Fried & Justified: Hits, Myths, Break-Ups and Breakdowns in the Record Business 1978-98

Mick Houghton

Softcover | 12.8 x 1.9 x 19.8 cm | 300 pp

Faber & Faber | 2019 | 9780571336838

The list of bands and artists Mick Houghton worked with in an illustrious career in the music business reads like a Who's Who of some of the greatest, most influential and downright dysfunctional cult groups of the post-punk era and beyond - Ramones, Talking Heads, The Undertones, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Felt, Sonic Youth, The Wedding Present, Spiritualized and Elastica among them. Often judiciously (or unintentionally) sidestepping the major trends in music - baggy, grunge and Britpop - his reputation for attracting outsiders led to him working with artists as disparate as Sun Ra, Andrew Oldham, Ken Kesey, Bert Jansch, Stereolab, Mercury Rev and Gorky's Zygotic Mynci.

But the three acts Mick is most closely identified with are Echo & the Bunnymen, Julian Cope (and the Teardrop Explodes) and the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu/KLF in all their guises. Between them, these three played a significant role in shaping the musical landscape of the eighties and nineties, and - as confidant and co-conspirator - Mick was with their chorus along the way, carefully navigating the minefield of rivalries and contrasting fortunes. It is Mick's indefatigable belief that it was always the music that came first, and it is his knack of attracting so-called difficult and troubled artists that makes Fried & Justified such an amusing, honest and insightful tale.

'A celebration of life on the musical margins. . .As parallel histories of the UK alternative scene go, this one leaves them all behind.' Uncut

'An engaging, even epochal, book.' Mojo

'Entertaining...recalls twenty heady years at the centre of the British music business.' Financial Times

'Egoless as the air conditioning, the Mick Houghton PR method permeated alternative rock 'n' roll for decades.' Julian Cope