ERIC GOULDEN

Originally Published in 2003 by Do Not Press, this page flipper celebrates its 21st birthday with a new foreword by Eric himself.

“I didn’t actually want to write a music biography. There was a story to be told, but it wasn’t the tale of the meteoric rise and demise of Wreckless Eric. I was more concerned with my upbringing, the social background that shaped me and lead to this meteoric rise and demise. And I wanted to write about what happens after the firework fizzles out.”

In 'A Dysfunctional Success', Eric Goulden writes with an acute eye for detail about growing up in the 60s and 70s in suburban South East England, discovering music and girls; life as an art student in the frozen north eastern town of Hull; the formation and dissolution of bands with desperate equipment, a home- made ethos and not much idea; his move to London in 1976 and subsequent recording debut on the newly formed Stiff Record label.

This is an honest coming of age story from both sides of instant pop success: bands, squalid flats, menial jobs, making records, the rise to the point of fame and falling off into poverty and alcoholism in Thatcher's Britain, where Goulden ultimately survived the 1980’s to achieve his own kind of success. Coming from a time when pop stars telling their own hard stories was a comparative rarity, 'A Dysfunctional Success' rings as true today as it did when it was originally published twenty-one years ago.

"I think I was hoping for insight into the early Stiff Records days, which I didn't get. What I got was much better, and a great deal more interesting: a shambling, acutely observed, very funny-sad-true-sharp autobiography…” - Neil Gaiman