“Roddy Bottum’s The Royal We doesn’t just offer an important portrait of an era, scene, and sound—it also gives voice to a sensibility all Bottum’s own, along with offering a startling cri de coeur about loss and death. It’s a pounding example of what it sounds like to be ‘alive not dead,’ and we are the luckier for it.”
—Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts

“A very honest and extremely well-articulated story of coming of age, parallel and within the evolution of the alternative music world. Roddy Bottum comes into his sexuality in a homophobic music scene, creating a stunning landscape of alienation and drug use that he manages to lift himself out of. There’s an exuberance to the telling of his adventure that guides the reader along through the darkest of moments.”
—Kim Gordon, author of Girl in a Band

“This memoir of a rarefied world made me realize I was so lucky to live through it on the fringes—San Francisco in the eighties during the glory days of punk rock, written as if Salinger was there, queer, and started a band. A band I was actually in, but they rarely admitted! Roddy has been an incredible influence on my life, love, friendship, and language. A brilliant and gorgeous book—just like Roddy Bottum.”
—Courtney Love, musician

“The Gen X Cancerian daddy king of California rock has delivered to us an oral history of a time when queer boys who rocked still played hard and RULED the underground. Emotionally charged, but never reckless (okay, maybe a BIT reckless), this book flows with an emotional IQ that only Roddy Bottum could give us. All the grit and grime aside, this is a story based in wisdom, recounting, and, above all, beauty.”
—Brontez Purnell, author of 100 Boyfriends

“Thump, thump, thump went my heart as the words popped and the pages turned and I fell more and more in love with Roddy Bottum. Written with the right amount of flourish and punk abandon—what a treat.”
—Chloë Sevigny, actress