In "A Dysfunctional Success" [ Wreckless ] Eric Goulden writes with an acute eye for detail about growing up in the 60s and 70s in suburban South East England, discovering music and girls; life as an art student in the frozen north eastern town of Hull; the formation and dissolution of bands with desperate equipment, a homemade ethos and not much idea; his move to London in 1976 and subsequent recording debut on the newly formed Stiff Record label.

“I didn’t actually want to write a music biography. There was a story to be told, but it wasn’t the tale of the meteoric rise and demise of Wreckless Eric. I was more concerned with my upbringing, the social background that shaped me and lead to this meteoric rise and demise. And I wanted to write about what happens after the firework fizzles out.”

This is an honest coming of age story from both sides of instant pop success: bands, squalid flats, menial jobs, making records, the rise to the point of fame and falling off into poverty and alcoholism in Thatcher's Britain, where Goulden ultimately survived the 1980’s to achieve his own kind of success.

Twenty-one years after its original publication, in a time when pop stars telling their own hard stories was a comparative rarity, "A Dysfunctional Success" rings truer than ever, reminding readers how we all come from somewhere, pay a high price for our dreams, and enjoy modest glories in return for staying the course.

"I think I was hoping for insight into the early Stiff Records days, which I didn't get. What I got was much better, and a great deal more interesting: a shambling, acutely observed, very funny-sad-true-sharp autobiography".

-Neil Gaiman

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