Within this long-awaited memoir, Neneh Cherry comes across as a warm-hearted, generous rebel. Love, kindness and honesty jump off A Thousand Threads’ pages, with meticulous detail having you almost smelling the amazing food she mentions, hitting the place she visits and hearing the jazz, soul, funk, punk, dub and rap she embraces. Within this, there is also trauma and grief, yet ultimately it’s a life-affirming read.
A Thousand Threads kicks off with Cherry’s bohemian childhood, as she zigzags between Stockholm, New York, Los Angeles and (later) London with her Swedish textile designer mother Moki and stepfather, American jazz trumpeter Don Cherry. The second part of this book documents – to name a few of a great many things – Neneh’s first visit to Sierra Leone to see her father Ahmadu, and her teenage navigation of Thatcherite Britain and the postpunk scene. Initially a ‘part-time’ member of The Slits, alongside close friend Ari Up, she then joins Rip Rig + Panic, before becoming a mother for the first time.
A flight to Tokyo, on a modelling assignment with Ray Petri’s Buffalo crew, flows into the third and final part of this book: Neneh Cherry the globally successful singer. Cherry is generous when it comes to crediting collaborators: if Tim Simenon of Bomb The Bass fame hadn’t insisted on remixing a disregarded B-side, Buffalo Stance – the catalyst that helped launch Cherry on her path to global fame – probably wouldn’t have been recorded. Fashion-stylist Judy Blame and Cherry’s long-time partner and music producer Cameron McVey also receive props, as does close friend, chef Andi Oliver. A Thousand Threads is a supreme read on so many levels – a book to cherish.
A Thousand Threads, Neneh Cherry (Fern Press)
Price: £25/£14 Ebook or audiobook. Info: here
words DAVID NOBAKHT