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Gene Pitney wrote upbeat hits for others - Bobby Vee's "Rubber Ball" (UK no. 4, US no. 6 '61), Ricky Nelson's "Hello Mary Lou" (UK no. 2, US no. 9 '61), the Crystals' "He's a Rebel" (UK no. 19, US no. 1 '62) - but picked other writers' songs for himself that tended to see his composure gradually crumble inside three minutes, whether through love's intensity ("Twenty-four Hours from Tulsa", UK no. 2, US no. 17 '63) or through despair ("I'm Gonna Be Strong", UK no. 2, US no. 9 '64); most extreme of all was 1968's "Billy You're My Friend", a traumatic love triangle that sounded like it was being sung with Gene inside a straitjacket.

Melody Maker, the jazz weekly, hated Colyer's band. He was a purist, a grouchy extremist who thought Louis Armstrong had sold out when he brought a saxophone into his band. His conservatism accidentally beat a new path. What he did with skiffle was to revive a music that was so old it seemed radically new; in this way, he is a forefather to Morrissey - who took the early-sixties, pre-Beatles pop culture to shape the Smiths' image and lyrics - and the indie revolution. What seemed like exotic distance to Ken Colyer seemed very real to people still living in two-up two-downs, in ramshackle Victorian structures with galley kitchens and outdoor toilets. The washboard, the mop, the bucket - these were everyday items in working-class fifties Britain. Transforming them into musical instruments with a few nails and a few screws caught the imagination of kids like a home-made Meccano set.

MIG JEG ER KAFIR MIG JEG ER MUNAFIQ
MIG JEG ER HUND
MIG JEG ER BESKIDT MIN SJÆL ER FATTIG
OG OVENPÅ UGERNINGEN JEG DØSER HEN I FORÅRSSOLEN

MIN LØN VAR NATTENS RETURKASSER
NOGLE NÆTTER VAR DER FIRE ELLER FEM
MEN DENNE NAT VAR DER KUN EN
JEG SPRÆTTEDE DEN OP TIDLIGT OM MORGENEN
UBRUGELIGE KRIMIER OG EN KNAUSGÅRD

SECRETS ARE LIES
SHARING IS CARING
PRIVACY IS THEFT

In Birmingham, Alabama, I rush myself to a dentist for the first time in 20 years. I insist upon codeine mixed with heroin and gin in order to settle my nerves, but this simple request is denied.

[...] Sarah Ferguson remains lodged in the US talk show mind as a British 'royal' boil, or at least as someone who has had the honor of hearing the Queen belch after a rousing luncheon of peppered horse.

By now, Marr, Rourke and Joyce have magically transformed into the Beverley Sisters, each chanting how that awful Morrissey had destroyed their lives - and just when they were all doing so well with their musical careers.

Whilst in Denver, Colorado, Johnny and I attend a concert by A-ha, whom we have met previously and whom we quite like. The hall is rammed with very small females who squeal at an intolerable volume throughout the concert, drowning out all of the songs. Because of this, the night is a mess. While it's true that girls screamed at Sparks, there was something utterly pointless about the high-pitched mass squeal that blanketed the hall for A-ha. There was hardly any necessity for the band to actually play. Backstage, A-ha are gracious. They are healthy and athletic and inherently decent, with their rosebud Norwegian propriety, and this is interesting to me because it shows me how the mission to sing isn't always a result of pain.

I vomit profusely when I discover that the album [The Smiths] has been pressed in Japan with Sandie Shaw's version of Hand in Glove included. I am so disgusted by this that I beg people to kill me.

When my old friend Simon Topping appeared on the cover of the NME, I died a thousand deaths of sorrow and lay down in the woods to die.

I crawl from the cultureless world to Stretford Hardrock in September 1972, where David Bowie is showcasing the venue. At midday he emerges from a black Mercedes, every inch the eighth dimension, teetering on high heels, with all the wisdom of our ancestors. Smiling keenly, he accepts the note of a dull schoolboy whose overblown soul is more ablaze than the school blazer he wears, and thus I touched the hand of this inexplicably liberating reformer; he, a Wildean visionary about to re-mold England, and I, a spectacle of suffering in a blue school uniform.

Eg gjorde som ho sa, song det eg alt hadde sunge, nærma meg staden der stemma skar seg, kom dit, og stemma var som den skulle, Malinovskaja veivde takten, og eg lukka auga og sokk ned i songen, sokk og steig alt etter kvar den dreiv meg, blomstrar veks frå ei anna verd og inn i vår, elva slår små bølger mot promenaden, ungdomar tar av seg kleda og slenger seg i vatnet om juni, juli, august er varm; nakne svømmer vi utan å tenke at også dei gamle var eit heilt liv, også dei svømde denne elva, og andre kroppar som for oss bare er steinar på gravlunden, fekk også kle av andre og ligge inntil og slikke mellom beina, men kven hugsa dei som ikkje lenger svømmer; kven hugsa tante, og kven vil hugse meg; eg står skjult inne i pumpehuset, og langt ute i bølgene kjem ein svart båt rodd av ein svartkledd mann, båten går opp og ned, men han ror jamt og er ikkje redd elva, det er ein øydeleggar som kjem, eg knip hendene saman, men kjenner ikkje lenger hendene mine, båten ror mot land, og brått brenn brystkassen min, og ei lysande venge fyller pumpehuset, ei lysande venge for alt som finst og har funnest, og alt som har prøvd å finnast.

Det holdt at jeg så ut som en idiot med det der skjegget og lange håret. Jeg så ut som en fallert heavy metal-musiker, på full fart mot femti. Å, kvapsete ansikt, småtykke kinn, dype furer og så et pistrete skjegg.