Bad Vibes: Britpop and my part in its downfall - Softcover

Haines, Luke

3.97

977 ratings by Goodreads

9780434018468: Bad Vibes: Britpop and my part in its downfall

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0434018465 ISBN 13: 9780434018468

Publisher: William Heinemann, 2009

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First, you fail. After four years of gigs no one attends, songs no one hears, perfect haircuts no one sees ... London in the late eighties - where the pubs still close in the afternoon and dance music rules - is no place for an avant-garde songwriter like Luke Haines to be. Luke Haines, after all, has never been to a rave. One near-death experience later and there's nothing left to lose. With just a ruined piano and a couple of cardboard boxes, you record a demo in your flat, form a new band and give it a pretentious name.

Forget Blur/Oasis and Cool Britannia, none of that actually happened. This is the real story of English Rock in the nineties. Luke Haines has the inside line: from the teenage rampage of the early tours with Suede, mainstream success in France and failure in America, to the break-up of The Auteurs, the death of Britpop (the idiot runt-child of all music genres) and the birth of strange and frightening new projects Baader Meinhof and Black Box Recorder. In scathing and worryingly funny prose, Haines presents the evidence: Pulp, Elastica, Iggy Pop, Kurt Cobain (and his hatred of mushrooms), and the dark studio magic of Steve Albini. Plus the sackings, the surreal self-medicating procedures, how to be a bad loser at the 1993 Mercury Music Prize, and what it's like to be attacked on stage by a vicious, drunken dwarf.

Bad Vibes is a pitch-black comic memoir from a legendary figure in the music world, variously described as pioneer, godfather or forgotten man of Britpop.

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Review:

"A compulsive read, part Oswald Spengler, part Spike Milligan, and very, very funny" (David Peace)

"'As acerbic and hilarious as you'd expect from a man who thought it completely reasonable to call a pop single "Unsolved Child Murder." Haines clearly relishes - and shines in - his role as the Ancient Mariner at the Britpop party.'" (John Niven, author of Kill Your Friends)

"A lavishly bitchy memoir packed with gripes, grievances and tall stories told at the expense of other more famous musicians...Haines has constructed a vivid literary persona for himself as the great, grumpy Nearly Man of 1990s rock...He pours endless scorn on his amiable peers, who bizarrely seem not to mind or even notice...Rock's misanthrope in excelsis." (Sunday Times)

"These recollections of a bitter former pop star could be mistaken for a great comic novel...Compelling...An entertaining read...Haines is as funny as he is grumpy...The formless unpredictable life of the minor rock musician, forever jetting about on unspecified "promotional" duties or being loaded on to a tour bus like cargo rather than talent, has rarely been captured so acutely...Bad Vibes, good book." (Independent on Sunday)

"Luke Haines was a delusional, cruel, pompous and arguably cloth-eared despot throughout the 90s. If he wasn't such a viciously funny writer, he'd have made an excellent music journalist...A beautifully acerbic and elegant portrayal of a committed misanthrope unleashing the titular bad vibes upon music business doofuses, from telling Chris Evans to fuck off to jumping off a 15-foot wall and breaking his ankles to get out of a European tour...What's not to love?" (Q Magazine (5 stars))

Book Description:

A blackly comic memoir from inside the British music scene in the 90s, by singer songwriter and Auteurs front man Luke Haines

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