The “Award Winning Biographer” issue
Note - there's an excerpt from my work-in-progress book The London Boys: The Teenage Dreams of David Bowie and Marc Bolan at the end of this newsletter. Feel free to skip straight there.
Well, here's a turn up, quite literally, for the books.
I won an award. Quite an important one. The Locus Awards, presented by the US sci-fi magazine Locus (obviously) have been running since the late 60s, and for those in the know are considered, along with the Nebulas and Hugos, as one of the most important gongs in nerddom. They're sort of the SAG Awards to the Hugos' Oscars (which I guess makes the Nebulas the Golden Globes? I'm not sure they'd thank me for that). Terry Pratchett, after many years of being ignored by American publishing, got his first Locus Award for The Wee Free Men in 2004. He went on to win six more. Now the book I wrote about Terry Pratchett has won a Locus and, to be honest ... it's all a bit overwhelming. And it took me completely by surprise.
Here's my speech:
(the organizers contacted me a few days before to say I was in the running and could I record something. I have my suspicions about that tbh – are there people out there who filmed acceptance speeches that will never be used? If so I feel really bad for them).
People say "oh I never do stuff expecting to get an award", and I used to think this was self-deprecating bollocks. When Taylor Swift writes a new album, she damn well expects a Grammy. When Spielberg makes a movie he know there's going to be an Oscar nod coming his way. They're not doing them, for the award, but there's a sense of entitlement that they'll probably get one. Except ... I did not write The Magic if Terry Pratchett to win awards. I genuinely didn't. I'm an unknown author sneaking an unofficial biography out with a small publishing house – you'd have to be mad to expect an award. The first I heard of it was a Google alert that told me that Locus had not only (favorably) reviewed my book, they'd added it to their "Must Read" list for 2020 and added it to the awards long-list. Naturally I assumed that's as far as it was going, and frankly I was happy with that. My US publisher is completely distinct to the UK one, and I'd barely had any contact with them so this all came out of nowhere. Next thing I know I'm in the top ten. And then the top three. At which point, because of the aforementioned request for an acceptance speech, I began to suspect I might actually have won. I had. I did.
I can't even begin to tell you what this means to me. I wrote in last month's newsletter about imposter syndrome, and how I struggle to accept I deserve things, and yet here was unarguable evidence of something I had done well. I could not have fluked or faked this. I couldn't have gotten lucky. I couldn't have been the fortunate recipient of an elaborate misunderstanding. I had written a good book and people had liked it. Despite feeling the fans in my mental mainframe whirring away to try to undermine this absolutely concrete evidence of my ability, I had to accept the truth for once. Until a little voice popped up and murmered quietly in my ear, "yeah ... but you'll never do it again". Brains are the WORST.
Stuff I've been writing this month
A fairly light month – I reviewed the satisfyingly Gary Newmany new Gary Numan album for The Quietus (which includes the story of why Gary told me to "f**ck off" on a cold January night in 2000), and that's all she wrote. I've been working on a fairly big piece for The Guardian, which I'd hoped would be ready by now, but it's grown with the telling and I've had to go back to the drawing board. It did involve me spending half an hour talking about telly with Russell T Davies though!
Mostly, though I've been trying to resist pitching freelance work to concentrate on writing book.
Book Updates! (bupdates?)
I'm very happy to report that The Magic of Terry Pratchett will be out on paperback in August, with a new, improved cover:
There's a few little tweaks to the text, partly to correct a couple of typos, partly to account for recent events. Typically the day I approved the new text, which said "There is as yet no news of a second season of Good Omens", Neil Gaiman announced a second season of Good Omens. Luckily we caught it in time. I'll have some pre-order links and signed copies and stuff by next month.
Manic Street Preachers: Album by Album is on course to make its October release. The book has now been typeset and is being proof read. I no-doubt delighted my editor by waiting until the typesetting had been done to drop an extra chapter on her, an epilogue based around my review of the up coming Manics album The Ultra Vivid Lament, without which the book would be rendered immediately out of date. It's worth it, I promise. I might even have pre-order links for that soon, and I'm having a good old think about the bonus content. You know I love me some bonus content.
The London Boys: The Teenage Dreams of David Bowie and Marc Bolan:
Despite this being a very Manics/Pratchett heavy month, this remains the thing that takes up the most brain space and sheer panic-inducing energy. This one is such a fine line to walk. I don't want to write a biography, because there are loads of those, I want to write a rock n' roll social history parable in which Marc and David are our guides. That's a tricky balance to get right. Sometimes I worry it reads too much like a straight biog, other times I feel like I'm writing a history book, and others it feels like a novel. It's definitely the trickiest project I've done. I owe it to the two boys to get it right. There's some behind the scenes stuff going on which is very exciting but which I CANNOT TELL YOU ABOUT, but it meant I had to write a full chapter-by-chapter detailed breakdown, and that more than anything has convinced me i'm on the right path. There's an excerpt at the end - see what you think.
The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing
My band, The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing, are rising from our nearly-two-year slumber. We've not played a public show since December 2019 (!) due to, ya know, all of this *gestures at the world*. But we're revving up again. We're playing the Camp Bestival festival on August 1st, and warming up for that with a show at The Black Heart in Camden, London on July 25. Currently government guidelines mean we can only sell 45 tickets for that, so obviously it's sold out, BUT ... if restrictions are lifted next week we'll be able to sell the other 120. We'll be premiering new songs, pulling out some old favorites and borrowing a drummer from the support band. Details here. Basically this is one of those “watch this space” deals. Honestly though, I cannot begin to tell you how excited I am to get back on stage with my buddies.
Sound and Vision
Nicoletta’s book, The Direction of Greater Courage is being published this month, and I can highly recommend you pre-order it to get her short memoir Those Nine Days which is one of the most extraordinary things I have ever read. Seriously, honestly, I cannot emphasise this enough. Link here: https://www.greatercourage.com/
Last week we went to see The new movie version of In The Heights, Lin Manuel Miranda’s breakthrough musical, and honestly I have not stopped playing the soundtrack. I got moderately obsessed with Hamilton last year (my god, THE WORDS), and though ITH is less focussed and less clever, it has a similarly irresistible feel. Honestly, it just is the summer.
Right, plenty to digest there I hope. Thanks to everyone who has supported me in becoming A FREAKING AWARD WINNING AUTHOR. Everyone who reads or replies to this mail means the world. And please do reply! It’s nice to hear from you! (Unless it’s to point out a typo).
let me know what think of the excerpt below!
Marc
EXCERPT FROM THE LONDON BOYS: The Teenage Dreams of David Bowie and Marc Bolan
©️Marc Burrows 2021
Please note, this is a work in progress draft and the finished result could look completely different. On that basis please do not share or copy this online. 1947
The London boys were born into a unique period of British history. Culturally, economically, socially, the decade that followed 1945 was a one of complete transition. The second world war had been all-consuming; the dominating fact of everyone’s lives for so long, that living in a dark, cold and oppressive era of restrictions and want had become second nature. For a while, a sense of hopefulness had pervaded the country as the war finally wound down and the bombs stopped, as loved ones returned, restrictions eased and rebuilding began. Clement Attlee’s Labour government ousted Churchill in the election of 1945 with a huge majority and a mandate of far-reaching social reform, contributing to the feel of a new broom sweeping away the Victorian hangover that had clung onto British society well into the inter-war era. The six long years of war felt like the pivot-point of the century: things couldn’t, and shouldn’t, be the same. The world had been reshaped, metaphorically, politically and indeed literally. That atmosphere couldn’t last.
This was ‘austerity Britain’, a country of thrift and restrictions that had sat on the doorstep of the most widespread and violent conflict the world had ever seen for six long years, and was left broken, exhausted, grieving. In his book Never Had It So Good the historian Dominic Sandbrook quotes one despairing housewife in 1946: ‘We won the war’, she says. ‘Why is it so much worse?’.
By 1947 the United Kingdom was in poor shape and spirits were low. Things hadn’t changed all that much. Money was scarce. Restrictions were necessary. The brave new world of social welfare had growing pains and unforeseen drawbacks. The end of hostilities in Europe brought immediate peace, but also came with the clang of the falling iron curtain and the first signs of a Cold War which would dominate geopolitics until the early 1990s began. Hitler was gone, but Stalin was probably more powerful than Hitler had ever been. The horrible new atomic weapons that had brought about Japanese surrender seemed ominous and terrifying. The relief of VE and VJ Day gave way to uncertainty and fear. The unity of purpose the push for victory created was gone. Britain was still living under wartime conditions but without a war to justify them.
The gloomy mood, however, would change. The 1950s was a time of cultural shifting and modernisation. Looking back from the 21st Century we have the benefit of seeing the whole picture, something only the most farsighted citizens of the post-war years could do. We know what’s on the horizon. We know about rock n’ roll, about The Beatles, about teenagers and televisions, about swinging London and Bobby Charlton and Carry On movies and ‘Space Oddity’ and ‘Ride A White Swan’. We know what’s coming. The peculiar mixture of oppression and poverty giving way to modernity and excitement created a flashpoint in youth culture. A unique node. The children born in 1947 were moulded in the spirit of that transition, becoming part of the fabric of that modern world as it took shape. It’s little wonder that so many of them would go on to impact and define that world so thoroughly. 1947 not only saw the birth of Bolan and Bowie, but also Elton John, David Essex, Queen’s Brian May, Steve Marriot of the Small Faces, Dave Davies of the Kinks, Ronnie Wood of the Faces and later the Rolling Stones, Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac, Brian Johnson of AC/DC and Greg Lake of Emerson, Lake and Palmer. A slightly older musical generation kick-started the rock revolutions of the 50s and 60s, but the class of ’47 shaped and defined so much of the popular culture that followed. They would, between them, own the 1970s. And it all began here, in an England that was broken, cold and miserable.
The Second World War had left London ravaged; pockmarked with bombsites, its population displaced. Across the city rows of terrace houses sported jagged spaces, like the gaps in an old man’s teeth. Two million of Britain’s homes had been destroyed in the Blitz. 80% of those were in the capital. Born just two years after the final attacks on London, both David and Marc had childhoods shaped literally by the aftermath of war. It was impossible to live in the city and not be close to the evidence of the German assaults, but Bowie and Bolan had it particularly bad. Marc hailed from East London, Stoke Newington, close enough to the Luftwaffe’s prime target of the Docklands to receive a particularly vicious hammering during the Blitz, and terrifyingly close to some of the most devastating rocket attacks of the war. To this day the nearby Walthamstow Marshes has a ‘Bomb Crater Pond’, after a V2 rocket blast gouged a sizeable hole in the ground which was left to gradually fill with water. The young Marc Bolan, like almost every child in the city, played in the wreckage of war.
Many of the bomb sites surrounding David Bowie’s childhood home in Brixton were the result of a particularly dubious bit of misdirection. In 1944 the Nazis had unveiled the V1 rocket; the ‘flying bomb’ nicknamed the ‘doodlebug’ by Londoners who were left terrified as they listened for its distinctive engine to cut out leaving the pilot-less plane to fall to earth and explode. Fearing the damage the new weapon could inflict on the city, officials hatched a plot to protect London’s most important zones. British double agents, operating behind enemy lines, fed misleading reports that the V1s were overshooting their targets. The Germans responded by shortening the range of the weapons, meaning valuable central London was spared the worst of the bombardment. The downside, of course, is that the doodlebugs invariably hit the mostly-working class southern parts of the city. It’s estimated that perhaps 2,000 lives were saved by the tactics, though that would be small comfort to the residents of those Lambeth streets disproportionately devastated by the attacks. The misinformation campaign was eventually discontinued due to the ethical concerns it raised, though not before significant damage had been done in Lewisham, Lambeth, Clapham, Camberwell, Battersea, Bermondsey and Brixton.