Something To Believe In, by Andrew Stafford

Planet Books Review:

Set to the soundtrack of music that helped shape a generation, Something To Believe In will resonate with anyone who feels their life has been saved by rock ’n’ roll.

Spending his early years in the 1970s in Melbourne’s outer Eastern suburban Ringwood, Andrew Stafford grew up in a time when music was a way out and a way up. His passion for rock music led him to a career as a journalist and music critic, but along the way his battles with family illness, mental health and destructive relationships threatened to take him down.

The opening section details Stafford sitting in an Auckland hotel preparing to kill himself. His will, along with a suicide note, was sitting at home on his kitchen table in Brisbane. All that stopped him was a deadline he needed to meet - he was due to file a review of Neil Finn’s latest album.

Ironically, there was no rock’n’roll in Stafford’s house growing up. No Beatles or Stones records to discover, much less Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath. His introduction to popular music was Countdown, both for better or worse.

A young Andrew became obsessed with birding and managed to take some weekend trips with some older birders who drove to regional bird-spotting areas. These trips were punctuated a blaring cassette deck in the ageing green Valiant introducing Andrew to the sounds of the Oils and The Dead Kennedys.

He writes about adolescence, his parents' marriage breakdown, his relationships – including his own marriage collapse – and his mother’s illness.

At the time he began writing the manuscript, he was obsessed with the Ramones song Something To Believe In, which is about losing and then rediscovering yourself. ''And it just hit me that that was a great title for a book about the healing power of music. Then I kind of went crazy and wrote 30,000 words in three weeks.''

There were times I felt I was reading some of the great reviews in the now defunct X-Press street press here in Perth and at others I was deep into a Rolling Stone feature.

Stafford’s book features everyone from the Saints and the Go-Betweens to Savage Garden, it was a massive undertaking involving 100 interviews. And along the way, he freelanced as a football writer, environment writer and a music journalist for much of the Australian media; as well as working as a cab driver and a roadie.

I thoroughly enjoyed his very well-written memoir. And the playlists at the back of the book can lead to hours of time for readers spent trawling the Internet or going to the 49-song playlist already on Spotify.

Review By: Ian Williams

About The Author:

Andrew Stafford is a freelance journalist and the author of the cult classic Pig City, a musical and political history of Brisbane, first published in 2004 by UQP. Something to Believe In is his second book. He has written for The Age, The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Monthly. You can find him on Twitter @staffo_sez

Book Details:

ISBN: 9780702262531

Publication Date: 2/7/2019

Publisher: University of Queensland Press

Binding: Trade Paperback

Genre: Memoirs