When it comes to music, I tend to be introduced to bands through the less famous route. For example, in theory my introduction to Nirvana did not come through Smells Like Teen Spirit or any of the songs from their mega album Nevermind, I was at the right age when it was released, but it was when their cover of David Bowie’s The Man Who Sold the World was broadcast on MTV. By then lead singer Kurt Cobain wasn’t even on the planet anymore. This has happened quite a bit.
The same goes for Neneh Cherry. My introduction to her music should have been the mega-selling single Buffalo Stance, with it’s catchy refrain and stick in your head chorus. No. My baptism of fire was through her 1994 duet with Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour, 7 Seconds. Then later I caught up with her album from her mid-90s excursion into trip hop, then her late 00’s collaboration with Swedish avant Jazz group The Thing and her return to electronica with 2014’s Blank Project.
The rather long-winded and self-indulgent introduction is me saying that I have read Neneh Cherry’s autobiography, A Thousand Threads.
Rock autobiographies are tricky due to the audience they are catering for. Some just cater for the fans and write a lot of excessive musical detail, others may just skimp on the details and write about the more anecdotal aspects of their lives. Personally, I think the best ones manage to balance both worlds.
Born to an artistic Swedish mother and an African father, Neneh Cherry lays it out very clearly that her life was one where racism dominated. Her parenthood is slightly more complicated as her father left her mother when Neneh was a baby, who then married American jazz musician Don Cherry (Neneh then was reunited her birth father when she was nine years old) who then had her half-brother Eagle Eye Cherry (who had a mega hit with the single Save Tonight in the late 90s).
As her childhood was spent between Sweden and New York, Neneh notices at the racism she encounters due to her being a child of a mixed marriage, either ignored or taunted. This also affected Don Cherry who, despite his high-profile gigs, could never get enough money due to his skin colour and the fact that that the record industry in the seventies had an unjust royalty system where the label would benefit more than the artist. Despite the poverty and constant moving, music, especially jazz was her form of escape.
“I recognised early other people’s discomfort about who I was. This was my daily reality, and so I was always a kind of warrior. I saw it as my job to resolve their unease by being able to deal with it. It was like constantly being tested.” (pg.95)
All this feeds into Neneh’s teenage years when her family moved into the UK and she finds solace in the post punk movement, joining post punk group The Slits and forming her first official group Rip Rig and Panic. We then move on to Buffalo Stance and Neneh Cherry’s solo career, with its highs and lows. Although music is a part of her life Neneh makes sure to include other themes.
I mentioned racism. Motherhood also has a big part in Neneh’s life. Not only with her three children but her own deep relationship with her mother, Moki, and there are a lot of passages dedicated to her, a free spirit who helped Neneh appreciate the arts and literature.
I must admit I love it when musicians mention the role books play in their lives, there’s a great paragraph of how Captain Corelli’s Mandolin influenced one of her mother’s recipes.
“… and created another of her great dishes from a description she read in Louis de Bernieres Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. In the novel, when the communal wood-fired ovens had been lit for baking bread , the villagers would place this lamb dish with potatoes, sliced tomatoes and olives seasoned with wild thyme, in the embers and left it to cook for hours. Moki’s version sings to me any time I think of it: a simple dish, but quite simply divine.” (pg 64)
Despite all her success, A Thousand Threads is not without its sordid moments. One particular passage details a sexual assault Neneh suffered from in her early teens, which whilst it psychologically affected her did not change her outlook on men, but it did make her realise that a woman cannot walk alone. Other problems, besides her family’s poverty is her step father’s Don’s heroin addiction and eventual deaths of her mother and close friends Ari Up (lead singer of The Slits, her musical inspiration) and artist Judy Blame. The following quote describes Neneh’s mental state:
“I was living with the after affects of trauma. The stress of which made it impossible to live with my feelings. I wanted to check out, to numb myself by drinking. Then I would lose control, freak out, black out. I had been unable to face the pain and shame of all my feelings but, until I did, I couldn’t heal” (pg. 287)
Thankfully Neneh does find peace in herself and continues life as a recording artist and a grandmother to children who are also in the music business.
A Thousand Threads is an autobiography which can be enjoyed by both a music lover and the casual reader. Music is Neneh’s salvation but this is a book about the trials of being a woman in contemporary society, whether dealing with obstacles Neneh’s strength and mostly optimistic demeanour helps realise her strengths. As any good music bio it does detail some movements, mainly the role of women in both the post punk movement in Britain and the rise of hip hop and her part she played, as it was mostly male orientated. The book emphasises Neneh’s strength as a person through its final paragraph:
“… I give thanks to Don and Moki for their legacy, for everything: their warrior spirit, the devotion, the faith, the unpaid bills, the total commitment to life, generosity, love, creativity. I see how all the threads that have become my own story connect back to this place.” (her childhood home) (pg.315)
- Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction 2025, A Thousand Threads − A Memoir was picked as a Book of the Year 2024 by The Sunday Times (UK), The Guardian, The New Statesman and other publications.
