The Secret Life of a Teenage Punk Rocker: The Andy Blade Chronicles

To be fair to Andy Blade, the lead singer with punk band Eater, became involved in a social scene that introduced him to several well known punk performers who had yet to make a name for themselves. The chapter featuring John Lydon, Jah Wobble and Lydon's future partner Nora, a german lady who seems to exercise great power over any male who crosses her path, is worth the price of the book alone.

Andy takes us on a roller coaster ride from the very beginnings of the punk scene in London in 1976. He meets several dysfunctional, desperate and drug addled characters along the way and indeed becomes one for awhile. It's like reading a punk rock version of 'Heart of Darkness', the further he goes into the heart of his story the more intriguing it becomes and there's a real twist in the tale at the end.

There's an amusing tale involving record producer Mickey Most and several well known punk heroes get a right slating from Andy. All the while Andy hangs on to the belief that his music will make him commercially famous one day, the irony being that he becomes less popular as the punk scene fades away.

This book inspired me to purchase Andy's 'From Planet Shop to Mental Shop' CD release in the early 1990s on Ebay for 75p plus postage. I really wanted to stick the boot in but the music contained within is excellent, very much in the vain of Peter Perrett from the Only Ones. He does a superb cover version of Sparks 'Without Using Hands' from their 'Indiscreet' album from 1975. It transpires that Andy is a great fan of Sparks but less so when he gets to actually interview them. Last but not least there is an amusing story involving Bob Dylan flying on a commercial flight and taking umbrage at people taking photos of him and asking for autographs.

Andy Blade may have only performed in a punk band that were not any major commercial success but the book he has written deserves to reach a much bigger audience, if only to serve at the pitfalls and pain that accompanies the search for success along the way. My only gripe is that he doesn't talk about any of his band's songs or give any details about them, but that apart this is essential reading matter for anyone interested in the punk scene in London that exploded in the late 1970s.


Refreshingly and often painfully honest!   September 21, 2005
6 out of 7 found this review helpful

This book is arguably the best overview of the early raw Punk scene. But it is not by some pretentious old fart who was either never there or only had a walk on part - this is by someone who saw it all from the inside as one of the players! But Andy manages to be both subjective and dispassionatly honest about it all and the full reality of it all is at times hilarious and at times very moving. It is full of surprisingly profound insights - not only into the Punk Scene - but matters such as childhood, growing up, relationships and even religion! Yet through it all Andy maintains a deliciously dry but razor sharp wit. It is of course a must for anyone interested in the Punk scene but is so much more than simply a book about Punk Rock. It is straight from the heart, well written and completely addictive from the first page.


eye-popping punk-abilia   September 12, 2005
A. Weston (Brighton, UK)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful

Andy Blade is an enormously fluent and diverting writer, although I suspect anyone with teenage children and musical aspirations might feel slightl wan at some of the not-so-innocent hijinks Andy and his peers got up to. It's sub-titled 'schoolboy by day and a low-rent punk rock star by night' and it runs a hilarious stop-start stream-of-consciousness race through the ramshackle days of early punk. A riot and riotous in equal parts. Obviously Blade (and his band Eater) crashed, burned and crashed again, but you get the distinct feeling that he somehow came out all right in the end: maybe that's the sop to the parents - it even seems that this terminal truant ended up as a teacher. Lots of incidental trivia (a great 'profound' encounter with Cat Stevens). I certainly hope Blade continues to write, because he is a natural.