Telling Stories Book

The Charlatans have had three UK Number One albums and seventeen Top Thirty singles. But they've also had to face the imprisonment and death of founding powerhouse keyboard player Rob Collins and an accountant who ran off with all their money, leaving them with a tax bill of almost ¿2 million. Not to mention the rock 'n' roll excesses of singer Tim Burgess. In his startlingly revealing memoir, Burgess describes how they dealt with their crises, and what's gone right with the band as much as what's gone wrong. Born in Salford and brought up in a Cheshire village, he went on to front a band that has travelled the world, played at every major music festival, and was at the forefront of both the Madchester and Britpop movements. Telling Stories is a tale of achievement and survival, via a fair bit of heartache, but told with humour. At the centre of it is Tim Burgess's own story: how someone with a passion for music got to fulfil his dreams. He doesn't flinch from the dark stuff - the lure of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle, its sweet enticements - and he confesses in vivid detail how he had to pull himself back from the brink. But along the way he had a lot of good times and met some great people while making great music. It's all here in Telling Stories. Tim Burgess grew up in rural Cheshire but from his mid-teens he spent as much time as he could at the legendary Hacienda in Manchester. He was invited to be the vocalist in newly formed The Charlatans, who went from supporting The Stone Roses to having four number one singles and riding the wave of Britpop. The band survived first the imprisonment of influential keyboardist Rob Collins on a charge of armed robbery, then the death of Collins in a car accident; and in more recent years the actions of Burgess himself as he took himself off to LA, for the music and the drugs. In this incredibly frank and vivid memoir, Burgess describes the mad life of a rock star: the dynamics of the band, the creativity and the self-destruction, the sex and the drugs but also the rock 'n roll - his obsession with music shines off the page as he writes about his influences and his encounters, from Dylan to New Order, from the Rolling Stones to Oasis.Read More