About the Book & Author
From the bohemian lifestyle of her Hungarian father’s social circle to the privileged glamour of her Japanese mother’s acting career, Miki’s young life was a blur of international travel, celebrities and peripatetic schooling. Frequent relocation, parental neglect and the dark presence of her abusive Nazi grandmother resulted in crippling shyness, mental health problems and a vulnerability to exploitation. The route out was music – diving into the London gig scene and forming Lush in 1988. The band’s pub gigs got them signed to the iconic label 4AD, releasing a string of EPs and albums that resonated in both the Shoegaze and Britpop scenes. This uncompromising autobiography documents the excitement of playing live, the camaraderie of the gang and the thrills and spills of touring abroad, which reached a crescendo on the 1992 Lollapalooza tour. But at the heart of the story are Miki’s internal battles: the conflict between her mouthy public persona and her thin-skinned private identity; the trials of being a woman in an infuriatingly male world; and the struggle to find a middle ground between ‘safe’ indie obscurity and ‘sell-out’
international success. “I don't want to be a drama queen but reliving the 30-year span of this book... let's just say it's been emotional. The madcap ups and dysfunctional downs of my childhood and adolescence (London, Windsor, Hungary, Japan, Los Angeles) set me up for the chaos of being in a band and the eventual overkill of a changing music industry. My story is as much about a disrupted family life, a childhood in the 70s, an adolescence in the 80s, alienation, friendship, love, sex, self-destructiveness and optimism as it is about music – what it felt like, as much as what happened. There are shocking events – but it's not a misery memoir. Bad stuff happens to everyone and it's how you get through the crap that I find important - and interesting. I’m not documenting my life for people to gawp or wonder at, but inviting them in, to experience the highs and the lows, and feel what it was like to live through it."