Description
Eddie Piller: ‘Clean Living Under Difficult Circumstances: A Life In Mod – From The Revival to Acid Jazz’. Foreword by Paul Weller.
Eddie Piller’s memoir is out 6 April, 2023. Pre-order now.
‘Late in 1984 I went to the National Mod Meeting – really, don’t ask – and in amongst the pettifogging nonsense of such organised fun one thing stands out, and it was Eddie Piller, introducing ‘keynote speaker’ Irish Jack, dealing with a heckler. It was brash, sharp and totally mod. Eddie was already a long way through his mod journey, and I had only really started mine (the advantage of always being 5 and a half years younger than him I guess!). By the time I began to know him socially he was even further in – and also further out – as both of us had given up mod clubs and gotten into the jazz scene. He was managing the James Taylor Quartet, and running the coolest new record label that I knew, Acid Jazz. As we DJ’d together, sat in pubs and then eventually worked together (he employed me when no-one else would), he was always a riot of stories. Tales that stretched back to the late ’70s mod scene and beyond, and always told so well. Any of us who sat through them, wondering how, even now after thirty years of hearing some of them, they still sounded fresh, knew that they would make an amazing book. That book is now here, and we at Acid Jazz knew that we would have to get it on the shop, have Ed sign it and get it delivered for you.’ – Dean Rudland, Acid Jazz
‘Eddie was there very early doors. His story is of the many.’ – Paul Weller
‘A total riot! Takes me right back to the 70s. A Superb book’ – Mani, The Stone Roses
‘What a wonderful book. Mod isn’t about what decade you lived in, it’s about your attitude, and this book has tons of it’ – Kenny Jones, The Small Faces
This is the memoir of a teenage mod from the East End of London.
A journey of discovery for a schoolboy dabbling with punk, funk, record shops, discos and clothes, and then… WHAAAM! An unstoppable wave of like-minded kids fall headlong in love with 60s mod culture, revived and reformatted for the 70s and 80s generation.
Eddie Piller was one such kid. His life was changed forever. Written with humour, passion and attention to detail, CLEAN LIVING UNDER DIFFICULT CIRCUMSTANCES is perhaps the ultimate mod memoir, taking us from meeting the Small Faces as a toddler, to the 1979 Mod revival, through the more purist 1980s mod scene and eventually to Acid Jazz.
A born storyteller, Eddie takes us evocatively into a world of scooters, clothes, and music. We run with the crowd to decaying seaside towns, East End backstreet boozers and sweaty teenage gigs, all fizzing with an uncontainable excitement and often exploding into violence.
Once mod touched your soul it changed the way you looked at life, unexpectedly broadening your horizons. In Eddie it awakens a can-do attitude that sees him setting up a fanzine, putting on club nights, hustling jobs in the music industry, and eventually setting up a record label. It even takes him to Ireland at the height of the troubles and to Australia where the local mods take him on a military exercise…
Visceral and always entertaining, CLEAN LIVING UNDER DIFFICULT CIRCUMSTANCES is a stand-out memoir that relives the thrill of the 70s and 80s, and the movement that helped make mod the most enduring and successful British youth culture of all time.
