We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The True, Tough Story of Women in Rock

by Gerri Hirshey

Rock and roll has traditionally been a boys' game. It has forced female artists to work twice as hard, usually for half the recognition -- but without their contributions, American music would be radically impoverished. Called "a kind of female Cameron Crowe" by the Chicago Tribune, Gerri Hirshey has been writing about music for two decades. Now, in a narrative based on frank original interviews and a vise grasp of American cultural history, she serves up a tasty platter of girl groups and soul queens, acoustic goddesses and priestesses of the avant-garde, punk grrrls, glamazons, and innovators of hip-hop and neo-soul. We Gotta Get Out of This Place is the passionate history of a century of women in rock that is deft, authoritative, and a sheer delight to read. "A literary soul queen, an Aretha of the page ..." -- Karen Schoemer, Elle "We Gotta Get Out of This Place ... helps set the record straight." -- Dan Gilgoff, U.S. News & World Report "Hirshey doesn't write about rock and roll. She writes rock and roll." -- L. D. Meagher, CNN.com "Vivid, impassioned, [and] lively." -- Francine Prose, O Magazine

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, History, Feminism

304 pages, Paperback

First published April 14, 2001

About the author

Gerri Hirshey is a journalist and author with 25 years of experience in newspapers, magazines and book publishing. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Esquire, GQ, and many more.

Reviews

[Jennifer Barbee]

Hirshey, a veteran rock journalist, manages to infuse a battle-tested told and re-told history with new flavor and some unexpectedly terrific prose. Though I wasn't always fond of the musicians she favored for emphasis (call me crazy, but Ricki Lee Jones and Joan Armatrading really only resonate as names I saw on album covers in Goodwill bins as a teenager), but I was incredibly fond of her emphasis on the musicians' MUSIC over gender politics. I think at this juncture, everyone knows it is problematic to make "women in rock" qualifications when the musicians clearly would like to be thought of simply as talented musicians independent of gender. Hirshey wastes very little time apologizing for choosing this subset of musicians, and instead gets right into talking about why their voices and their music meant something to rock and roll and all its many fans, male, female, adult and adolescent.

[Amanda]

This was a good read that spanned women's musical influence from the 1950s doowop era through today. The author was easy to follow and filled the book with a number of short vignettes to pack a virtual encyclopedia into a very few pages. She seems to have met everyone and looks at them with a mix of awe, respect, critique and honesty.

[Jennie]

Outdated and a little too flippant in places. Interesting as a time capsule read.

[Naomi Krokowski]

I enjoy Hirshey's writing and share so many of the same interests and passions. This book was more fun for me in the earlier sections about artists I'm more familiar with, but I did enjoy it overall.

[Amy K]

I've had this on my wish list for quite a while, but just can't get into it. Maybe another time.

[Ryan]

There's far too much ground covered by this book to adequately deal with it in a scant 300 pages, but Hirshey tries her best to do so. What this subject really needs, though, is a huge Ken Burns-style documentary with accompanying soundtrack, because reading about the various artists Hirshey talks about (and to) made me want to dig through my CD collection.

It seems at times Hirshey gears the book towards the people that she's come to know over the years, which is the only main complaint I have with this - as one example, the "divas" phenomenon gets the lion's share of the late 1990s chapter, with significantly less space spent on the Lilith Fair crowd. Maybe it's just a question of where I was coming from at the time, but I think that the focus of those two, at least, should have been reversed.

[Frank Taranto]

A very good first hand look at women in rock and roll. The author stars at the prehistory of rock and roll and takes us through the nineties.
I enjoyed the little vignettes she threw in and the way she took from her own interviews with many of the subjects. My favorite parts were about Ronnie Spector and the Ronettes and Tina Turner.

[Susan]

I do like the style of this journalist. "It's always been clear to me: These tend to be women of appetites.......But the shifting boundaries between appetite and its acceptance is still a torrid and hazardous zone. Janis Joplin may have died negotiating it; others like Tina Turner, have learned to chant blissfully on the volcano's edge."

[H Ryan]

So far it's kind of like a breathless magazine piece. Too broad.

[Sara]

Man, this book has to be taken in tiny little pieces. It has interesting stuff, but is a tedious read at best.

[Laverne]

It is a good book about women in music! Read it in high school and learn more about all my fave female musicians in this book and plus the hardcover version has Courtney on the cover :)

[Nicole Froio]

A bit dense. Not a very good pace for me, too quick about too many people. When I was interested it was very good. Otherwise, not worth it.

[Lindy]

nothing in here I didn't already know, but hirshey writes beautifully about the sensations and emotions one experiences while listening to music.