LUNCH WITH THE WILD FRONTIERS
- A HISTORY OF BRITPOP AND EXCESS IN 13½ CHAPTERS
by PHILL SAVIDGE
The 2019 memoir about Britpop by someone who claimed to have influenced the birth of the movement, and met many artists linked to the genre and others active at the time, which might contain a few tidbits of interest:
"Phill Savidge is widely credited as being the main instigator of the Britpop music movement that swept the UK in the mid-1990s. Savidge was co-founder and head of legendary public relations company Savage & Best, the company that represented most of the artists associated with the scene, including Suede, Pulp, The Verve, Elastica, Kula Shaker, Spiritualized, Menswear, The Auteurs, and Black Box Recorder.
Savidge transitioned to female after the publication of her first book,
Lunch With The Wild Frontiers, and is now known as Jane Savidge. In
Lunch … she suggests that Britpop came about by accident because she refused to represent any American bands. She subsequently ended up with an extremely accessible, media-friendly roster that lived around the corner and included the most exciting press-worthy acts of the era.
Savidge’s unique experience at the epicentre of Britpop led to many intimate, not entirely self-congratulatory encounters with a who’s who of popular culture, including Brett Anderson, Damon Albarn, Roy Orbison, David Bowie, Joe Strummer, Lou Reed, Michael Barrymore, Richard Ashcroft, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Mick Jagger, George Lucas, Damien Hirst, and Dave Stewart, among others. But did she really Sellotape a cassette of Suede’s ‘Animal Nitrate’ single to a purple velvet cushion with a note that said ‘another great disappointment’ and then bike it to the
NME? And could she and Jarvis Cocker really have fallen out simply because a journalist thought she was more glamorous than the Pulp front man?
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to represent Hirst, Cocker, and The Verve in the same decade, and then wake up in bed with Keith Allen in the Ritz in Paris courtesy of Mohammed Al Fayed then you should read this book. Imagine David Sedaris with a hangover and an expense account and you’re halfway to appreciating the delinquent delights of
Lunch With The Wild Frontiers." -
http://jawbonepress.com/lunch-with-the-wild-frontiers/
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And another book on the way,
Adventures in Wonderland, by Paul Charles.
"Irishman
Paul Charles is one of the leading music agents on the planet. Over the past 40 years, he has worked with some of the biggest names in music, at different times managing the careers of Van Morrison, Ray Davies of The Kinks, Gerry Rafferty, The Waterboys and Dexys Midnight Runners, and launching Tanita Tikaram – the teenage star whose debut album sold almost 5 million copies – into the world.
In addition, he has been agent and confidante along the way to The Kinks, Robert Plant, Tom Waits, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Don McLean, Lonnie Donegan, Rory Gallagher, Marianne Faithfull, John Prine, Carly Simon, Jackson Browne, Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Christy Moore, Taj Mahal, Buzzcocks, The Undertones, Hothouse Flowers, The Blue Nile, Shakespears Sister, Ronnie Spector – and dozens more of modern music’s brightest stars.
In his role with the Asgard agency, he has also promoted shows featuring many of the leading artists in the world, including The Police, U2, Van Morrison, Dire Straits, Carole King, Meatloaf, David Gilmour, BB King, Emmylou Harris and John Lee Hooker.
Paul has also been involved since the early days with Glastonbury Festival, with his artists topping the bill on more than one occasion before he was invited by Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis to take on the daunting – and inspiring – task of booking the Acoustic Stage at the festival every year, a role he has carried out for the past 30 years.
Oh, and he is also a successful crime writer and a songwriter, whose work has ended up on albums by Kendrick Lamar (in his K.Dot guise), Talib Kweli and Norah Jones – as well as on the four original albums released by the Northern Irish band he started out with, Fruupp, and with whom he enjoyed the kind of mad adventures which only bands that fall just short of the big time have the very dubious pleasure of experiencing!
All of these extraordinary escapades, as well as his encounters with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Police, U2 and more, are brought together brilliantly in his marvellous new book
Adventures In Wonderland. A riveting memoir, it is the story of a music-mad kid from Magherafelt in Co. Derry, Northern Ireland who went on to work, and become friends, with many of his rock and roll idols...
Packed with jaw-dropping stories, including the time when he was almost burned alive along with his precious record collection, and pen pictures of the kind of stars we all want to know more about,
Adventures In Wonderland is also one of the most complete insights into the world – and the business – of music that you will ever encounter. It is a must-read for every music fan – and for students of how the world of rock ’n’ roll works alike."
A coveted appearance at the International Festival of Literature Dublin is among the highlights of a tour that kicks off in Walthamstow, London on 18 May –...
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