Born into a working-class Glaswegian family in 1961, this memoir begins in a district soon to be evacuated in Prime Minister Edward Heath's brutal slum clearances. Leaving school at 16 and going to work as a printers' apprentice, Bobby's rock ’n’ roll epiphany arrives like a bolt of lightning during a Thin Lizzy gig at the Apollo in Glasgow. His destiny is sealed with the arrival of the Sex Pistols and punk rock, which to Gillespie represents class rebellion, and leads to him becoming an artist in Primal Scream, the most innovative British band of the 1990s.

Tenement Kid is a book filled with the joy and wonder of a rock ’n’ roll apostle who would reshape British pop. Published 30 years after the release of Screamadelica, it illuminates a decade lost to Thatcherism and saved by acid house.