Holesworth’s intimate debut, the first in a multi-volume memoir, offers a document of a youthful reckoning, charting his school years in the chronic town of Kensington, in northeast Philly, in the 1980s and 1990s, where he found secular salvation in the music of R.E.M. The child of an addict (his father) and a born-again Christian (his mother), Holesworth attended Baptist schools that offered “a make-believe education” that stamped out ambition and creativity. In a childhood of poverty, abuse, and crime, alternative rock’s breakthrough to the mainstream offered Holesworth new models of living, especially in the form of R.E.M. singer/lyricist Michael Stipe. Holesworth first hears “Losing My Religion” on a jukebox—the very title jolted him. What follows is a classic tale of clinging to something new like a life raft and looking to artists for cues about exactly what’s promised by the book’s title (and the eponymous R.E.M. song).

It may be hard to imagine, today, that loving so humane a band could have been a source of controversy. But Holesworth touchingly recalls hiding tapes from his mother and warnings that he might be beat up for loving “gay” music. (He was chased for plenty of other reasons already.) Brightening the gloom of Holesworth’s life of rage, depression, and cutting was Stipe’s deep empathy and commitment to communicating sentiments that matter: “He told the listener that everybody, including himself, hurts, and they’re not alone,” Holesworth notes.

Holesworth’s storytelling is fast and concrete, though it lacks the polished scenecraft of the best memoirs, and he lets the material sprawl, often without a strong narrative thrust. Still, survivors of the era will appreciate accounts of Lollapalooza, making sense of Monster, feeling deeply shaken by XTC’s “Dear God,” and discovering and losing Kurt Cobain. Those public moments are as deeply personal as accounts of teen jobs, running away, relishing mix tapes, and daring to make a bold (yet likely hard to parse) statement on the last day of school. To his credit, Holesworth never talks around a problem or skips the part about love.

Takeaway: Intimate account of a young life saved by R.E.M. and the alt-rock revolution.

Comparable Titles: Jeff Gordinier’s X Saves the World, Peter Ames Carlin’s The Name of This Band is R.E.M.

Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: B
Marketing copy: B