It began with an outrageous press trip to New York to launch unknown rock band Brinsley Schwarz, which went disastrously wrong, and it went on to launch the careers of Ian Dury, Elvis Costello and Joe Strummer. The pub rock scene of the early 1970s was one of the most eventful and important in British music history. Guided by maverick operators such as Jake Riviera and Dave Robinson, who later founded the legendary label Stiff Records, this beery, bluesy scene gave rise to such electrifying acts as Kilburn and the High Roads, Eddie and the Hot Rods, Graham Parker and the Rumour, Dr Feelgood and Elvis Costello and the Attractions - and led directly and organically to the cultural explosion that was punk. Featuring a wealth of anecdotes from Costello, Dury, Nick Lowe and all of the defiantly anti-showbiz scene's major names, this book offers an account of a crucial seven-year period in British rock history.
