Exit Stage Left – Nick Duercen (1)

They went bankrupt shortly after. Reliving all this now, he says, is hard. ‘I couldn’t really talk about this to anybody for years. Couldn’t have a conversation about it at all. Even five years ago, it was still painful. But more recently, I’ve . . . Well, I mean, I guess time’s a healer, right? But I’ve also got into things like spirituality and mindfulness, different ways of dealing with what happened to me back then, and things like acceptance, and no longer stressing over those things you can’t change, but learn[ing] to embrace them instead, feel gratitude for them, even.

Because, you know, I’m grateful for everything we had, but there are things I’ve implemented into my life now that help me deal with my past a bit more.’ His initial reaction to the fallout was severe. ‘I was suicidal, you know. I was close to jumping off a fucking bridge.’ Now in his early forties, Donny Tourette has, like Emu after Rod Hull removed his hand, withdrawn from public life. He is Patrick Brannan again, no longer a freewheeling drunk but rather an entirely sober, friendly and keenly conversational person.

He practices reiki and is convinced that the universe has a plan for him. He lives in Hoxton, east London. After his dalliance with suicidal ideation, his sister came to his assistance, and locked him in her house to decompress. ‘Everybody thinks you’re bulletproof, but you’re not.

I’ll tell you what the root of it was, and it’s probably important, this. I was nervous all the time. I was terrified. In order to get up on stage, I had to drink; to do an interview, I drank; a photo shoot, drink. I was pretty much wasted constantly in order to have the confidence to do all the things I needed to do to be in a band.

That’s why I always seemed to have that layer of something else, that fuck you-ness. I was pretty much strung out for five years. Nobody who met me [during that time] would’ve known the real me. There was an insecurity to me, a lack of confidence.’ With hindsight, with age, he regrets plenty: the big hair, the careless interviews, the attitude. In mitigation, he suggests Towers of London were cursed.

When they tried to break America after conspicuously failing to break the UK, they took their film crew with them, but then the credit crunch bit and the banks ran out of money, leaving their documentary doomed. ‘But then everything we touched was doomed.’ Now not merely in debt but penniless, Tourette needed to work. He ended up on a building site. ‘It all happened so quick, so quick. We’d been on the main stage at Reading and Leeds, all over the papers and TV, touring the world .

. .

Copyright © 2022 Nick Duerden The right of Nick Duerden to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Headline Publishing Group First published as an Ebook in Great Britain by Headline Publishing Group in 2022 Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library Epigraph quote from A Fabulous Creation: How The LP Saved Our Lives by David Hepworth, reproduced by kind permission of Bantam Press Quote from Me: Elton John Official Autobiography reproduced by kind permission of Pan Macmillan. Quote from Clothes Music Boys by Viv Albertine, reproduced by kind permission of Faber & Faber. Jacket photographs © Shutterstock Author photograph © Nick Duerden Image retouching by Gareth Pritchard Cover design by Jack Storey Hardback ISBN 978 1 4722 7777 0 eISBN: 978 1 4722 7779 4 HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP An Hachette UK Company Carmelite House 50 Victoria Embankment London EC4Y 0DZ www.headline.co.uk www.hachette.co.uk OceanofPDF.com Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Page About Nick Duerden Praise Also by Nick Duerden About the Book Dedication Epigraph INTRO ONE – MARMALADE SKIES AND KALEIDOSCOPE EYES TWO – THE DIFFICULT UMPTEENTH ALBUM THREE – SCENESTERS FOUR – TOP OF THE POPS FIVE – INFAMY, INFAMY, THEY’VE ALL GOT IT IN FOR ME SIX – THE PYRAMID STAGE SEVEN – THE TROUBADOURS EIGHT – ONE-HIT WONDERS NINE – THE LEGENDS’ SLOT TEN – THE MAVERICKS FADE OUT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INDEX OceanofPDF.com About the Author Nick Duerden is a writer and freelance broadsheet journalist.

He has written widely on the arts, family and health, and is the author of two novels, a memoir on fatherhood, and other non-fiction works. OceanofPDF.com Praise Praise for Nick Duerden: ‘Exit Stage Left is the book I’ve long wanted to read about the PTSD-like after-effects of pop stardom – and Nick Duerden is the perfect writer for the job.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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• Title: –
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• ISBN: 9781472277770, 9781472277794
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• Language: English (en)

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