When I Grow Up: A Memoir

by Juliana Hatfield

Book Overview

By the early nineties, singer-songwriter and former Blake Babies member Juliana Hatfield's solo career was taking off: She was on the cover of Spin and Sassy. Ben Stiller directed the video for her song "Spin the Bottle" from the Reality Bites film soundtrack. Then, after canceling a European tour to treat severe depression and failing to produce another "hit," she spent a decade releasing well reviewed albums on indie labels...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1684425883
• ISBN13: 9781684425884
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: Trade Paper Press
• Length: 344 Pages
• Weight: 1.12 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

What's it REALLY like to be a rock star?

This is a very entertaining and thoughtfully-written book about Juliana Hatfield as a work in progress. It is a book about someone caught in the middle: Someone who has made it big enough that everybody knows her name, but not Elton John, private-jet big. Someone who has enough neuroses to make finding love a challenge, but not enough to create drug-and alcohol-fueled self-destruction. It is apparently an honest book that is neither self-serving nor overly modest. It is a amusing and informative about Juliana, and about the world of alternative rock, with discourses on music in 5/4 time and the evils of Clear Channel. There is a bit of repetitiveness (yet another cramped dressing room and stale sandwiches in another backwater city?), but the book is fun to read, with just enough seriousness to make you think a little. (I took it on vacation with me and it was a perfect read.) It will be even more fun to listen to her music now, and to see what the next chapter of Juliana Hatfield's career brings.

A Pleasurable Read

When I Grow Up is a pleasure to read, mostly because it offers the opportunity to spend some time in the mind of a thoughtful, passionate musician who has reached a crossroads in which she must decide whether and why to continue to make music, years past her big hit. The memoir proceeds in two alternating threads, one a city-by-city diary from a single tour, the other a personal and professional history, in short chapters that proceed in a nonlinear but orderly fashion (they are linked associatively to the diary chapters that come before and after them, and help the reader to understand the moments dramatized in the tour diary in the same way Hatfield understands them.) The cumulative effect is a quiet forward energy and a steady, constant pleasure. Juliana Hatfield is a fine writer.

Don't I merit a mention...

This book is simply a must for any Hatfield fan; like her music, she manages to be funny and heart breaking all at the same time. Every other chapter is a diary/chronicle of a tour from several years ago - in between snippets of various high/low points in her prolific career. She remains incredibly perceptive to all that's going on around her; her descriptions (straight down to the tacky Cracker Barrel's and less than comfortable Red Roof Inn's) are spot-on. Favorite chapters include her in-depth description of what went on with the now shelved "God's Foot" album, her bout with debilitating depression around the time of Only Everything, and her fight with anorexia. She really holds nothing back here, her candor is completely charming. It's nice to finally get to know the woman behind some of my favorite songs and albums.

Excellent memoir by a talented artist

I got this on a whim - I was somewhat a fan of Juliana Hatfield's back in my college days. I had a couple of her albums. I didn't really follow her career after that. If you were into 'alt rock' in the early-to-mid '90s you might remember songs like "My Sister" or "Universal Heartbeat." I'm glad I read this, it is an excellent memoir that accomplishes two very important things. First, it inspired me to check out more of Hatfield's music, as she has consistently released new albums. Second, it read like the genuine voice of the author. What I mean is, since I obviously don't know Juliana Hatfield personally, it didn't have the bland ghost-written generic feel of so many celeb/artist/entertainer autobiographies. The book is structured in a non-linear way, alternating (for the most part) between a chapter regarding Hatfield's past, followed by a chapter regarding a recent tour. It skips what I find to be usually the least interesting part of a bio: the early childhood years before the subject started doing what it is you're probably reading the book to find out about. Aside from a few anecdotes, the earliest stories told by Hatfield are during her college years right before forming her first band Blake Babies. I found the book very interesting because most of the artist autobiographies I've read were of very well known people. This book provides a very detailed look at the career of a talented singer/musician/songwriter who had a very brief flirtation with stardom only to find herself a relative obscurity for the rest of her career. This is not about rock star debauchery and excess. These stories of Hatfield's life are crammed full of the minutia you usually don't hear about in the books of better known stars. I say that as a good thing. Throughout the book, I felt like a was getting a pretty good idea of what Hatfield is like as a person. That's a good sign when reading someone's memoir. I imagine a lot of this stuff was culled from years of religiously kept journals. It's all so detailed. This is a good book to read for popular music fans in general, even if your awareness of Juliana Hatfield is limited. She writes in depth about the music industry and it's many pitfalls - the way non-mainstream artists like her have a way of falling through the cracks.

Juliana Hatfield is Truly Inspiring! Every Struggling Artist Needs To Read This!

Most of us have thought about what it would be like to be a famous singer: The attention. The glamour. The money. The power. Singer/Songwriter, Juliana Hatfield got a small taste of that life for herself. In her recent memoir, When I Grow Up, Miss Hatfield recounts the year in which she first toured the United States with her then newly formed band, Some Girls. You'll see what it was really like to be on that tour: The long car rides. The cheaply rundown clubs and dives. The poor working conditions. The bug infested motel rooms. The altercations with fans and co-workers. The difficulties performing. The struggles to stay at peace. Throughout the books take on the tour are other chapters of past reflections by Juliana, regarding her small beginnings in Boston, Massachusetts, meeting up with future Blake Babies band mates, Joe & Freda, as well as being signed briefly by Atlantic Records, only to be let go a few years later, after making three studio albums with them and never seeing the last one released. You'll discover Juliana's struggles with depression and anorexia, and read about her difficulties growing up at home and how they affected her future personal relationships. See where she is today, more confident and full of life than ever before. This is a small window into the life of a very gifted and talented artist. I have to confess, I have never listened to any of Juliana Hatfield's music. Not because it isn't any good (far from it) but because I was simply unaware. I picked up this book out of pure curiosity. Being a struggling artist myself, the description on the back of the book interested me greatly. Though at first I worried that perhaps it would be too self-indulgent (yet another disgruntled performer complaining about why they never became a huge sensation) I couldn't have been more further from the truth, and found this book hard to put down as I was reading it. I kept wanting to find out more about Juliana. Towards the middle of the book I had to force myself to slow down in order to savor everything more deeply. Each chapter is quite interesting, with so many intriguing and fascinating stories to uncover. I found Miss Hatfield herself to be quite likable as well as a very nice person. She reveals many different sides of herself in this memoir, and even the less flattering views are understood and respected as you read them. The woman has a good heart and a rich soul. She'll complain to her crew, at times during the tour, due to lack of food or fatigue, etc, only to feel extremely guilt ridden having done so, and apologize shortly thereafter. You cannot dislike her. The self-criticism she evokes upon herself throughout the book is both humbling and genuine. Every struggling artist should read this book. It will speak to you in so many different ways and fill you with a newfound hope, especially when your own life's pursuits seem at their bleakest. This is a woman who suffered through it al