The Absence (Paperback)

Budgie

ISBN 10: 1399621572 / ISBN 13: 9781399621571

Published by Orion Publishing Co, 2025

About this Item

Paperback. As a member of Big in Japan, The Slits and, most famously, Siouxsie and The Banshees and The Creatures, 'Budgie' became one of the era-defining drummers in the much-mythologised post punk scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Growing up in working class St Helens in the 1960s, Peter Clarke lost his mum as a young boy and it's her 'absence' that haunts the pages of this book. Disenchanted with art school inLiverpool, Peter became Budgie and befriended the likes of Jayne Casey, Holly Johnson, Pete Burns, Bill Drummond and other luminaires of the legendary Eric's' Club, before taking off for London and the big city heat of punk. Budgie's unique technique and musical sensitivity endeared him to the all-female group The Slits, who asked him to play on their debut album Cut. Subsequent touring with former members of the Sex Pistols and others from the post punk aristocracy firmly established Budgie's reputation for innovation. But the beating heart of this painfully honest and frank account of a life often sabotaged by substance abuse and alcoholism is, of course, his long-term position as Siouxsie and The Banshee's drummer and co-writer alongside ex-lover, and ex-wife, Siouxsie Sioux. In the Banshees and seminal side project The Creatures, their creative partnership produced some of the most seductive and celebrated pop music of the decade, from Juju, through A Kiss in the Dreamhouse to the salutary valedictory album, Peepshow. Eventually, their personal relationship started to fall apart, with inevitable consequences for both bands. The Absence is brave and unflinching in its dissection of how and why this happened. Angels emerged, many of them female, to show Budgie that a mother's lost love can be replaced. A man and musician whose creativity and singular style came to define the goth-pop 1980s as much as any other individual, Budgie's life is both fabulously glamorous and a tawdry cautionary tale. For the first time the story of this most exalted and mysterious of bands has been told by one who survived inside the belly of the beast. A classic postpunk memoir by a cult hero of the 80s - Budgie, the drummer in Siouxsie and the Banshees - with a twist Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781399621571

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Absence (Paperback)
• Publisher: Orion Publishing Co
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1399621572
• ISBN 13: 9781399621571
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

'This is not a musical memoir. It is a memoir about loss, grief, surviving abuse and recovery from addictions that just happens to have a musical career at its core. Siouxsie and The Banshees, The Creatures, The Slits, Big in Japan, and Spitfire Boys are all here to tell my story - I am not here to tell theirs. Against the backdrop of this life in music, I chart my relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, my struggle to make sense of what happened to me, and how it shaped the unrecognisable person I was becoming.'

This is the story of the most famous drummer to come out of Liverpool after Ringo Starr, Budgie. Growing up in the sixties in working class St Helens (of which there will be a portrait comparable to Bobby Gillespie's writing in Tenement Kid), Budgie's life was impacted by the loss of his mother as a young boy. Nourished and excited by rock and roll and punk, Budgie became the drummer in legendary Liverpool new wave outfit, Big in Japan (with Bill Drummond and Ian Broudie), then the only male member of the iconoclastic Slits alongside Ari-Up and Viv Albertine. In 1979 he joined Siouxsie and the Banshees, with whom he would co-create alongside Siouxsie, some of the most influential and groundbreaking music of the postpunk era. At this point Robert Smith of The Cure was also in the band. As the band became more and more successful both here, in the States and in Europe, Budgie found himself vulnerable to alcohol and other substance abuse problems; and as his relationship with Siouxsie crossed the border from creative to romantic, towards the end of the decade things grew darker between them and eventually fell apart.

The Absence documents the career and achievements of a postpunk hero but also the life of an addict unravelling in what would become an unhealthy and co-dependent relationship, initially in the Banshees and later in their subsequent and final creative pairing as The Creatures.