Everyone likes a Guardian reading hooligan. And of this special breed Baxter Dury is one of my favourites. His records are the kind you put on and are immediately transported to somewhere on the Med about to smacked in the mouth by the girlfriend of the man you’ve just flirted with. On the upside the sun’s shining, the beach is inviting and there’s several strong margaritas lined up to anaesthetise the pain. Therefore, I was intrigued to find that he’d written a book and led me to ask, is there no end to this man’s talents? No, I’m afraid there isn’t, but, then again, if he can write ten mini operas per album then writing Chaise Longue, this two-hundred-page memoir, must have been an absolute piece of piss. Seems so, as there’s not a duff page in it. Of course, it helps that as a ‘Nepo Baby’ he’d been able to get up close and personal with his dad, Ian, and all the hangers on in his dad’s bohemian court. Which included various famous musicians, his dad’s assortment of girlfriends and the infamous Sulphate Strangler, whose times as Baxter’s minder always turned up the chaos way beyond a ten. In fact, from early childhood to early manhood, chaos and weirdness never seemed far away but his mum and sister, the steady influences in his life, gave him some sort of base from which to build a life less precarious. A singular and, at times, scary way to grow up. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Maybe. Maybe not. According to Baxter Dury, Long Chaise “more or less gives you the energy of what happened”. It certainly does and that makes it essential, geeze, yeah?

Chaise Longue – Baxter Dury - publ. Corsair - £9.99

Steven Long