The culty British singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock has had a long, fascinating career. He led the Soft Boys, the influential UK psych-punk band. He filmed a concert film with Jonathan Demme and then acted in a few other Demme movies. He served as a key inspiration for bands like R.E.M., who covered his song “Arms Of Love.” Along the way, Hitchcock also cranked out an insane number of glittering power pop nuggets without ever getting anywhere near mainstream stardom. Now, he’s telling a key part of his story in a new book.

Today, Robyn Hitchcock announced plans to publish his memoir 1967: How I Got There And Why I Never Left. The book won’t cover Hitchcock’s whole career. Instead, it tells the story of the epochal year when Hitchcock turned 14 and left home for the first time to take residence at the boarding school Winchester College. Over that year, Hitchcock met Brian Eno, heard people like Bob Dylan and Pink Floyd, did a whole lot of literal and figurative growing, and started to develop his own sensibility. Here’s what Hitchcock says about it:

1967 is the point when I and the world went through the change. It was all just blissful synchronicity as I grew nine inches in 15 months, just as Dylan was electrified and pop groups turned into rock bands. Arguably as much was lost as was gained, but at the same time, you had Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd and others producing music that couldn’t have even been described three years earlier. You had the Beatles wearing suits and ties, producing inaudible shows with tiny amplifiers, in many ways playing to the old rules of showbiz, and then suddenly up came Dylan with his thousand-watt PA and Jimi Hendrix with his Marshall stacks, and the whole thing erupted.

Sounds good! 1967: How I Got There And Why I Never Left is out 6/28 via Akashic Books.