The Secret Life of a Teenage Punk Rocker: The Andy Blade Chronicles

Few knew that Blade, born Andy Radwan, had emerged from a very untypical background and that he would go on to embrace a very different lifestyle. This book puts the history-making punk period into the context of a very unusual life. It also offers a vivid insight into the London new wave scene from someone who was present at many of the epochal moments, rubbing shoulders with Johnny Rotten and many other movers and shakers. While Eater's original recorded legacy was limited to four singles ("Outside View" the most famous), an EP and an album, the fact the book's foreword has been provided by Henry Rollins of Black Flag fame is testament to their influence. Rollins says: "Andy Blade has gone to great lengths to tell the tale of how it went down and what happened afterwards with a steel trap memory and an alarming lack of restraint or self-congratulation. Punches are not pulled, and I'm sure there will be a few ruffled feathers." The Sid and Johnny stories are worth the price of admission on their own. People who are now acknowledged as Punk gods pass through the pages of this book. He was at shows that are the real stuff of legend, like the first ever UK appearance of the Ramones. A photo section includes previously unseen pictures of the band from Andy Blade's archives.

Andy Blade was the frontman of Eater, a London punk band of the mid 1970s perhaps best remembered for having an even more magnificently named (and pre-pubescent) drummer, one Dee Generate. They appeared on the seminal "Roxy, London WC2" album singing Alice Cooper's "Eighteen," title changed to "Fifteen" to reflect their schoolboy status.