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Universal Mother was released by 33 1/3 and Bloomsbury in February 2025. I am honored to have the opportunity to consider iconoclast Sinéad O'Connor in print. This little book provides a forensic look into the making of the LP. If you'd like to read an excerpt, it can be found at ROLLING STONE UK. If you'd like to purchase the book, please do so at the Bloomsbury website. I am aiming to avoid Amazon, since they are complicit with aiding and abetting our current government by insanity. I too am struggling with unlocking from the convenience drip but am trying to do all I can. My sincere thanks. Twist: Tales of a Queer Girlhood is available to purchase at at ZE Books. Again, I ask that you please avoid Amazon for the sake of our country. It is a memoir about my fantastical childhood. Here are some reviews: “Twist is one of the most original, amazing stories I’ve ever read—a story of innocence and brutality, of courage and faith and luck. It is the story of an extraordinary woman-child in an extraordinary time, of devils and angels, trolls under the bridge and unexpected helpers. For all the pain and misfortune in the early life of the intrepid narrator, it is most of all about the connective, transformative power of art and soulful community. Twist is strong and strange poetry; while reading it you may hear music in your head—I did.” —Mary Gaitskill “Twist is a dark, demented, horrific and hilarious shot to the heart of American girlhood. Adele Bertei was gender fluid before gender even entered the lexicon. Her writing is miraculous, but the bigger miracle may be that the author survived to write it. And lucky for us she did. This is a book to love.” —Jerry Stahl “What I fell in love with most about Adele Bertei’s fearless memoir is the strange certainty of its voice, even when—especially when—it is that of a young child. It’s a certainty of her own judgement, one honed without classic guidance. A certainty that never once cedes to accommodate cruelty or intolerance. It is Bertei at her core: uncompromising, a place she came to wholly on her own.” —Stephanie laCava “A powerful look at survival and redemption despite extremely challenging obstacles.… [Bertei] narrates with a zest and objectivity probably only possible from a long temporal remove, and she excels at bringing readers deep into the difficult circumstances of her life…. Throughout the book, Maddie comes across as curious, impulsive, and observant, fond of losing herself in books and brought to life by the music she hears—and creates.”—Kirkus “A harrowing voyage through the cultural tornado of America in the latter part of the 20th century as seen through the eyes of a thoroughly 21st century girl. This book gives serious credence to the expression ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ Very inspirational.” —Rufus Wainwright “Twist spins a bruising tale of the desperate need to break free from the shackles that bind by finding a perverse beauty in the devastating landscape of the American traumazone of poverty, prejudice and familial insanity. Heartbreaking, yet remarkably ever hopeful.” —Lydia Lunch “Truth can sometimes be even stranger than fiction. Twist is so well written that the reader admires the capability of Adele Bertei to present her true story in such a novel way…. By creating her persona of Maddie Twist and her utterly honest and truly poetic expression of reliving her teenage years, Bertei not only holds to her truth but captivates the reader with the way she expresses it. The way it is written makes you truly believe you are reading fiction along with the abrupt realization that this all really happened to Bertei. It is revelatory. --The Rage Monthly “Adele Bertei always came across as a magnificent talent to those of us who met her when she came to Birmingham in 1981 to play alongside the left feminist and anti-racist punk 'n reggae musicians of the time. With Twist, she reveals her literary talent, producing a sharp and incisive critique of the foster family and institutional care system for estranged young people in the US in the late 1960s and early ’70s, and as it surely is today.”—Angela McRobbie, author of The Aftermath of Feminism “Once ‘the Devil ran through’ her family, Maddie free falls from institution to institution, growing into her queerness and discovering her fate—that ‘God has to be music.’ This riveting novel/memoir by underground icon Adele Bertei situates the making of a survivor rebel against the background of the chaotic side of 1960’s America. An honest, hard times page turner filled with heart and revelation.” —Sareah Schulman, author of Let the Record Show “Bracingly candid and stylishly written.” —David Smith, The Guardian “Underground legend Adele Bertei’s roman a clef is like something out of the darkest pages of Charles Dickens. Her heroine Maddie Twist is born into a family racked by poverty, violence and madness and graduates to abusive foster care, the terrors of life as a teenage runaway and imprisonment in reform school. But Maddie is a survivor, as much Artful Dodger as she is victim. She rides the turbulent waves of the 1960s and early ’70s with reckless courage, buoyed by her careening high spirits and an almost mystic faith in poetry, music and the love of other girls. An unforgettable queer coming of age story and an inspiration to outsiders everywhere.” —Mary Harron, director of American Psycho, Alias Grace, and I Shot Andy Warhol “This raw, vivid work brings readers into a life of poverty, domestic violence, mental illness, war, and trauma . . . Bertei's childhood is harrowing, and her memoir does not hold back on the details, which are horrific at times. But the author sounds her voice loudly in this book, and her sense of self is captured throughout the pages. The end result is likely to captivate readers.” —Rebekah Buchanan, Library Journal “Fascinating…. Twist is beautifully written in crystalline prose without judgment or stigmatization. What carries her through is music and singing and Bertei writes memorably about both. This is a story about a gay teenager in the 1960s and early 70s at a time, and in institutions, which had little understanding and less tolerance for gay youth. There are episodes of horrifying brutality and violence against Bertei. Yet the great accomplishment of Twist is that it ends on an uplifting and positive note, as Maddie/Bertei becomes herself—the person we know will go on to be a force in the New Wave No Wave scene in New York…. To be placed on your hit parade.” —Tom Teicholz, Forbes “Bertei depicts her relationship with her brilliant mother, who was schizophrenic, with uncommon empathy and grace.… Equal parts raucous and harrowing, Twist gives the reader a glimpse of the formation of a singular, uncompromising artist.” —Brendan Dowling, Public Library Association “Fascinating, candid, informative, intimate, insightful, emotional, deftly crafted, intensely personal, Twist is one of those life stories that will linger in the mind and memory long after the book has been finished and set back upon the shelf. Of special relevance to readers with an interest in LGBTQ biographies and memoirs…Very strongly recommended for community and academic library American Biography/Memoir collections.” --Midwest Book Review, Reviewer’s Choice Why Labelle Matters is a tribute, a book of psalms to three women whose voices helped me recover from a dark childhood. It can be purchased here at the University of Texas Press. Here are some reviews: "LaBelle changed how we look at women singers. No longer were they "girl groups." They and we were grown up. Voulez vous couchez avec moi, si vous plait? You bet. This is the book that tells us how... and why." --Nikki Giovanni "In this vivid praise-song to her lifesaving, teen-fangirl crushes, Adele Bertei deploys rock solid scholarship, granular musical analysis and piquant, personal revelation to transcendent and inspirational effect for an array of readers— those equally long-besmitten from a century past, and the post-millennial virgin-eared alike. Sarah Dash, Nona Hendryx and Empress Patti Labelle (in tandem with far-sighted guiding light manager Vicki Wickham), emerged in the 70s as a trio of soulful warrior queens whose legendary accomplishments now hold several pop pantheons on lock: that of the Great Black Music canon's most spectacularly adorned space-funk fashion avatars, most hypersensual feminist icons, and most gender-radicalizing cohort of rock&roll hall of fame rebels. In Bertei, this audacious trifecta of harmonizing trailblazers have been gifted a trenchant, mythopoetic scribe worthy of essaying fiercely about Labelle's reverberant spiritual depth, omniversal cultural significance, and torch-bearing Black Futurist visionary status. All with a whole lotta love, wit and witness-bearing illumination." -- Greg Tate "Finally, here's a book that pays tribute, revealing their journey from the Chitlin' Circuit to their breakthrough as the true mothers of Afrofuturism. Labelle's story more than matters, and Bertei brings the why of it all home, beautifully." --Lenny Kravitz "Few are better placed to explain why Patti Labelle, Nona Hendryx, and Sarah Dash matter than self-confessed "glitterbug androgyne" Bertei, who fell for Labelle at a wild 1975 show in her native Cleveland - and now brings us the trio's thrilling Afro-futurist-feminist story these many years later. It's a smart, shrewd, joyful read - as piercing as any top C shriek from the woman who gave Labelle their name." --Barney Hoskyns "This is a marvelous scholarly account of the whole magnificent Labelle phenomenon by the multi-talented Adele Bertei. This book registers the key place in pop culture of 'pyrotechnic gospel punk', it encapsulates the excitement of the girl groups of the '60s and the glimmers of gay pop in Swinging London and most of all it foregrounds the place of Labelle in queer Afrofuturism. Bertei makes a bigger feminist space in music history for Nona Hendryx, Sarah Dash and Patti LaBelle than has been accorded them while also drawing on all the riches of Black diasporic cultural formations." --Angela McRobbie, Emeritus Professor FBA, PhD , Goldsmiths, University of London |
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The first published book: Peter and the Wolves, a memoir about my encounters with two outlaw artists;
Peter Laughner and Nan Goldin. Although the book focuses on musician and legend Laughner (who died at 24) Goldin is also fundamental to the way I learned to see as an artist. Laughner gave me an outlaw education in dark and light. This story of music, love, and loss in the city of the burning river is currently out of print, but I will be recording the full audiobook soon and distributing through Authors Direct. |
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If there was a queer Cleveland answer to Patti Smith, it would have to be Adele Bertei,
who tells her fascinating story in Peter and the Wolves.
—Gregg Shapiro, The Bay Area Reporter
This memoir recalls to me Patti Smith "Just Kids"
for the youthful embracing of a vibrant, exciting music scene.
—Tom Schulte, Good Reads
"Peter Laughner (Pere Ubu) was a secret inventor of punk rock, a dazzling songwriter and guitarist who should
by all rights have become a star. But he died suddenly, in the crucial year 1977, and instead became a ghost,
haunting the corridors of rock and roll. Adele Bertei's tender evocation restores him to flickering life, and her
account of the complex education he gave her is inspiring and sobering at once.”
— Lucy Sante
“Much has been written about the punk scenes of New York, London, and LA. Adele Bertei inks 1970s
Cleveland, where burning water provided an existential backdrop to a demimonde centered around the
doomed, charismatic figure of her friend and band mate Peter Laughner. Peter and the Wolves is a Just Kids of
the heartland, with Bertei a poète maudit as in love with rock’n’roll as her hero Patti Smith.”
— Evelyn McDonnell
"Adele Bertei's Peter and the Wolves is a heart-rending, fascinating and occasionally hysterical memoir about
her time with Pere Ubu's Peter Laughner, the real founder of Punk Rock. Bertei’s story of the time they spent
together, and the unsentimental education Laughner bequeathed her, stands out as a classic of the genre.
Her prose is at once unsparing and lush, and never less than riveting. With a visionary's eye and the grace of a
poet, she brings this unsung, unlucky genius back to life. No reader will walk away unaffected from this
personal, devastating, and ultimately inspiring masterpiece."
— Jerry Stahl
“Adele Bertei is seriously brave and seemingly unafraid. What she has given us is a memoir of music and loss, a
story of legendary Cleveland musician Peter Laughner, of Pere Ubu and Rocket From the Tombs, who died at
24 in 1977. Laughner’s most successful lyric, “Ain’t it fun when you know you’re gonna die young” is the
soundtrack. Peter & The Wolves is the recounting of that trajectory. Painful, tender, naked, and yes, brave.”
— Dorothy Allison
“Adele Bertei's elegy for Peter Laughner evokes the lost world of rock and roll bohemia with heartbreaking
clarity, a recreation so vivid I felt like I had actually travelled back in time.”
— Mary Harron
“Midwestern 1970s punk was a true scene, largely undocumented. Adele Bertei gives us that story, drenched in
the power of music to bring us our people, and the power of those people to change our lives.”
— Michelle Tea
"Out of the raging heart of Adele Bertei, lone wolf Clevelander from the 70s falling in and out of reform schools
and dealing with 14-year-old madness of psychopathic American experience, who later ran to NYC to
become this amazing creature on stage banging the keys with the original Contortions, the most demonic and
savage no wave misfit ensemble to soundtrack the fucked up streets of NYC, comes Peter and the Wolves
(Adele Bertei hc), a long gestating, touching and tear-swallowing memoir of her time as Peter’s roommate,
speed-snorting buddy and young kid dyke discovering EVERYTHING that makes this Disneyland dementia worth
buying stereo equipment and bookshelves for. No matter how lost the most lost heart in rock and roll can drop,
there is an angel of transmission passing the fever of ecstatic rebel glory on to whomever has the magic. We
hear Peter recognizing Adele’s strum, her vocal sweetness on stage kicking real deal rock and roll ass and
inviting her IN. This is a book of love… all emanating from a strange and deliciously damaged encounter with
the incendiary light of Peter Laughner, an America genius of the rock and roll heart."
— Thurston Moore & Byron Coley
who tells her fascinating story in Peter and the Wolves.
—Gregg Shapiro, The Bay Area Reporter
This memoir recalls to me Patti Smith "Just Kids"
for the youthful embracing of a vibrant, exciting music scene.
—Tom Schulte, Good Reads
"Peter Laughner (Pere Ubu) was a secret inventor of punk rock, a dazzling songwriter and guitarist who should
by all rights have become a star. But he died suddenly, in the crucial year 1977, and instead became a ghost,
haunting the corridors of rock and roll. Adele Bertei's tender evocation restores him to flickering life, and her
account of the complex education he gave her is inspiring and sobering at once.”
— Lucy Sante
“Much has been written about the punk scenes of New York, London, and LA. Adele Bertei inks 1970s
Cleveland, where burning water provided an existential backdrop to a demimonde centered around the
doomed, charismatic figure of her friend and band mate Peter Laughner. Peter and the Wolves is a Just Kids of
the heartland, with Bertei a poète maudit as in love with rock’n’roll as her hero Patti Smith.”
— Evelyn McDonnell
"Adele Bertei's Peter and the Wolves is a heart-rending, fascinating and occasionally hysterical memoir about
her time with Pere Ubu's Peter Laughner, the real founder of Punk Rock. Bertei’s story of the time they spent
together, and the unsentimental education Laughner bequeathed her, stands out as a classic of the genre.
Her prose is at once unsparing and lush, and never less than riveting. With a visionary's eye and the grace of a
poet, she brings this unsung, unlucky genius back to life. No reader will walk away unaffected from this
personal, devastating, and ultimately inspiring masterpiece."
— Jerry Stahl
“Adele Bertei is seriously brave and seemingly unafraid. What she has given us is a memoir of music and loss, a
story of legendary Cleveland musician Peter Laughner, of Pere Ubu and Rocket From the Tombs, who died at
24 in 1977. Laughner’s most successful lyric, “Ain’t it fun when you know you’re gonna die young” is the
soundtrack. Peter & The Wolves is the recounting of that trajectory. Painful, tender, naked, and yes, brave.”
— Dorothy Allison
“Adele Bertei's elegy for Peter Laughner evokes the lost world of rock and roll bohemia with heartbreaking
clarity, a recreation so vivid I felt like I had actually travelled back in time.”
— Mary Harron
“Midwestern 1970s punk was a true scene, largely undocumented. Adele Bertei gives us that story, drenched in
the power of music to bring us our people, and the power of those people to change our lives.”
— Michelle Tea
"Out of the raging heart of Adele Bertei, lone wolf Clevelander from the 70s falling in and out of reform schools
and dealing with 14-year-old madness of psychopathic American experience, who later ran to NYC to
become this amazing creature on stage banging the keys with the original Contortions, the most demonic and
savage no wave misfit ensemble to soundtrack the fucked up streets of NYC, comes Peter and the Wolves
(Adele Bertei hc), a long gestating, touching and tear-swallowing memoir of her time as Peter’s roommate,
speed-snorting buddy and young kid dyke discovering EVERYTHING that makes this Disneyland dementia worth
buying stereo equipment and bookshelves for. No matter how lost the most lost heart in rock and roll can drop,
there is an angel of transmission passing the fever of ecstatic rebel glory on to whomever has the magic. We
hear Peter recognizing Adele’s strum, her vocal sweetness on stage kicking real deal rock and roll ass and
inviting her IN. This is a book of love… all emanating from a strange and deliciously damaged encounter with
the incendiary light of Peter Laughner, an America genius of the rock and roll heart."
— Thurston Moore & Byron Coley
