1967 ★★★★
LITTLE BROWN. £22
Way back in the 1960s: singer-songwriter explores his year zero.
Al Pereira/Getty
The first time Robyn Hitchcock heard Desolation Row, he was a 13-year-old boarder sweeping the hall at Winchester School. “Like a child abandoned in the forest who thinks the first creature they see is their new parents, so I… convert to Bob Dylan,” the Soft Boy and solo artist writes in his delightful yet deeply melancholy memoir 1967, a year in the life of an uptight schoolboy on the brink of revelation. The cold hand of an earlier Britain is on his teenage neck – he writes astutely about the repressions and traumas of his parents – but he still picks up flashes of psychedelic semaphore: The Beatles, The Incredible String Band, Pink Floyd, a happening organised by wisdom-dispensing Winchester School Of Art luminary Brian Eno (“Thinking that everything has a purpose is a hang-up, you know?”). 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. Victoria Segal