklehorse and Suzanne Vega with the Grateful Dead, among others. He came of age in the 1960s while he attended Winchester College, an eccentric hothouse boarding school in the south of England. Hitchcock lives in Nashville with his wife Emma Swift and their two cats, Ringo and Tubby.
Review :
Incredibly enough, when decades ago I first swooned for the Soft Boys and their shambolic leader, I said to myself and anyone who'd listen, "This is the sole psychedelic musician I can imagine writing not one, but actually two witty, self-effacing, phantasmagorical autofictional memoirs in quick succession as he rounds into late middle age." Even more incredibly, I have been completely vindicated in this left-field speculation, and we are all the better for it, as Stranded in the Future has capitalized on the opportunities opened by 1967's close focus on that single year of boyish self-invention and vaulted us into the next act, in which mannish boy becomes boyish man. Now our correspondent only has to repeat this astonishing trick ten more times to complete his imperishable twelve-volume epic A Dance to the Music of Hitchcock
