Great book even without the obvious Moz references.Recently I started reading the book 'Let the Right One In' by John Ajvide Lindqvist and was pleasantly surprised:
I've finished the book now, I loved it. One of my new favouritesGreat book even without the obvious Moz references.
(Parody diary in Private Eye UK)
Interesting. Pretty sad to read that the band were barely on speaking terms in '86 though.View attachment 87546
Live At the Brixton Academy: A Riotous Life in the Music Business (2014)
Very interesting book I've only just got round to - a host of bands feature.
Blurb:
"In 1982, aged twenty-three, Simon Parkes paid £1 for a virtually derelict building in Brixton. Over the next fifteen years he turned it into Britain's most iconic music venue. And now he's telling his story: full of fond - and wild - reminiscences of the famous musicians who played at the venue, including Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, Lou Reed, The Ramones, New Order, the Beastie Boys and The Smiths."
Main Smiths mention:
"Perhaps inevitably, the growing buzz about the Academy led to my first real disappointment in one of our gigs. I had been so excited when we booked The Smiths. I always thought of them as one of the truly original voices in British music. But when they actually came to play, the band was so riven with internal tensions that its members were barely speaking to each other. It was impossible to hide this animosity and emotional distance onstage, and the performance seemed to lack any real joy or defiance.
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‘Morrissey at his best, as a mercurial, prancing dandy’
Johny Marr and the boys more than made up for it a few months later, though. The Smiths came back for a second Academy show, this time with Artists against Apartheid. We were heavily involved with AAA, who had already done a storming gig with Madness a few months earlier, and this performance could not have been more different from the last. Morrissey was at his best as a mercurial, prancing dandy, spitting razor-sharp banter with the crowd. The band also seemed in high spirits, as if they were all in on some kind of joke that the rest of us didn’t get. During the encores there was the obligatory stage invasion, and, as fifty or so people danced onstage for the last song, the band tore through a version of their first ever single, ‘Hand in Glove’. That song ends with the line ‘I’ll probably never see you again’. No one listening that night in 1986 could have known just how apt a show-closer that would be. It was the last gig The Smiths ever played."
Worth a read.
FWD.