[books 2014] Marc Almond's autobiography
Feb. 9th, 2014 04:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inulro6. Tainted Life by Marc Almond
Marc's autobiography, published way back in 1999!
It's very much a recently-out-of-rehab mea culpa.
It gets really repetitive.
Having said that, the parts about his childhood are pretty harrowing (domestic violence), and the art college/ university parts are interesting.
Marc studied at Leeds Polytechnic and a lot of myths about Soft Cell were still current when I was at Leeds University. I always thought I'd bought my copy of the 12-inch of Bedsitter in the cluster of streets (the Brudenells) where it was written, but it turns out the crappy accommodation that inspired that particular song was in Chapeltown. (Only Marc Almond could "accidentally" end up living in Chapeltown - it's nowhere near the unis, not in the student ghetto, and I suspect was known throughout the North of England for being a notorious red light district).
Also he was not as young as I thought when Soft Cell made it big - for some reason I thought he had never finished his degree due to being derailed by fame, but Soft Cell didn't even start going till after he graduated.
There are some well thought out passages about homophobia in the music industry and society in general, even coming from people who are ostensibly gay allies.
One for the fan-boys-and-girls only - it's certainly not *bad*, but there's far too much "I made a bad record because I was on drugs and couldn't say no to people. I should have learned", which fails to be followed up by learning.
Oh, and thanks very very much to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
girfan for tracking down a copy of it for me!
Marc's autobiography, published way back in 1999!
It's very much a recently-out-of-rehab mea culpa.
It gets really repetitive.
Having said that, the parts about his childhood are pretty harrowing (domestic violence), and the art college/ university parts are interesting.
Marc studied at Leeds Polytechnic and a lot of myths about Soft Cell were still current when I was at Leeds University. I always thought I'd bought my copy of the 12-inch of Bedsitter in the cluster of streets (the Brudenells) where it was written, but it turns out the crappy accommodation that inspired that particular song was in Chapeltown. (Only Marc Almond could "accidentally" end up living in Chapeltown - it's nowhere near the unis, not in the student ghetto, and I suspect was known throughout the North of England for being a notorious red light district).
Also he was not as young as I thought when Soft Cell made it big - for some reason I thought he had never finished his degree due to being derailed by fame, but Soft Cell didn't even start going till after he graduated.
There are some well thought out passages about homophobia in the music industry and society in general, even coming from people who are ostensibly gay allies.
One for the fan-boys-and-girls only - it's certainly not *bad*, but there's far too much "I made a bad record because I was on drugs and couldn't say no to people. I should have learned", which fails to be followed up by learning.
Oh, and thanks very very much to
girfan for tracking down a copy of it for me!
