FEATURE:
The Book I Read
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The Best Music and Music-Related Books of 2020
___________
EVERY year…
PHOTO CREDIT: @simon_noh/Unsplash
we see a lot of lists relating to the best albums and singles. I can understand why there is such fascination and debate, but the same attention and focus is not given to music books! I think a great music book can be really interesting, and this year has seen so many great and varied releases arrive. From biographies of artists to autobiographies that are hugely influenced by music, through to surveys of musical scenes, I have collected together the books that you will want to own. If you need ideas for early Christmas presents then there are some leads here that might be perfect…
Author: Pete Paphides
Release Date: 5th March
Publisher: Quercus Publishing
Synopsis:
“Do you sometimes feel like the music you're hearing is explaining your life to you?'
When Pete's parents moved from Cyprus to Birmingham in the 1960s in the hope of a better life, they had no money and only a little bit of English. They opened a fish-and-chip shop in Acocks Green. The Great Western Fish Bar is where Pete learned about coin-operated machines, male banter and Britishness.
Shy and introverted, Pete stopped speaking from age 4 to 7, and found refuge instead in the bittersweet embrace of pop songs, thanks to Top of the Pops and Dial-A-Disc. From Brotherhood of Man to UB40, from ABBA to The Police, music provided the safety net he needed to protect him from the tensions of his home life. It also helped him navigate his way around the challenges surrounding school, friendships and phobias such as visits to the barber, standing near tall buildings and Rod Hull and Emu.
With every passing year, his guilty secret became more horrifying to him: his parents were Greek, but all the things that excited him were British. And the engine of that realisation? 'Sugar Baby Love', 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart', 'Tragedy', 'Silly Games', 'Going Underground', 'Come On Eileen', and every other irresistibly thrilling chart hit blaring out of the chip shop radio.
Never have the trials and tribulations of growing up and the human need for a sense of belonging been so heart-breakingly and humorously depicted” – Waterstones
Buy: https://www.waterstones.com/book/broken-greek/pete-paphides/9781529404432
Review:
“The grown-up Paphides’s career is also invaluable when it comes to the inside track: as a youngster, he is convinced that the soul-baring The Winner Takes It All must have been written while Björn Ulvæus was drunk, because, as Paphides wonderfully puts it, “spillage on this scale almost never happens without the aid of a corkscrew”. Decades later, while interviewing Ulvæus, his hunch is confirmed.
If there’s a weak area of the book, it is in the rare moments when Paphides introduces non-music asides that involve a leap forward in time. There’s mention of Brexit and Boris Johnson, tangents that jar. But – to repurpose a joke from Paphides – it’s small fry. Because, as well as producing writing that conjures some visually stunning images (a mass of school pupils is a “murmuration of green blazers”), Paphides is funny: “I didn’t know who Lulu was, but I knew she was important, because like Sting, Odysseus and Kojak, she only had one name.”
Broken Greek isn’t all about the transcendent joy of discovering new bands. There are flashes of racism; and Paphides’s parents spend much of the time miserable, largely from working themselves too hard – in the case of Victoria, to the point of a hospital stay. But they clearly love their children (even if Dad isn’t always good at showing it) and incidents of kindness and friendship abound, despite economic and marital struggles.
Paphides points out, rightly, that great pop should require no effort from the listener. I don’t believe this is entirely true of literature, but this is a memoir that carries you along with all the breeziness and addictive properties of, appropriately, a Dexys Midnight Runners track. A smash hit” – The Guardian
It Takes Blood and Guts
Authors: Skin/Lucy O’Brien
Release Date: 24th September
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd
Synopsis:
“Charting the Skunk Anansie singer’s fascinating musical journey as well as her role as a trail-blazing social and cultural activist and a champion of LGBTQ+ rights, It Takes Blood and Guts is an extraordinary read from a unique talent.
'It's been a very difficult thing being a lead singer of a rock band looking like me and it still is. I have to say it's been a fight and it will always be a fight. That fight drives you and makes you want to work harder . . . It's not supposed to be easy, particularly if you're a woman, you're black or you are gay like me. You've got to keep moving forward, keep striving for everything you want to be. It's been a fight, and there has been a personal cost, but I wouldn't have done it any other way.'
Skin, the trail-blazing lead singer of multi-million-selling rock band Skunk Anansie, is a global female icon. As an incendiary live performer, she shatters preconceptions about race and gender. As an activist and inspirational role model she has been smashing through stereotypes for over twenty-five years. With her striking visual image and savagely poetic songs, Skin has been a groundbreaking influence both with Skunk Anansie and as a solo artist.
From her difficult childhood growing up in Brixton to forming Skunk Anansie in the sweat-drenched backrooms of London's pubs in the '90s, from the highs of headlining Glastonbury to the toll her solo career took on her personal life, Skin's life has been extraordinary. She also talks powerfully about her work as social and cultural activist, championing LGBTQ+ rights at a time when few artists were out and gay. Told with honesty and passion, this is the story of how a black, working-class girl with a vision fought poverty and prejudice to write songs, produce and front her own band, and become one of the most influential women in British rock” – Waterstones
Buy: https://www.waterstones.com/book/it-takes-blood-and-guts/skin/lucy-obrien/9781471194917
Review:
“In this frequently jaw-dropping memoir, Skin also recalls finding her voice. A blood-curdling scream let out by Judi Dench, a guest at her school, made for a fabulous early example of female catharsis. Later, when Skin turned on the stalker who had sexually assaulted her, shaming him at volume in a busy Brixton street, she overcame more than shyness.
Skunk Anansie’s songs were often visceral responses – to inequity, racism or abuse. Weak, from their first album, came out of the assault she sustained from a male partner, an experience she processed during her time in Middlesbrough, where she fell in with the local LGBTQ+ scene and the rape crisis centre.
“Yes it’s political,” went another song, “everything’s fucking political.” A funk-rock track, Intellectualise My Blackness, articulated Skin’s frustration at having had expectations of her ethnicity mansplained to her by some presumptuous berk.
Just as interesting as the glamorous highs is the detail of what a jobbing part-time icon does when her solo career doesn’t quite go supernova. She is particularly good on the importance of learning how all the gear works and how to talk to sound engineers in language they can understand. As with many musical autobiographies – Keith Richards’s is another – the landscape of Skin’s childhood and family has some of the most evocative writing.
That’s not to say this is a perfect read. It might have been smoother to have one voice throughout or a more regular interplay between Skin and co-author O’Brien.
But among the pleasures of this peek into an extraordinary life are the intriguing facts it pumps out. Rod Stewart ends up doing a cover of Weak. Skin’s anti-apartheid-era Brixton buddies end up running the Namibian stock exchange. An outraged Robbie Williams takes on racist Russian nightclub bouncers when they refuse Skin entry to the club.
We now have a lot of language – intersectionality, microaggressions – to describe many of the events in this memoir. However, nothing can really equal candid, first-hand experience, recounted matter of factly here. It would be instructive for anyone who thought they knew the story of the 90s to spend 300 pages in Skin’s skin” – The World News
Small Hours: The Long Night of John Martyn
Author: Graeme Thomson
Release Date: 9th July
Publisher: Omnibus Press
Synopsis:
“Did any musician in the Seventies fly so free as John Martyn did on Bless The Weather, Solid Air, Inside Out and One World? Did any fall so far?
Small Hours is an intimate, unflinching biography of one of the great maverick artists. Though Martyn never had a hit single, his extraordinary voice, innovative guitar playing and profoundly soulful songs secured his status as a much admired pioneer.
Covered by Eric Clapton, revered by Lee Scratch Perry, produced by Phil Collins, Martyn influenced several generations of musicians, but beneath the songs lay a complicated and volatile personality. He lived his life the same way he made music: improvising as he went; scattering brilliance, beauty, rage and destruction in his wake.
Drawing on almost 100 new interviews, Small Hours is a raw and utterly gripping account of sixty years of daredevil creativity, soaring highs and sometimes unconscionable lows” – Omnibus Press
Buy: https://omnibuspress.com/products/small-hours-the-long-night-of-john-martyn
Review:
“His ill-fated marriage to, and uneasy musical alliance with, Beverley Kutner preceded what was arguably Martyn’s most fruitful and creative period. Between the end of 1971 and the beginning of 1975 he released four spectacularly good albums – Bless The Weather, Solid Air, Inside Out, and Sunday’s Child — records that were innovative, exploratory, warm, containing the most beautifully tender, soulful songs and as far removed from ‘folk music’ as it’s possible for one man and a guitar to be. When I sat down with him that afternoon in 1974 Inside Out had not long been released, and Martyn was searching for a drummer to complement the instinctive musical empathy that he’d developed with bassist Danny Thompson so that he could perform his groundbreaking music live. I’m not sure he ever managed to assemble his perfect ensemble, but he and Thompson developed a profound musical and personal bond that resulted in many memorable performances — and perhaps an equal number of offstage incidents that set new standards in wild, destructive behaviour and alcoholic belligerence. Frustratingly, as the years rolled by, the albums became more and more patchy as it seems his behaviour and temperament became increasingly aggressive and, for friends and family, almost totally alienating. His treatment of Beverley and his children was especially cruel and vindictive, although despite subsequent up-and-down relationships and a seemingly more contented last few years of his life, he claims to have “never written a great song since Beverley finally left him”. I would agree. By the time he passed away in January 2009 of pneumonia and acute renal failure, he’d managed a certain degree of reconciliation with his children — though apparently having no regrets about the way he’d behaved or the emotional havoc he’d caused through the years.
There were many other colourful and significant people in Martyn’s turbulent life – Hamish Imlach, Nick Drake, Phil Collins, Ron Geesin, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry to name but a few; Thomson deftly weaves them into the narrative and by doing so places Martyn and his music in context. His peers were undoubtedly in awe of him and his talent. That he never really achieved the degree of universal recognition that his music deserved remains a mystery to me and I have to say that, thankfully, despite the plethora of awful, wince-inducing anecdotes, my love of his very best music has never waned. So I was greatly looking forward to this book and am grateful to Graeme Thomson for telling Martyn’s story with incisiveness, compassion and even-handedness. Small Hours is the perfectly balanced book that John Martyn, his music, and the people who knew him, deserve” – Caught by the River
Hey Hi Hello: Five Decades of Pop Culture from Britain's First Female DJ
Author: Annie Nightingale
Release Date: 3rd September
Publisher: Orion Publishing Co
Synopsis:
“Hey Hi Hello is a greeting we have all become familiar with, as Annie Nightingale cues up another show on Radio One. Always in tune with the nation's taste, yet effortlessly one step ahead for more than five decades, in this book Annie digs deep into her crate of memories, experiences and encounters to deliver an account of a life lived on the frontiers of pop cultural innovation.
As a dj and broadcaster on radio, tv and the live music scene, Annie has been an invigorating and necessarily disruptive force, working within the establishment but never playing by the rules. She walked in the door at Radio One as a rebel, its first female broadcaster, in 1970. Fifty years later she became the station's first CBE in the New Year's Honours List; still a vital force in British music, a dj and tastemaker who commands the respect of artists, listeners and peers across the world.
Hey Hi Hello tells the story of those early, intimidating days at Radio One, the Ground Zero moment of punk and the epiphanies that arrived in the late 80s with the arrival of acid house and the Second Summer of Love. It includes faithfully reproduced and never before seen encounters with Bob Marley, Marc Bolan, The Beatles and bang-up-to-date interviews with Little Simz and Billie Eilish.
Funny, warm and candid to a fault, Annie Nightingale's memoir is driven by the righteous energy of discovery and passion for music. It is a portrait of an artist without whom the past fifty years of British culture would have looked very different indeed” – Waterstones
Buy: https://www.waterstones.com/book/hey-hi-hello/annie-nightingale/9781474620154
Review:
“Do you want life advice from Annie Nightingale? Who wouldn’t? The book is also filled with maxims from the world-class DJ. Here’s a small sampling to help get you through the day:
“If there’s somewhere you want to be, circle your target.”
“You cannot live your life the way others decide you should.”
“Don’t be late. Don’t ever, ever be late. Don’t even think it’s all right to be on time. On time can slip into being not on time so easily. There could be too many people queuing for the lift. There could be a delay in checking through security. Unforeseeable hazards can transform you from being Cinderella arriving via glass coach, in a shimmering ball gown, back into the shrivelling pumpkin.”
“[W]hile it’s great to have a role model, best not to copy. Or pick up too many similar mannerisms of your favourite star. That’s a lesson even The Beatles had to learn . . . . You being you, believe it or not, is . . . enough.”
“The music must never stop.”
Absolutely, take Nightingale’s words of wisdom to heart. But perhaps even more, view her career and her life’s work as a potent example to live by. In a delightfully pithy manner, Nightingale serves up a middle finger to sexism in music and broadcasting. Nightingale asks rhetorically, in the voice of all those naysayers, “Why would a woman want to be a DJ?” Well, she answers, “I want to be a DJ, because I figure it’s the best job in the world!” When someone suggests, “you can’t do this job because you’re a woman,” Nightingale responds with a simple yet powerful twenty-first century text message: “WTF?” And to the idea that women should strive for “symbols of some kind of domestic utopian paradise,” Nightingale replies, “no fucking way.”
If 2020 has you down, take pleasure and power in Annie Nightingale’s memoir. And when you finish the book, just turn on the radio” – Louder Than War
Resistance: A Songwriter's Story of Hope, Change and Courage
Author: Tori Amos
Release Date: 5th May
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Synopsis:
“Since the release of her first, career-defining solo album Little Earthquakes, Tori Amos has been one of the music industry's most enduring and ingenious artists. From her unnerving depiction of sexual assault in 'Me and a Gun' to her post-9/11 album Scarlet's Walk, to her latest album Native Invader, her work has never shied away from combining the personal with the political.
Amos was a teenager when she began playing piano for the politically powerful at hotel bars in Washington, D.C., and her story continues from her time as a hungry artist in Los Angeles to the subsequent three decades of her formidable music career. Amos explains how she managed to create meaningful, politically resonant work against patriarchal power structures - and how her proud declarations of feminism and her fight for the marginalised always proved to be her guiding light. She teaches readers to engage with intention in this tumultuous global climate and speaks directly to supporters of #MeToo and Time's Up, as well as to young people fighting for their rights and visibility in the world.
Filled with compassionate guidance and actionable advice - and using some of the most powerful, political songs in Amos's canon - Resistance is for readers determined to steer the world back in the right direction” – Waterstones
Buy: https://www.waterstones.com/book/resistance/tori-amos/9781529325607
Review:
“Like extensive sleeve notes in a lavish box set, Tori Amos’s second book uses songs from her back catalogue – the lyrics are transcribed at the start of each chapter – as starting points for stories of “hope, change and courage”. So Resistance is less an explanation of what her songs were about than a reflection on what they mean to her now, resulting in a tale of politics, feminism and equality. There are a few too many discussions with her muses, but Resistance reinforces Amos’s position as one of pop’s more thoughtful songwriters” – The Guardian
Overpaid, Oversexed and Over There: How a Few Skinny Brits with Bad Teeth Rocked America
Author: David Hepworth
Release Date: 17th September
Publisher: Transworld Publishers Ltd
Synopsis:
“The Beatles landing in New York in February 1964 was the opening shot in a cultural revolution nobody predicted. Suddenly the youth of the richest, most powerful nation on earth was trying to emulate the music, manners and the modes of a rainy island that had recently fallen on hard times.
The resulting fusion of American can-do and British fuck-you didn't just lead to rock and roll's most resonant music. It ushered in a golden era when a generation of kids born in ration card Britain, who had grown up with their nose pressed against the window of America's plenty, were invited to wallow in their big neighbour's largesse.
It deals with a time when everything that was being done - from the Beatles playing Shea Stadium to the Rolling Stones at Altamont, from the Who performing their rock opera at the Metropolitan Opera House to David Bowie touching down in the USA for the first time with a couple of gowns in his luggage - was being done for the very first time.
Rock and roll would never be quite so exciting again” – Waterstones
Buy: https://www.waterstones.com/book/overpaid-oversexed-and-over-there/david-hepworth/9781787632769
Review:
“Frequently the hottest British acts got nowhere in America. Roxy Music were too arch, Marc Bolan too unprofessional, the Sex Pistols too confrontational, Oasis too belligerent. Then there were the American bands all but ignored in the States and lauded in Britain, like the Stooges and the Ramones. All of this illustrates the fundamental difference between the countries, which is at the heart of Hepworth’s entertaining account. While Britain appreciates irony, rebellion and underdog spirit, America rewards hard work, sincerity and, more than anything, idealism. Perhaps that is why the two countries will never fully understand each other, musically speaking.
“It’s my ambition to travel to America and give it what it considers it wants and needs,” said the lead singer of an up-and-coming band in 1981, realising something few British bands did: that to become massive in the USA, you have to forget about “conquering” it and instead get in line with the American way of doing things. That was Bono of U2. And he’s Irish” – The Times
Stranger Than Kindness
Authors: Nick Cave/Darcey Steinke
Release Date: 23rd March
Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd
Synopsis:
“Stranger Than Kindness the book is available in standard and signed deluxe editions now here.
Stranger Than Kindness is a journey in images and words into the creative world of musician and storyteller Nick Cave.
This highly collectible book invites the reader into the innermost core of the creative process and paves the way for an entirely new and intimate meeting with the artist, presenting Cave’s life, work and inspiration and exploring his many real and imagined universes.
It features full colour reproductions of original artwork, handwritten lyrics, photographs and collected personal artefacts along with commentary and meditations from Nick Cave, Janine Barrand and Darcey Steinke.
Stranger Than Kindness asks what shapes our lives and makes us who we are, and celebrates the curiosity and power of the creative spirit.
The book has been developed and curated by Nick Cave in collaboration with Christina Back. The images were selected from ‘Stranger Than Kindness: The Nick Cave Exhibition’, opening at the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen later this year” – Nick Cave.com
Buy: https://www.waterstones.com/book/stranger-than-kindness/nick-cave/9781838852245
Review:
“Magnificent . . . A visual history of Cave's life, it's annotated by him with the same warmth and wit that have made his Red Hand Files series of letters to his fans so special. As for the images, they give more insight into the workings of his mind than any interview could . . . Darcey Steinke [has] written a fascinating and scholarly essay on Cave's work that sets him alongside some of literature's greatest figures . . . Exhaustive, gorgeous and thoughtful, this book of treasures will delight and inspire any admirer of Cave's work – Classic Rock
Larger Than Life: A History of Boy Bands from NKOTB to BTS
Author: Maria Sherman
Release Date: 21st July
Publisher: Running Press Book Publishers
Synopsis:
“This nostalgic, fully-illustrated history of boy bands — written by culture critic and boy band stan Maria Sherman — is a must-have for diehard fans of the genre and beyond.
The music, the fans, the choreography, the clothes, the merch, the hair. Long after Beatlemania came and went, a new unstoppable boy band era emerged. Fueled by good looks and even greater hooks, the pop phenomenon that dominated the '80s, '90s, and 2000s has left a long-lasting mark on culture, and it's time we celebrate it. Written by super fan Maria Sherman for stans and curious parties alike, Larger Than Life is the definitive guide to boy bands, delivered with a mix of serious obsession and tongue-in-cheek humor.
Larger Than Life begins with a brief history of male vocal groups, spotlighting The Beatles, the Jackson 5, and Menudo before diving into the building blocks of these beloved acts in "Boy Bands 101." She also focuses on artists like New Edition, New Kids on the Block, Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, One Direction, and BTS before ending with an interrogation into the future of boy bands. Included throughout are Tiger Beat-inspired illustrations, capsule histories of the swoon-iest groups, in-depth investigations into one-hit wonders, and sidebars dedicated to conspiracy theories, dating, in-fighting, haters, fan fiction, fashion (Justin and Britney in denim, of course), and so much more.
Informative, affectionate, funny, and never, ever fan-shaming, Larger Than Life is the first and only text of its kind: the ultimate celebration of boy bands and proof that this once maligned music can never go unappreciated” – Barnes & Noble
Buy: https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/maria-sherman/larger-than-life/9780762468911/
Review:
“Larger Than Life’s real strength is its recognition that boy bands, like many cultural entities, exist at the intersection of multiple overlapping and conflicting forces. Sherman moves through a myriad of lenses: gender, race, labor, globalization. “Boy bands should unionize,” she jokes while discussing exploitative label/manager-artist agreements, a recurring theme. She credits Motown Records’ Berry Gordy for pioneering the streamlined, factory-style system upon which the boy-band industry was built, and explains how Boston’s Racial Imbalance Act—which mandated desegregation through busing—exposed the rapping, breakdancing white boys in New Kids on the Block to Black music. She also details how the squeaky-clean images of Disney Channel stars, like the purity ring-wearing Jonas Brothers, were shaped by a conservative, abstinence-only agenda. But sometimes the intensity of Sherman’s assertions—which match fans’ playfully hyperbolic diction—can obscure more the subtle dynamics that she’s teasing out” – Pitchfork
Glitter Up the Dark: How Pop Music Broke the Binary
Author: Sasha Geffen
Release Date: 7th April
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Synopsis:
“Why has music so often served as an accomplice to transcendent expressions of gender? Why did the query "is he musical?" become code, in the twentieth century, for "is he gay?" Why is music so inherently queer? For Sasha Geffen, the answers lie, in part, in music's intrinsic quality of subliminal expression, which, through paradox and contradiction, allows rigid gender roles to fall away in a sensual and ambiguous exchange between performer and listener. Glitter Up the Dark traces the history of this gender fluidity in pop music from the early twentieth century to the present day.
Starting with early blues and the Beatles and continuing with performers such as David Bowie, Prince, Missy Elliot, and Frank Ocean, Geffen explores how artists have used music, fashion, language, and technology to break out of the confines mandated by gender essentialism and establish the voice as the primary expression of gender transgression. From glam rock and punk to disco, techno, and hip-hop, music helped set the stage for today's conversations about trans rights and recognition of nonbinary and third-gender identities. Glitter Up the Dark takes a long look back at the path that led here” – goodreads
Review:
“The literal voice is one of Geffen's recurring zones of fascination. From Little Richard to Donna Summer to Grimes, the author notes, artists have broken the binary by taking their voices to places where they can't be easily gendered — sometimes becoming more vulnerable, sometimes becoming less so and thus exercising a sort of personal boundary. That's the case with Grimes, notes Geffen, who was initially dismissed by male critics frustrated at how remote her floating voice seemed, how it "did not allow easy entry into her inner emotional state."
Another aspect of pop music that fascinates Geffen is the ways in which it's mediated by technology. Just as one can feel more authentically oneself when dressed in drag than one might when completely nude, artists can use technology to create dreamscapes that may sound "artificial" on the surface but that are, in a sense, more pure than an acoustic guitar could ever be.
Consider a pioneer of electronic music, Wendy Carlos. A trans woman, she wasn't completely out at the time of her game-changing release Switched-On Bach in 1968: released under the telling moniker Trans-Electronic Music Productions. Geffen points out that Carlos used a vocoder to create an entirely new sound for the human voice in the Beethoven movement she reworked for A Clockwork Orange: "The vocoder voice is not a union of two discrete elements. It's a third entity, the likes of which had never been heard before” – The Current
Confess
Author: Rob Halford
Release Date: 29th September
Publisher: Headline Publishing Group
Synopsis:
“Most priests take confessions. This one is giving his.
Rob Halford, front man of global iconic metal band Judas Priest, is a true 'Metal God'. Raised in Britain's hard-working heavy industrial heartland he and his music were forged in the Black Country. CONFESS, his full autobiography, is an unforgettable rock 'n' roll story - a journey from a Walsall council estate to musical fame via alcoholism, addiction, police cells, ill-starred sexual trysts and bleak personal tragedy, through to rehab, coming out, redemption... and finding love.
Now, he is telling his gospel truth.
Told with Halford's trademark self-deprecating, deadpan Black Country humour, CONFESS is the story of an extraordinary five decades in the music industry. It is also the tale of unlikely encounters with everybody from Superman to Andy Warhol, Madonna, Jack Nicholson and the Queen. More than anything else, it's a celebration of the fire and power of heavy metal” – Waterstones
Buy: https://www.waterstones.com/book/confess/rob-halford/9781472279507
Review:
“It’s not confined to Halford’s early life either. Detailing his struggles with being a gay man while fronting one of the world’s biggest bands is equally frustrating and heartbreaking. More than once I was screaming in my head “just tell them you’re gay, fuck the haters!” But hindsight is a wonderful way to make complex situations simplistic. Rob didn’t do that, and was never going too. As we find out he hates confrontation – sometimes to the detriment of his own career. This is a fascinating insight into a seemingly larger than life heavy metal icon. Watching Halford on stage it’s easy to get caught up in the theatre and see this omnipotent indestructible metal god, as it turns out he’s just like the rest of us. When I interviewed Rob, (revisit that here) I asked him about his mental health and what he did to stay healthy. He gave a very small insight into his daily regime, saying he has a set of tools he uses to get through. Little did I know what those tools were and what it’s like to survive each and every day as a former drug addict and alcoholic.
Rob also details the very public fight the band had against censorship lobby group the P.M.R.C (Parents Music Resource Center). Spoiler Alert: the P.M.R.C no longer exist, Judas Priest are still going strong! Halford wears the number three spot on the “Filthy Fifteen” for ‘Eat Me Alive’ as a badge of honour, and so he should. We also get a further insight into the equally ridiculous and tragic lawsuit over a teenager’s suicide – Judas Priest wearing suits to court, or as Rob put it “…a stupid circus” fighting the fight for music, metal and common-fucking-sense.
But the book is not all doom, gloom and Scarface amounts of cocaine, there are plenty of funny stories of life on the road, mishaps and mischief. Highlights and hilarity include a metal queen meeting The Queen, going gaga over Lady GaGa and learning to drive. This may be a cliché but this book will make you laugh out loud and cry the odd tear.
It’s Rob Halford, honest, raw and with sometimes a little bit too much glory hole detail. Confess might not win the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction but it will win the hearts of Judas Priest and music fans the world over” – Wall of Sound
Sweet Dreams: From Club Culture to Style Culture, the Story of the New Romantics
Author: Dylan Jones
Release Date: 1st October
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Synopsis:
“David Bowie. Culture Club. Wham!. Soft Cell. Duran Duran. Sade. Spandau Ballet. The Eurythmics... 'Who better to tell the story of the super-stylish New Romantic movement than GQ editor Jones, who lived through it?'i News, 75 Best New Books for Autumn 'Jones has finally produced the tribute that one of Britain's most culturally rich periods truly deserves.' Classic Pop ***** One of the most creative entrepreneurial periods since the Sixties, the era of the New Romantics grew out of the remnants of post-punk and developed quickly alongside club culture, ska, electronica, and goth. The scene had a huge influence on the growth of print and broadcast media, and was arguably one of the most bohemian environments of the late twentieth century. Not only did it visually define the decade, it was the catalyst for the Second British Invasion, when the US charts would be colonised by British pop music - making it one of the most powerful cultural exports since the Beatles. In Sweet Dreams, Dylan Jones charts the rise of the New Romantics through testimony from the people who lived it. For a while, Sweet Dreams were made of this” – Waterstones
Buy: https://www.waterstones.com/book/sweet-dreams/dylan-jones/9780571353439
Review:
“Sweet Dreams loses focus when the New Romantic bands become huge in the US. As Jones notes, their biggest successes came because they pursued the mainstream, rather than vice-versa. The shock of the new that accompanied the first wave of synthesiser-driven hits dissipates: none of the music sounds as groundbreaking or extraordinary as Boy George looks. Meanwhile, rather than engender flamboyant individualism, the style magazines start doing the opposite: reflecting a new conformity, a codified notion of sophistication involving mass consumption of “designer” goods. Jones seems to lose interest, pursuing other pop-cultural threads that don’t quite tie together, from Madonna and Prince to the launch of the Groucho Club, and Sweet Dreams starts feeling not unlike falling down an internet rabbit hole. You find yourself reading about Hall And Oates, a US pop-soul duo who have about as much to do with the New Romantics as the cast of Dad’s Army, thinking: how did I get here?
It pulls itself together at the end, with a final chapter that both recounts some bracing stories of the era’s movers and shakers in decline and reiterates Jones’s central argument about continued relevance. Some of the former are scarcely believable – one of the book’s protagonists goes from running an effortlessly hip nightclub to selling disposable lighters outside Queensway tube; another takes so many drugs he pulls all his own teeth out in an addled frenzy – but the latter feels pretty credible. It’s a little over-long and digressive, but you finish the book convinced its author has a point. Besides, even its flaws are in keeping with its subject. If Sweet Dreams is a bit much, well, so were the New Romantics” – The Guardian