There is a sort of morbid curiosity turning the stone over and seeing where the likes of Hothouse Flowers, Terrance Trent D’arby and Moloko have crawled to. turns out likely not) And if you continue churning out the same stuff album after album, you risk boring your fans to death, and they'll still leave you.

The book also touches on areas generally not touched with a ten-foot (Tudor) pole by the music biz – mental illness, poverty, shame, family estrangement, divorce, burnout. Not the only time the interviews have been overtaken by subsequent events; Paul Cattermole is the saddest example, but the most disastrous is surely Roisin Murphy, where even if she'd been a confirmed social media dodger, the gleeful accounts here of doing private gigs for Russian oligarchs would now read considerably less fun than she presumably intended at the time. So you have several chapters of the druggies, the people who got a proper job, and the people still making music despite no one really listening to it.The quibble I had with “Exit Stage Left” was that while it would have made a superb long-form article in a monthly music magazine (if such formats still existed in today’s publishing world), when the concept is stretched out to book length it can be repetitive and tautological. I also think that by narrowing the focus of "Pop", the author builds a narrative that im not sure is true in that things discussed in interviews need to tie directly back into what it means to be a "pop star" or part of the "pop" scene. I was completely charmed by lovely Natalie Merchant, who, unlike almost every other musician featured, realised she'd made a life changing amount of money, and quietly set about changing the lives of others, working unpaid with disadvantaged children. Frank TurnerFeaturing brand new interviews with the likes of: Bob Geldof, Shaun Ryder, Robbie Williams, Roisin Murphy, Stewart Copeland, Billy Bragg, Wendy James, Alex Kapranos, Joan Armatrading, Leo Sayer, Gary Lightbody, Lisa Maffia, Tim Booth, Bill Drummond, Rufus Wainwright, David Gray, and Justin Hawkins.

Read more about the condition New: A new, unread, unused book in perfect condition with no missing or damaged pages.Tragedy, genius, addiction and inspiration: Exit Stage Left is a comprehensive tour through all the ways life can go wrong post-fame (and the few ways it can go right). Nor has the English been checked any more thoroughly than the facts; among others I noted a complement/compliment mix-up, and a pallet for palette (which I supposed was at least more novel than the usual palette/palate, but no, that was waiting for me further in).

Others, such as Leo Sayer didn't fully realise what they'd gotten into and like Donny Tourette it was the record label's last swing at keeping a band alive. Many talk about their life touring and singing, but it is the love and the thrill these artists got from the crowds that really drove them, something they might never have and in a few might never get again. Not all of them, by any means; I may have made a grudging peace with David Gray's Babylon, but I still couldn't give less of a toss about his continued attempts to follow it up. There are bands who accepted that their moment in the sun was fleeting, or see fame as a by-product of a hobby that got out of hand.Why is a band touring in smaller venues than they had previously played or selling fewer records than they did in their early 20s met with such ridicule and contempt? In many ways, this is when these former idols are at their most heroic, too, because they reveal themselves not only to be humane and sensitive, but also still driven to create, to fulfill their lingering dreams, to refuse to live quietly.

Although very enjoyable and for sure I had Spotify playing in the background while reading the near 100 interviews, I couldn't escape disappointment that the author had almost exclusively interviewed men. A former primetime television personality, his outdated style has seen him relegated to the scrapheap. What was illuminating was how a lot of them ended up under the unrelenting gaze of reality TV as for some, like Shaun Ryder, it was the need to pay off debts and create a revenue stream beyond that. The book includes interviews with a genre-crossing range of artists whose stories, while wildly different from one another, all echo the fickle nature of the music industry. Nick Duerden has written a fascinating exploration of what happens to most pop stars when the hits dry up.It was very heavily geared toward older Gen-x English men, there were hardly any female pop stars profiled and it took something which could have been interesting and flattened it out.