How to Survive on Tour with a Rock Band

Jan 8, 2025 2:59 PM

Author:Stuart Maconie

The Lives Less Ordinary series brings you the most exciting, adventurous and entertaining true-life writing that is out there, for men who are time-poor but want the best. Lives Less Ordinary drops you into extreme first-hand accounts of human experience, whether that's the adrenaline-pumping heights of professional sport, the brutality of the modern battlefield, the casual violence of the criminal world, the mind-blowing frontiers of science, or the excesses of rock 'n' roll, high finance and Hollywood. Lives Less Ordinary also brings you some of the finest comic voices around, on every subject from toilet etiquette to Paul Gascoigne.

Anyone who every dreams of being in the music business thinks that 'being with the band' is an instant passport to free drugs, women and hedonistic, rock 'n' roll good times. But Stuart Maconie hilariously tells a different story of the slow-drip hell of continental travel in the claustrophobic confines a small van with a certain death metal trio.

This digital bite has been extracted from Stuart Maconie's brilliant book Cider with Roadies.

Reviews

As near-definitive as we are likely to get. Detailed, shocking and scrupulously researched, it is an addictive and often harrowing read

—— Sunday Telegraph

'Every generation believes that language is in decline, but Doing Our Own Thing argues that this time the concern is real... John McWhorter's...analysis is insightful, richly documented, and yes, eloquently written.'

—— Steven Pinker

A propulsive read

—— The Times

Chatty, funny, hugely engaging ... an endearingly honest account of his life so far...

—— Heat

Witty with bursts of Smithy-style sincerity - it is distinctively Corden.

—— Independent

It'll make you lol but is also full of poignancy in classic Smithy Style

—— Company Magazine

Strong accounts of his highs and lows... [the book] lays bare the distorting lens of modern celebrity.

—— London Life

A vivid, sympathetic account... provides a definitive explanation of Welles's ultimate, lingering downfall

—— Financial Times

I am already looking forward to [the third volume] such is Callow's sympathetic absorption in the mass of material, which he handles with a light and ironic touch, that I found myself utterly hooked... As an actor himself Callow writes illuminatingly about Welles's performances

—— Mail on Sunday

Callow's enterprise is one of the rarest in publishing. It leaves the reader dry-mouthed with anticipation for his final, third volume

—— Alan Warner , Guardian

The only biog really worth it's salt this year...reliably entertaining, wise and sane

—— Catherine Shoard , Evening Standard

Welles’s packed schedule is rifled through with chatty elegance

—— Catherine Shoard , Sunday Telegraph

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