Richard Balls

In the beginning he quotes Ian as saying, "I don’t want a hagiography". At the end I'm not sure if he granted Ian his wish or not.

I saw Kilburn And The High Roads back in 74-ish and they were good but weird. Then Ian Dury appeared an suddenly he was everywhere and there was someone singing in my language, both internal and external. Billericay Dickie has to be one of the finest pieces rhyme in the English Language to appear in the last couple of hundred years or more. And I ain't pulling yer plonker. This is Essex. This is how most of England really is and not the pretentious rubbish that the Guardian, Telegraph and LRB would like you to believe. I really think that just for moment we had our own Shakespeare there, for if WS was alive today he would be all over social media and reality TV. Instead he has been appropriated by the elite and disowned by the every people he was writing to. Anyway.....

It was somewhat of a revelation to read that Ian Dury came from landed gentry and not the apocryphal Upminster of myth and legend. There was no doubt that he was a nasty bastard at times but his pettiness just permeates this biography. I guess the lesson is to never read a biography of someone that you had on a pedestal.

Also a snapshot of the music scene at various times and the personalities within it. If you are interested give it a go.… (mehr)

Film director Mat Whitecross has chosen to discuss Richard Balls’ Sex & Drugs & Rock’n’Roll: The Life of Ian Dury, on FiveBooks as one of the top five on his subject – Film Directing, saying that:



“… When I started the film the only thing that was available was Richard’s book, which luckily is very good. It’s 500 pages and it goes into lots of details, which was difficult for me as a film-maker because we were trying to make a 110-minute film. So we decided to cherry pick moments from the biography.. .…”.



The full interview is available here: http://thebrowser.com/books/interviews/mat-whitecross… (mehr)