VIA PRESS RELEASE | Smog Veil Records announces the release of Adele Bertei’s long out of print memoir, Peter And The Wolves. This vibrant and brave memoir recounts Bertei’s friendship and musical collaboration with Peter Laughner, Cleveland’s answer to all things underground and punk in the 1970s. The pair’s musical collaborative work appears in the Peter Laughner 5 LP box set (out now). This edition of the memoir features a new foreword, an additional epilogue by original Pere Ubu bassist Tim Wright, and recently discovered, never before published photographs. The book will be available internationally on November 10, 2020. An audio version (narrated by Bertei) is in the works.
Author and friend Luc Sante wrote “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.”
Readers will be enthralled by Bertei’s chapter describing her first visit to New York City, courtesy of Laughner, to visit his friend and their host, Lester Bangs (Creem magazine). The segment is a time capsule capturing not only the insane antics of this raucous trio but also the city itself.
“His intoxicating sprawls of sentences about music made me giddy. Peter’s journalism was decidedly gonzo and Bangsian, yet he had his own unique spin, enough to gain bard and mentor Lester’s respect and loyal friendship.” and, “My New York at dusk was a painting by Monet, the rain smearing misty circles of color around the glow of the streetlamps on Sixth Avenue. Our taxi pulled up in front of Lester’s place—an apartment above the unglamorous Gum Joy restaurant near the corner of 14th Street.”
Describing an intense and vibrant time and place, the people come alive in Bertei’s words, both visually and emotionally. In fact, the books seems to beg someone to film these stories – either for binge-worthy streaming or the big screen. Thurston Moore and Byron Coley of Bull Tongue put it in visceral terms calling the book “…a long gestating, touching and tear-swallowing memoir of her time as Peter’s roommate, speed-snorting buddy and young kid dyke discovering EVERYTHING…”
Adele Bertei is a poet, writer, actor, performer, singer, songwriter, and filmmaker. She entered the downtown New York scene of the late 1970s as organist for musical insurrectionists, the Contortions, of No New York fame. Bertei has appeared in lead roles in several indie films, most notably Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames, has toured with, written songs for, and recorded as a backing vocalist for artists as diverse as Tears for Fears, Thomas Dolby, Sandra Bernhard, Culture Club, Scritti Politti, Whitney Houston, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Sheena Easton, Oleta Adams, Lydia Lunch, the Pointer Sisters, and Sophie B. Hawkins.
Bertei’s first solo recording Build Me a Bridge on Geffen Records was a dance hit. Thomas Dolby’s “Hyperactive!” and Jellybean’s “Just a Mirage” were international pop hits due to Bertei’s featured vocals. She debuted new material at MoMA in 2017, at Club Salo in Paris, and in Florence, Italy at La Compagnia Cinema in 2018. Bertei’s book Why Labelle Matters will be published in 2021 by the University of Texas Press.
