’80s Hitmaker Holly Knight Reveals Her Reason for Writing
Holly Knight is exploring the meaning behind her life’s work in a new memoir, after writing ‘80s hits for Tina Turner, Bon Jovi, Kiss, Meat Loaf, Pat Benatar and many others.
Titled I Am the Warrior: My Crazy Life Writing the Hits and Rocking the MTV Eighties, and on sale now via Permuted Press, the book features a foreword by Turner and acts as a “provocative love letter to the ‘80s” and the MTV era, the publisher said in a statement. It explores the Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee’s experiences writing the hits “Love Is a Battlefield,” “The Best,” “Invincible,” “The Warrior” and “Better Be Good to Me,” plus her time with the rock icons of the decade.
“I’ve been fighting my whole life for the things that mattered to me,” Knight explained. “It started when I was a child, but as I got older, I was able to articulate in a more elegant and creative manner what was most important to me: independence, autonomy, expressing my own voice, anarchy in all its glory – and, essentially, telling people to fuck off in a clever way.” She admitted she’d “stumbled” into songwriting but “discovered that I was better at it than I thought I would be.”
The memoir details how she ran away from home at the age of 15, found her “tribe” in her first band, wound up playing on Kiss’ Unmasked album then became friends with Ozzy Osbourne, Steven Tyler and Rod Stewart, among others. “I was 25 when the [MTV] channel launched in 1981,” Knight said, “and it was the best thing that could’ve happened to me.”
In her foreword for I Am the Warrior, Turner says she “felt Holly’s words and music often synchronized with what I needed or wanted in that moment. Those songs have something special – a connection that deeply resonates with people around the globe.”
I Am the Warrior: My Crazy Life Writing the Hits and Rocking the MTV Eighties can be purchased via Amazon and other outlets.
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