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Oct 15, 2024 Web Exclusive By Frank Valish Photography by Abbey Raymonde

This year saw the long-awaited U.S. release of Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me from Success, the brilliantly written memoir from Lush singer and songwriter Miki Berenyi. With it, Berenyi lays bare not only the formation of Lush with co-founder Emma Anderson, the band’s ascendance to the height of shoegaze, and the band’s eventual (and somewhat erroneous) subsumption into the Britpop scene, but also and perhaps most stunningly, her family history and the childhood years that ultimately made her into who she became.

In excavating her history, done with the help of diaries, photo albums, and a whole host of archival material, Berenyi details the bicultural dynamics of her Hungarian father and Japanese actress mother but also the familial abuse she suffered throughout during her formative years. Although she has alluded to things in song throughout her career, Berenyi’s complicated youth has never been so shared as she does in Fingers Crossed.

The book is a stunning document with literary worth over and above a simple musician’s tale. In matter of fact, Fingers Crossed often reads like the most gripping of novels, making Berenyi’s accomplishment with the book so stunning.

Berenyi, who after a brief Lush reunion in the 2010s has moved on to creating music with Piroshka, the band she formed with her longtime romantic partner KJ “Moose” McKillop, and the Miki Berenyi Trio, took time to chat with Under the Radar about the genesis of her book, her complicated inter-band relationship with Anderson, the challenges she had with the male-dominated Britpop scene, and the courage it took to share the most difficult aspects of her past.

Frank Valish (Under the Radar): I first just wanted to ask when you made the decision to write the book and how long the process took.

I was asked to write it. So it’s not like I wrote it and then was looking for a publisher. Basically, I got approached by Peter Selby at Nine Eight Books. I’m thinking it was August of 2021, because the publisher was setting up Nine Eight as a music imprint and was looking for a roster, and he approached me. It was probably because I’d spent a few years doing loads of almost semi-autobiographical tweets in a desperate attempt to drum up some attention for Piroshka. People kept telling me, “Oh, you should write a book.” And I was like, “Yeah right.” There’s a big difference between doing a load of tweets and writing a fucking book. And when [Selby] approached me, I was like, “Absolutely no way,” that’s a ridiculous idea. And then by Christmas, the magazine I was working for was folding, and then the following March, with lockdown, I was like, “This is a terrible time to be looking for a job.” So I eventually caved and said, “Okay, I’ll give it a go.” Basically it took about another just over a year. I’m not an experienced writer, so I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, and I do remember sort of getting to around the deadline, it might of be the end of March 2022, and in February I was frantically emailing him going like, “I’m not being funny but I haven’t even fucking met Emma yet in this book.” So I got a bit of an extension, but for the last half of the book, I don’t think I left the house.

Did you use your diaries? Was that a jumping off point?

Yeah, I used everything. I went through all the diaries. Loads of letters. I used to keep a gig list of all the gigs I ever went to, never mind just Lush, so that was quite useful as as trigger, because I think the hardest part is probably getting the order of things. You have these memories and you think, “Was I 15 or 17?” Photo albums as well. I’ve got a whole wall of photo albums, and all the photos have script under them with little details. I am a bit of a hoarder and an archivist, and all the press clippings for Lush and everything. So I had a lot of stuff to trigger memories. I do get asked a lot, “God how do you remember all that childhood stuff so vividly,” and to be honest, I used to talk about it all the time. It’s not like something that was deeply buried, even some of the more alarming things were things that I definitely talked a lot to friends about or had talked to boyfriends about. My dad was a real talker as well, and we often disagreed on some of the details. It was just more getting the events in order. And there’s the thing where you think, “Oh this would make a really good bit,” and then you write it down and go, “That’s actually quite boring.” I don’t have vast experience as a writer to be able to think genuinely whether something will read really well on page until I’ve actually gone through the whole rigamarole of writing it down and then reading it and going, “No that’s crap actually.” So that’s quite time consuming.

The first part of the book, before and up to your birth and shortly thereafter, reads remarkably. I wondered how you got the information to paint such a detailed picture. That’s typically the part of the memoir that’s more of a slog to get through, and it wasn’t in your book.

I talked to my mom a lot. She did help. We talked a lot about Japan and when she first came to the UK. And my dad always talked a lot about all that stuff, about going to Tokyo. I’ve got his photographs from when he was there. I guess my parents were slightly unusual—well, obviously they were quite unusual—but they were unusual also in that even after they split up, they talked quite fondly about each other and with a lot of detail about how they first met and what that felt like. It was never really something that was hidden. And I think Yasuko [Miki’s mother] had a lot of the detail about her parents too and their background. We’re not really a massive family of secrets. It would probably be better if we were. It’s too much information. [Laughs]

I wonder how much trepidation there was about sharing certain things, obviously some of the childhood history stuff but also things that maybe you regretted or things that may have been embarrassing. Was there a thought going into this that you were necessarily going to be an open book for this or were there there places you just knew you weren’t going to go?

There were things that I left out. Eventually. Or I edited out. I thought there were certain things that painted a vivid picture, but it’s difficult. If you release certain facts, certain things, or certain details, I could see how people would run with that. Even some of the early relationships I had with men. I’m fine with it, but I can see how spelling it out too much would probably get them into a lot of trouble quite frankly, which wasn’t the intent. And it’s kind of interesting, with the Emma stuff, I get people, probably more friends of hers than Phil’s [Phil King, Lush bassist], who were like, “Oh my god, you really stuck the boot into Emma,” but I equally know people who have known her all her life, like school friends and all sorts of people, who actually say the opposite, like “Fuck me, you actually went really easy on Emma didn’t you?” There’s things about Emma that I could have put in. Not bad things, but things that are actually genuinely fascinating about her, but I think there’s a borderline between what’s your story and what’s their story. Like some of her background and stuff. I just thought, I’d love to put it in because it’s so interesting, but it’s not really my place. And because we don’t talk, it’s harder. It’s not like I can ring her up and be like, “Do you mind if I stick this in the book,” because the answer would just be no to everything. But there were things. I never really talked a lot about the child abuse when I was in the band. But I did write about it. There are songs. There are lyrics.

The stuff with Emma is fascinating to me, because she certainly comes off a certain way in the book, and I wondered how you balanced that. Whether there was a hesitation. Because the book paints a picture of you, but it necessarily also paints a picture of her in telling your story. So I wondered how much you grappled with how you were going to present the band relationship and your relationship with her, because she was going to come off a certain way.

I was really conscious when I got the offer for the book. I did let her know, and I said I’d send her a manuscript before publication. Primarily because I know how I’d feel if Emma or Phil were writing a book. I’d be thinking, “Oh shit what the fuck are they going to put in there?” And just so she wouldn’t have that anxiety. I’d lose sleep over something like that, so I totally got that. I did send her it, and she didn’t respond well. She wasn’t happy, and I get that. But I suspect she didn’t read the whole book. Which again I understand. Why would she? But the problem with doing the Emma Anderson search through the manuscript is that you don’t get the context. I am being a bit defensive here but I think if she’d have read how I wrote about everyone else, including myself, she might have understood that it’s just that kind of book. I’ve got John Best, who’s an ex boyfriend, he actually loved the book. But he was like, “Fuck me that was hard to take, some of your opinions.” And I said, “But you know the thing is they’re quite unfiltered. They are the feelings at the time. I can tell by the diaries what I was feeling. And it’s not a historical factual account. It’s my personal view.” So even when I slag off someone like, for example, Graham Coxon from Blur, there’s a million people you can talk to who would say he’s a fucking fantastic bloke. And I’m sure he is. He was just a bit of a prick to me. So that’s my opinion. And similarly with Emma. I could sit there and talk about, and I have talked about, how talented she was and how funny she is, how ambitious, how bright, there are all these benefits. But on a personal level, it was fucking hard work. And I’m sure she would say the same about me. It was a relationship that was never particularly warm. That was my take. And I was quite bruised by a lot of what went on between us in Lush. So I actually did hold back quite a bit. Because I didn’t want it to be, “Oh poor me, and she’s such a fucking bitch or whatever.” But I did have to get some of that across, because it’s at the heart of the story.

You do get a sense of her personality. I don’t know her, but you get a sense of your perception of her personality through your telling. Did she take umbrage to your just writing the book, or do you think she was was just concerned about just being portrayed in your light?

Look, it’s not an easy thing. It’s someone you have fallen out with, who you no longer talk to. And believe me, it’s not just a bit of like, “Oh well, it’s a bit of a spat or whatever.” Sides have been taken. I get fucking blanked by people in public as a result of what happened after that reunion. It’s quite unpleasant, and it was quite bitter. And I totally understand if that person writes about you, I would argue that it would be almost impossible to judge accurately whether that’s fair or not. There are people in the book, like Billy Childish, where I said, “Look, I can send you the pages.” He was like, “No no it’s fine, write what you’d like, I just don’t want to read it.” And I get that. And I did write back to say, “Look, it’s a memoir. It’s my opinion. And that’s how those things work.” I really did try. I did not set out to demonize, not her, not anyone actually. Even when I talk about someone like Howard [Gough, Lush’s manager]. I literally had people queuing up, going, “Oh my god I can’t wait to hear what you write about Howard.” But even that, I had to balance it. Because at the end of the day, I can sit there and slag him off, but we did choose to have him as a manager. There must have been something fucking good about him, or why in the hell would we have worked with him for three or four years or however long it was? I absolutely understand that it would have been bruising for her. But to be honest, i could have just written a fucking litany of compliments and mentioned one problem and she probably would have freaked out about that.

It certainly doesn’t read like you are just slinging shit, for lack of a better term.

Not to me. Like I’ve said a million times in these interviews, I’m not a big reader of rock bios. I get that people love all that oh-my-god-the-high-times-of-my-rock-and-roll-life. But it’s not interesting to me. I read much more fiction than I do nonfiction. and what I love about fiction is that it’s sometimes more true than nonfiction, in that it deals with relationships and brings characters to life and looks at how they play off of each other and all of that. And that’s what interested me about writing this book. I wanted people to be living, breathing, flawed human beings, not just a list of things I’ve done. That’s partly why I put it in the present tense. You’re going through this as you’re reading it. It’s not me looking back and listing the highs and lows. It’s meant to feel quite immersive.

That answers another of my questions, about your reading habits, but it also explains for me the reason the book read the way it did. It often reads like a novel, not like a rock biography, which are sometimes difficult to get through. They sometimes read like an extended Wikipedia entry.

I did read quite a few before I had to write this book. I was going through these books, like “Oh my god, what do other people do?” I thought it was quite notable that my interest started to wane after the teenage years. Once the fucking band gets going I’m actually quite bored, because it feels a bit box-ticking. Yes, of course it’s great that you headlined some stadium or you met fucking David Bowie or whatever the fuck you did, but you had to be there really, unless someone is an incredibly skilled writer and can really bring that to life. Even with a lot of the Lush part and the band stuff, I thought it was actually more interesting to write it for an audience with the idea in my head that this could be someone who knows absolutely nothing about the music industry, knows nothing about being in a band, and so I’m just going to explain the bits that I think would be interesting to that person. Rather than like what studio effect we used on “Superblast!,” or did we double track the vocals on whatever the fuck it was?

Was it difficult to go back and relive a lot of this stuff?

Yeah, some of it was. I think definitely going through all the diaries was, I think partly because I was never a diary writer who was just trying to keep a document. A lot of it was just reliving mental health madness. The diary was what I’d turn to if i was particularly upset or self-destructive or agonizing over things. So that’s a skewed thing in itself, because, my god, the teenage brain. I actually just felt quite sorry for this child. So that was hard, and I think, obviously Chris’ death [Chris Acland, Lush’s drummer, committed suicide in 1996], that was really fucking hard to write about, and genuinely just upsetting to go through it all. But I did feel quite immersed in going back to those times, and partly because what I really noticed is that I’d sit there and think, “I must write about whatever it is because that’s quite funny” and then I’d start writing it and I’d think, I don’t think that’s actually how it was. The problem is that when you tell these stories, they develop and you look a bit better or it’s a bit funnier than it actually was. When you actually go back and try to capture the drama of what happened, sometimes it’s quite traumatic. Because sometimes some fabulous event that should have been some pinnacle was actually sort of fraught with self-doubt and angst and god knows what and actually isn’t as simple or as pleasing as you’ve turned it into. So I did feel that I had to go back and relive it. Especially when you mix things together. When you think, “Oh yeah I was recording that, but oh god that’s when I was splitting up with that person and that was really hard, or Emma and I were going through a thing.” All these things kind of merge together.

So there are instances when you realized looking back at the source material that your memories might not have been as correct as you thought they were?

For instance, when people ask what it was like to record Lovelife. Usually in the context of the different Lush albums and the different producers we worked with, I’d go, “Yeah we did that with Pete Bartlett. It was really good fun. We got our mates in. Pete had known us for years, blah blah blah.” But that was exactly when I was splitting up with John Best, and actually I was fucking going mental. The other side of that is that I fucking hated the world I was in with this Britpop explosion and going to private drinking clubs and hanging out with fucking fashion designers and comedians, and I just thought it was awful. Things were concurrent. So yeah, it’s all very well saying I had a great time recording that album, but there’s another side to that.

Lastly, did Terence Trent D’Arby ever end up getting off his ass to talk to you? [Berenyi shares in her book a story about being at a festival at the height of Lush and being summoned by Terence Trent D’Arby’s assistant to come talk to D’Arby, who though sitting just across from her had gone through his assistant to request her presence. Of course, Berenyi demurs, telling the assistant to tell him to get off his ass to come talk to her himself if he wanted to talk to her.]

You know what, there was a bit afterward, where after everyone had played, there was a sort of bar area. I remember seeing Paul Weller walking past, and everyone was sort of hobnobbing. And he was actually chatting up some other girl, and I thought, “Well this is the point where I’m going to muscle in and sit down and say hello.” And he looked a little startled, but he was nice enough. I mean, what the fuck?

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Berenyi was one of the artists on the cover of our 20th Anniversary Issue.

Read our 2015 interview with Miki Berenyi and Emma Anderson of Lush on Lovelife and the final days of the band.

Read our 2015 interview with Lush on Split.

Read our 2016 interview with Lush on their reunion.

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