On first viewing I put it down pretty quickly, like it was burning hot, because, as a child, he wanted to know why his parents didn't spend an extra £600 on a nicer house on the other side of the road where he was raised. That had me screaming "Because in those days £600 was a fortune, you materialistic get!" So I put the book down and vowed not to pick it up again.
Anyway, while listening to Matthew Rudd's Q the 80s show on Sunday night I was reminded of the book when he played Duran Duran's second single, Careless Memories. So yesterday I thought I'd bestow the mighty honour of making In the Pleasure Groove by John Taylor my toilet book of choice.
Where to start? The flap on the inside cover perhaps? "In his frank, compelling autobiography John recounts the high points - hanging out with icons like Bowie, Warhol and even James Bond" Bit of a problem there, James Bond is a fictional character. Unless he means spending time with a bloke whose real name is James Bond, in which case that's not really impressive as the only famous James Bond is a fictional spy.
So because of the £600 incident I decided to skip his childhood and get to the bit where he's started playing the guitar and forming bands. To say it's been ghostwritten with a professional writer, even someone as inexpert as me can see the prose is terrible:
"Standing in front of my classmates, holding this weapon [a Telecaster copy], all the rules changed. I was no longer nerdy Nigel...I was the bomb"
"Music was moving on and we were moving with it. We were the zeitgeist"
"We retreated to the room above the toy shop and plotted our revenge"
"Inevitably the parties would meet; there were encounters at undesignated times in neutral demilitarised zones such as the dilapidated ground-floor kitchen where the washing-up never got done, and sneers and cigarette papers would be traded" Not doing the washing-up, now that's what I call rock 'n' roll.
"He [Roger Taylor, not the Queen one] is also the least moody guy I know. A nice yin to my yang."
"He was a sympathetic and encouraging producer, the midwife who would be responsible for the birth of UB40" I bet after hearing Red Red Wine he wishes he'd committed infanticide.
One of the glaring things though is that he seems the perfect encapsulation of an only child - a bit spoiled. He implores his parents, after being refused any chance of doing a BA, to let him concentrate on music for a year while he still lives in their house - while all the other new wave and punk bands he loved honed their talents in squats, seedy flats and communes. But in chapter 16, he throws all that in his parents' face when he decides to change his name from Nigel to John: "I needed to reinvent myself. Not be Mum and Dad's son" Not to be Mum and Dad's son while clearly still enjoying their hospitality. "It would take Mum years to get with the John plan" Nice. So he insisted that his mum called him John, what a slap in the face for her. And how is John any more of a rock 'n' roll name than Nigel? What about Rick or Garry or Mick? John, I ask you. The most common first name in Britain.
Anyway, I'm determined to battle on with it even though I don't think it's aimed at me. I seem to be an enthusiast for shite autobiogs - I've read Ken Bruce's (all juicy bits left out) and Richard Whiteley's (a son mysteriously appears with absolutely no reference to his mother).
5 comments:
I spend a lot of time on the road and the last few weeks I've been amusing myself with VH1's Classic Albums on Netflix (I may have hit a wall with these...Plastic Ono Band, last night...time for the fork).
The only one I've turned off midway through was Rio...mainly because they were preforming the songs as the doc went along. Ghastly.
Nigel...er John did mention that returning from their first American tour, his Dad still wouldn't let him watch what he wanted on TV.
Still, for all their Duran Duranishness they were first band that I got I really got into as a kid (I was 10 in 1983) and trying to find their records is what first led me to the record store that would help shape the next couple of decades for me...record buying, shows and that.
It was a shape that didn't include much room for Duran Duran but...Girls on Film and Planet Earth are still on my list.
Ha...read on. You can do it.
You need Nigel Havers' autobiography in your life. Rumour has it it was originally called "I'm A Total Cunt" but the publishers made him tone it down a bit.
Nobody called Nigel was EVER any good.
John, I ask you. Eh?
John M
Reading on, this book could be a whole series of blog posts, it's so ridiculous. "The poetry had arrived" is how Le Bon joining the band is described.
Looking at the setlist Nick Rhodes used to play as DJ in a nightclub - nearly every tracks a winner - it makes you wonder how their own music was so poor, given their influences.
The last autobio I read was Tony Iommi, ghost-written tripe. There was a lot of chapters but you could boil it down to 500 words...mostly concerning being mounted on coke from 1972 onwards, that's a lot of Snowblindness and precious little else.
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