SEX AND DRUGS AND ROCK’N ROLL
THE LIFE AND TIME OF IAN DURY
- Paperback
- Illustrated
- Width: 13 cm
- Weight: 500g
- Pages: 336
- Language: English
- Height: 20 cm
- Updated Edition
Ian Dury was a true original, a great artist, a poet, an actor and most of all, Ian Dury was an enigma. He always met life head on both in his relationships and in his music. This acclaimed biography not only celebrates his triumphs, it digs deep and chronicles some of his darker moments.
Author Richard Balls talked to over 50 of Dury’s friends as well as Dury himself shortly before his death. Dury’s extraordinary life was always a battle.
As rocker, lyricist, artist and actor he was unsentimental and uncompromising. As a man he was harder to fathom – until now. In this classic rock biography, the self -styled diamond geezer stands revealed as a real diamond after all.
This book offers an insight into a variety of worlds, harsh post-war schools for handicapped children…the fifties art school scene that would give rise to so many influential rockers, the ramshackle pub rock circuit of Kilburn and the Highroads and the Blockheads…plus a lucky dip of celebrities including Omar Shariff and Robert Mitchum to Jane Horrocks, Pete Blake and Bob Dylan.
This edition has been updated to cover the release of the biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, and includes original interviews with Oscar-winning actor Andy Serkis who starred as Dury in the film.
Many agree that Ian Dury was a genius. His lyrics were a combination of lyrical poetry, word play, observation of British everyday life, character sketches, and sexual humour:
“This is what we find … ‘(h)ome improvement expert Harold Hill of Harold Hill, Of do-it-yourself dexterity and double-glazing skill, Came home to find another gentleman’s kippers in the grill, So he sanded off his winkle with his Black & Decker drill.”
The song “Billericay Dickie” rhymes “I had a love affair with Nina, In the back of my Cortina” with “A seasoned-up hyena Could not have been more obscener”.
In early 1998 Dury reunited with the Blockheads to record the album Mr Love-Pants.
In May, Ian Dury & the Blockheads hit the road again, with Dylan Howe replacing Steven Monti on drums. Davey Payne left the group permanently in August and was replaced by Gilad Atzmon; this line-up gigged throughout 1999, culminating in their last performance with Ian Dury on 6 February 2000 at the London Palladium.
Ian Dury died of metastatic colorectal cancer on 27 March 2000, aged 57 and as per Ian Dury’s wishes, 50p from every copy of this book has been donated to Cancer BACUP.
An obituary in The Guardian read: “one of few true originals of the English music scene”. Suggs, the singer of Madness, described Ian Dury as “possibly the finest lyricist we’ve seen.”…we agree.
This biography chronicles the life and times of an extraordinary man.
Sex and Drugs and Rock’n Roll is an exceptional read, no coffee table should be without a copy and you can buy it right here for less than a packet of cigarettes!
Our Farnham, who art in Hendon
Harrow be Thy name.
Thy Kingston come; thy Wimbledon,
In Erith as it is in Hendon.
Give us this day our daily Brent
And forgive us our Westminster
As we forgive those who Westminster against us.
And lead us not into Thames Ditton
But deliver us from Yeovil.
For Thine is the Kingston, the Purley and the Crawley,
For Esher and Esher.
Crouch End.
Here is a taste of Ian Dury featuring his controversial song, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll . . .
