Books (Englisch)
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19.49 €
Revolutionary Spirit : A Post-Punk Exorcism: The Teardrop Explodes, Care, The Wild Swans, And Beyond
Liverpool Post Punk - Book - by Paul Simpson
(2022)
Part
memoir, part social history, Revolutionary Spirit is the poignant,
often hilarious story of a cult Liverpool musician s scenic route to
fame and artistic validation, and marks the arrival of an original
literary voice. If Morrissey was the Oscar Wilde of the 1980s indie
scene, Simpson was its William Blake; a self-destructive genius so lost
in mystical visions of a new arcadia that he couldn t meet the rent.
Simpson s career begins alongside fellow Liverpool luminaries Ian
McCulloch, Bill Drummond, Will Sergeant, Pete Wylie, Pete Burns, and
Holly Johnson at the infamous Eric s club, where, in 1976, he finds
himself at the birth of the city s second great musical explosion.
He
co-founds and christens the neo-psychedelic pop group The Teardrop
Explodes with Julian Cope but walks out of the band just as they are
about to break big and goes to work in a tearoom instead. He then forms
The Wild Swans, the indie-band of choice for literary-minded teens in
the early 1980s, and Care with Ian Broudie of The Lightning Seeds,
sharing a flat with a seventeen-year-old Courtney Love along the way.
Marriage, fatherhood, tropical illness, and divorce follow, interspersed
with artistic collaborations with Bill Drummond and members of The
Brian Jonestown Massacre, among others.
Following
an onstage reunion with Cope at the Royal Festival Hall, Simpson
discovers that seven thousand miles away, in the Philippines, he is
considered a musical god. Presidential suites, armed-guards, police
escorts you couldn t make it up, and, incredibly, he doesn t need to.
Revolutionary Spirit is the story of a musician driven by an unerring
belief that artistic integrity will bring its own rewards.
It
concludes with an exorcism of sorts as Simpson finally rids himself of
the debilitating demon of psychological depression that has, from the
age of nine, run like malware in the background of his life.