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A Casual Life

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Author:Euron Griffith

A Casual Life tells the tale of Griffith’s love affair with music, starting in his pre-teens, through university to a relentless four year stint leading a band in the shallow end of the music business and a final realisation that he needed to find a proper job. As he says in the Preface, his musical career, in contrast to Brian May’s, was one “of struggle, pain, determination and sheer hard graft that led to…absolutely fucking nowhere.”

An interest in salacious gossip is a normal part of the human condition. The biggest-selling autobiographies are those written by the most recognisable names in show business, sport, politics and music, and most of the readers who pick them up are hoping they’ll tell the stories behind the headlines. What about the life stories of ordinary people? Everyone’s story is unique, of course, but the non-famous have to make sure they tell theirs well. With a sales pitch like that, Griffith has to entertain.

Each chapter hangs on the flimsy shoulders of a band T shirt, ending with a playlist to fit on a cassette tape, effectively carbon-dating the narrative. He began disadvantaged, growing up in North West Wales outside the reach of Radio One. Record shops were scarce or poorly stocked, even in the city of Bangor. Like-minded souls were hard to find. His teenage years in the seventies were untroubled by the internet but Top Of The Pops and The Old Grey Whistle Test were essential viewing and music inkies could be devoured from cover to cover. Promisingly, T shirts were available by mail order, albeit at a glacial pace. He did, however, benefit from an indulgent mother, who enabled that crucial first purchase, kindly teachers, on the whole, who encouraged his writing, a motley crew of friends willing to follow his lead, and a disapproving but non-obstructive father.

Griffith’s writing is like a jazz pianist, let’s say Red Garland. His flow is smooth and rhythmic with plenty of scope for philosophical explorations, scenic diversions, random polemics, flights of fancy and dead ends. He makes few attempts at literary flourishes. He understands the power of short words, meeting both triumph and disaster with a cool equanimity. Any descriptions of his own qualities or feelings are lighthearted and self-deprecatory. He captures the character of his friends, teachers and colleagues in just a few sentences. Queen Fiona’s microphone, a first gig hosted by Bob Harris, Dillwyn the Drum, Clara’s shotgun-armed dad, a school eisteddfod, La Beat Route, the Chrysalis dungeon studio, Maldwyn’s special words, and Bethel’s own gangster Big G are all described with affection and wit. Nevertheless, his passion is almost exclusively channelled into the music. The book ends with the true love of his life, Tubular Bells.

Remarkably, it turns out that a book about failure is a real pleasure to read.

Length of Read:Medium

Might appeal to people who enjoyed…

If ever a book was written for the Afterword, this is it. It’s the right era, the right kind of music and it’s packed with anecdotes about people in the music business.

One thing you’ve learned

Our formative years are imprinted on our brains but the accuracy and detail of Griffith’s recollections of this period of his life are astonishing.

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Comments

    • Hi Freddy. It’s available from all the usual places- Amazon, Waterstones etc. But you could also get it from the publisher direct. Seren Books are Wales’ leading independent literary publishers and I’m sure they’d appreciate the support! I’m also grateful to you! I just hope it lives up to your expectations. It comes out next Monday.

  6. Lovely, it’s in my check out at Seren (which I misread as seven books which took me somewhere else indeed.) and as soon as I’m allowed back into the living room and I can locate my debit card, I’ll get it (pre) ordered.

  9. Sounds like my kind of book.

    Is it only available as a physical book or is/will there be an ebook version. Whilst I could order from Amazon or get my son to pick up a copy from Waterstones, it would be much more convenient for me in Singapore with a digital edition.

      • Hi again Chris, the idea seems to be that there may well be an ebook version but not imminently. Er, shameless plug alert…one of my previous books, a novel called “Miriam, Daniel and Me” is available on ebook on the Seren website. No obligation…naturally…

        • Thanks. I will look out for it.

          I’m probably going to be in the UK this summer anyway, so if it’s not out by then, I shall wander into Waterstones.

          • Thanks again Chris. Although Waterstones has a rather shoddy approach to stocking books that aren’t published by the ‘bigger’ boys. They tend to have a better approach to online sales. But, as I say, no obligation!!

  10. This sounds great Eddie. I have to day that realising after 4 years that it was time to get out doesn’t sound at all like failure to me. I was always fascinated by the bands in the Where are they Now? Section in Q back in the day. You would see people who had been in a band with one Top 40 hit 10 years before still plugging away in London, usually on some “dance-oriented material that should come out next year on our own label”. Getting out early wasn’t a failure.

    Am I going to be the first one to ask if you were Bauhaus fans?

    • Hi Hawkfall. I’ve never learnt my lesson and I still knock about in a band writing and playing songs that no one really cares about but it’s a bug and now that I’m older and not doing it as a potential strike for stardom I’m finding it all more enjoyable. My band played in front of just eight people in a coffee bar in Cardiff last Friday and, to make matters worse, our drummer had to cancel at the last minute because of a bad back. But those eight lucky people loved it and so did we! Incidentally, it was by no means the worst-attended gig I’ve been a part of…more about that in the book!). I have to say that I was never really a Bauhaus fan and, to my knowledge, neither was anyone else in The Third Uncles. Finding as name for a band has always been a pain and I landed on this simply because I loved the Eno track. I had no idea Bauhaus had covered it until all these goths suddenly started coming to our gigs with their Addams Family hair and blood red lipstick. We were glad to have them there though and, to be fair, they seemed to like it. So maybe we were more goth than I thought…

      • Ah yeah I forgot it was a cover of an Eno song. I only know the Bauhus version. You can see how much cooler Eddie is than me from that sentence.

        *slopes off to listen to Bela Lugosi’s Dead*

        • Check out Eno’s original. Also, the entire album (‘Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy’). In the days when he wrote gorgeous songs instead of wishy washy soundscapes…

            • I quite enjoy his laid-back and unemotive vocals on those early albums. He sings like an university lecturer to a King Crimson/Talking Heads/XTC type backing.

              • His last two albums with David Byrne are full of lovely songs. His vocals on Nerve Net are excellent, though his sound palette is an acquired taste (better as My Squelchy Life). Plus, he sounds surprisingly lovely on his latest album of songs, Forever/And/Ever/NoMore.

                • Eno’s vocals were his biggest influence on post and post-punk. Without Baby’s On Fire and the like there wouldn’t have been Howard Devoto.

                  (this of course is not true… not a sausage of it is true)

  11. If any of you lovely people are within range of Cardiff on April 4th then you’d be welcome to attend the launch for this at Kings Road Yard in the Pontcanna area of the city. Free entry. Craft beers. Er, and my band will be playing a short set…but don’t let that put you off.

  12. eddie, it’s something of a tradition here at t’Word for newly published authors to mail out complimentary copies to that select few who have seen their works in print. So that’s Colin, whose 1000pp “John McLaughlin: A Gorbals Childhood 1952-1959” was such a runaway success last year; me, of course, for “Carrie”, a horror story about a repossessed car, and, er, I think that’s about it. We can dismiss Chiz’s “Twenty Years In Corduroy Shorts: A Memoir” because it was self-published and frankly he can’t give it away hahalol!!

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