Search Results for:

CONSTABLE

Cover of To Hell With Poverty! : A Class Act: Inside The Gang Of Four by Jon King.

Jon King

To Hell With Poverty! : A Class Act: Inside The Gang Of Four

Constable

    TO HELL WITH POVERTY! documents Jon King's story from a South London slum and impoverished working-class background to international success as core musician, lyricist, writer, and producer in legendary post-punk/funk band Gang of Four. The reader is taken on an episodic and kaleidoscopic journey full of adventures from childhood to the end of Gang of Four's 'golden period' in 1984. Thrown off Top of the Pops, truncheoned by police at an anti-Nazi rally, being at the heart of Leeds music scene and the UK post-punk movement in the 1970s, fraternising with Hell's Angels and other undesirables, supported by bands like REM and playing with the likes of the Police and Talking Heads, King's times with Gang of Four are rich with stories.


    [ + ]
    [ - ]
    Cover of Bunnyman : A Memoir by Will Sergeant.

    Will Sergeant

    Bunnyman : A Memoir

    Constable

      Growing up in Liverpool in the 1960s and '70s, when skinheads, football violence and fear of just about everything was the natural order of things, a young Will Sergeant found the emerging punk scene provided a shimmer of hope amongst a crumbling city still reeling from the destruction of the Second World War. From school-day horrors and mud flinging fun to nights at Liverpool's punk club, Eric's, Sergeant was fuelled by and thrived on music.

      It was this devotion that led to the birth of the Bunnymen, to the days when he and Ian McCulloch would muck around with reel-to-reel recordings of song ideas in the back parlour of his parents' council estate house, and to finding a community - friends, enemies and many in between - with those who would become post-punk royalty from the likes of Dead or Alive, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and the Teardrop Explodes to name a few.

      It was an uphill struggle to carve their name in the history of Liverpool music, but Echo and the Bunnymen became iconic, with songs like 'Lips Like Sugar,' 'The Cutter' and 'The Killing Moon'. By turns wry, explicit and profound, Bunnyman reveals what it was really like to be part of one of the most important British bands of the 1980s.

      [ + ]
      [ - ]
      Cover of Echoes : A Memoir Continued... by Will Sergeant.

      Will Sergeant

      Echoes : A Memoir Continued...

      Constable

        Scenic Wye Valley isn't the typical place for a rock story to begin, but when Echo & the Bunnymen hit the studio to record their ground-breaking debut album, Crocodiles, it was anything but ordinary. The album was the making of the band - cultivating a cult following which would soon evolve into staggering mainstream success. Their lives would never be the same again.

        In Echoes, legendary guitarist and founding member of Echo & the Bunnymen, Will Sergeant, recounts the band's whirlwind rise to stardom with his trademark wryness and intelligence. Sharing never-before-told anecdotes - including the heady Rockfield Studio sessions and touring across the US, playing sold-out shows at Whisky a Go Go and experiencing the iconic New York club scene from dusk 'til dawn - and accompanied by snapshots of the cultural, social and political scene at the time, this is a memoir to remember.

        [ + ]
        [ - ]
        Cover of Limited Edition Of One by Steven Wilson & Mick Wall.

        Steven Wilson & Mick Wall

        Limited Edition Of One

        Constable

          The more I thought about it, the more I realised my career has been unusual. How did I manage to do everything wrong but still end up on the front cover of magazines, headlining world tours and achieving Top 5 albums? How did I attract such obsessive and fanatical fans, many of whom take everything I do or say very personally, which is simultaneously flattering but can also be tremendously frustrating? Even this I somehow cultivated without somehow meaning to. My accidental career.

          Limited Edition of One is unlike any other music book you will ever have read. Part the long-awaited memoir of Steven Wilson: whose celebrated band Porcupine Tree began as teenage fiction before unintentionally evolving into a reality that encompassed Grammy-nominated records and sold-out shows around the world, before he set out for an even more successful solo career. Part the story of a twenty-first century artist who achieved chart-topping mainstream success without ever becoming part of the mainstream.

          From Abba to Stockhausen, via a collection of conversations and thought pieces on the art of listening, the rules of collaboration, lists of lists, personal stories, professional adventurism (including food, film, TV, modern art), old school rock stardom, how to negotiate an obsessive fanbase and survive on social media, and dream-fever storytelling.

          [ + ]
          [ - ]

          E-newsletter —
          Sign up
          Back to top