Coal Black Mornings - Hardcover

Anderson, Brett

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1408710501 ISBN 13: 9781408710500

Publisher: Little, Brown UK, 2018

Synopsis

Brett Anderson came from a world impossibly distant from rock star success, and in Coal Black Mornings he traces the journey that took him from a childhood as 'a snotty, sniffy, slightly maudlin sort of boy raised on Salad Cream and milky tea and cheap meat' to becoming founder and lead singer of Suede.

Anderson grew up in Hayward's Heath on the grubby fringes of the Home Counties. As a teenager he clashed with his eccentric taxi-driving father (who would parade around their council house dressed as Lawrence of Arabia, air-conducting his favourite composers) and adored his beautiful, artistic mother. He brilliantly evokes the seventies, the suffocating discomfort of a very English kind of poverty and the burning need for escape that it breeds. Anderson charts the shabby romance of creativity as he travelled the tube in search of inspiration, fuelled by Marmite and nicotine, and Suede's rise from rehearsals in bedrooms, squats and pubs. And he catalogues the intense relationships that make and break bands as well as the devastating loss of his mother.

Coal Black Mornings is profoundly moving, funny and intense - a book which stands alongside the most emotionally truthful of personal stories.

About this title

About the Author

Brett Anderson is the founder and lead singer of Suede.

Review

a tough-minded and emotionally acute account of the Suede singer's childhood and teenage years, about his relationship with his parents and the route map that pop music provided for him to march away from his suburban origins―Herald

Coal Black Mornings is excellent: evocative, thoughtful and frank; an instant hit in a minor key. Anderson is particularly good on his unusual upbringing . . . as accomplished a writer of elegant prose as he was of narcotically enhanced lyrics about urban ennui―Neil Armstrong, Mail on Sunday

A remarkable feat, utterly true. This decade's Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius―Douglas Coupland, author of Generation X and Girlfriend in a Coma

A rich, sad and honest tale―Olivia Cole, GQ

An ineffably romantic coming-of-age story; a beautiful reminder of the magic that happens round the edges―Sunday Times

As an antidote to all the drug-fuelled destruction, I recommend Brett Anderson's elegant Coal Black Mornings, in which the Suede frontman looks back on his pre-fame days―Telegraph

Beautifully crafted and brilliantly well-written . . . his memoir is a thought-provoking meditation on how our childhoods form the people we become, as well as a love letter to London . . . The book is perfect as it is, but there's no question that we need a second volume―Anna van Praagh, Evening Standard

Coal Black Mornings is a triumph . . . a bracingly honest work raised way above the celeb book fray by Anderson's obvious talent for writing . . . revelatory and delivered with writerly panache―John Harris, Mojo

Fascinating . . . gorgeously written. On more than one occasion it made we well up . . . most certainly not just for the fan club―Guardian

Few rock memoirs are worthy of critical note. Brett Anderson's richly melancholic Coal Black Mornings was an exception. Eschewing the "coke and gold discs" template, the Suede singer recounts a childhood of bohemian poverty and traces his band's vivid prehistory―George Eaton, New Statesman

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown UK
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1408710501
• ISBN 13: 9781408710500
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224