Sour Mouth, Sweet Bottom: Lessons from a Dissolute Life

(Hardback)

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The legendary music impresario (and producer of bands likeThe Yardbirds and Wham!)tells his life story in a series of mesmerisingly candid vignettes.

Sour Mouth, Sweet Bottom: Lessons from a Dissolute Lifeis the book Simon Napier-Bells fans have always hoped hed write.

From 1940s London where he listened to wartime hits like 'Mairzy doats and dozy doats' in the air-raid shelter; to talking about Wham! with Deng Xiaoping, head of Communist China, or getting stoned with Elaine May and Jack Lemmon by the pool in 60s Beverly Hills,Sour Mouth, Sweet Bottommakes most memoirs look like thin gruel by comparison. This is a high-octane explosion of a book, a kaleidoscopic sequence of more than sixty lessons drawn from a life lived to the full: frank, funny, freewheeling and honest.

There are anecdotes of the acts he managed (the Yardbirds, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Marc Bolan, Japan, Sinitta, Boney M, Candi Staton, Ultravox, Asia, Wham!, George Michael and Sinead OConnor) but theres also the wisdom gathered from a louche life of clubs, restaurants, gigs, arrests, awards, bankruptcies, bereavements, booze, coups and sex, both gay and straight.

Reviews

• 'Never has anybody had so much fun, remembered it so precisely and made so much sense of it all' Mark Ellen
• 'A deliciously gossipy new memoir that lifts the lid on six decades managing the biggest egos on the planet' Daily Express

Author Bio

Simon Napier-Bell has been a film composer, songwriter, record producer, and author, but he is best known for having managed such artists as The Yardbirds, Marc Bolan, Japan and Wham!. Under his management, Wham! became the first Western pop group ever to play in Communist China. He is the author of four acclaimed books about the music industry: You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, Black Vinyl White Powder, I'm Coming to Take You to Lunch and The Business. He is CEO of the Pierbel Entertainment Group, and continues to consult, write and broadcast, most recently directing documentary films on subjects ranging from Frank Sinatra to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Britain. Simon lives in Thailand.