Last Orders at the Liars Bar: the Official Story of the Beautiful South - Softcover

Pattenden, Mike

3.85

54 ratings by Goodreads

9780575067394: Last Orders at the Liars Bar: the Official Story of the Beautiful South

Softcover

ISBN 10: 057506739X ISBN 13: 9780575067394

Publisher: Orion, 1999

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Since they formed in 1989, The Beautiful South have become on of the biggest selling acts in the UK. Their greatest hits album compilation was, for a while, the fastest selling release in the UK , and their album "Blue is the Colour" sold 1.5 million copies. They have also run up 17 hit singles. This book is the authorized story of The Beautiful South. Mike Pattenden, of "The Times", "Vox" and "Arena", has been granted access behind the scenes to the band themselves and their associates, both past and present, in order to tell the story of the last decade. From the early days of Norman Cook and The Housemartins, right up to the released of the new album in the autumn of of 1998; from Paul Heaton's outspoken left-wing politics with attitude to his twin obsessions of Sheffield United and Italian football; from the acrimonious split from Go! Discs to a profile of the city of Hull, its pubs, and its influence on the several members of the and who were born and bred there, "The Liar's Bar" is a definitive book about The Beautiful South.

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Review:

The Beautiful South, so the press release proclaims, are "the only 1 million-plus selling UK band not to have had a book written about them." It�s that kind of perverse underdog pride which characterises The Beautiful South: a low-key, resolutely unstarry band, springing from the defunct Housemartins, who have nonetheless placed 19 singles in the charts, and a copy of their greatest hits album in one in every seven UK households. But at last music journalist Mike Pattenden has blown their cover, putting The Beautiful South in print with this intriguing portrait.

Pattenden was commissioned to "establish a different perspective of the Band"--to tell us more than what we already knew, that they came from Hull, they were partial to a drink or two, and they wrote funny, ironic pop songs (songwriters Dave Rotheray and Paul Heaton were particularly irked by that "ironic" label). As Pattenden follows the band from booze-drenched gig to, erm, booze-drenched gig, his readers might be forgiven for gleaning little more. Hull, to which the band remain firmly committed, is clearly an abiding inspiration; drink is a sine qua non; and as for irony--well, judge for yourself. Interspersing his adventures with the band with comment from Billy Bragg, Norman Cook and others, Pattenden provides an intimate, even loving account of a strangely uncommunicative pop tribe. --Alan Stewart

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