All the Madmen, Review

[michelej1]

This is an excerpt from London Evening Standard's review of:

All the Madmen:
Barrett, Bowie, Drake, Pink Floyd, The Kinks, The Who and a journey to the dark side of British rock
by Clinton Heylin
(Constable, £20)

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/arts/b...s-7573713.html

There is an underlying glibness to the tone — Fleetwood Mac’s schizophrenic founder Peter Green is described as “barking”, while “ insanity did not so much run in [Bowie’s] mother’s family as positively gallop”. Some passages are overwritten and several are aimed at the most obsessive students of bootlegs and sleeve notes. The story ends, in a so-whattish way, with punk sweeping away the excesses of prog rock and concept albums, and the discrediting of the idea that madness could be a useful creative tool. And, ultimately, with Nick Drake’s Pink Moon being licensed by his actress sister Gabrielle to a Volkswagen advert in 2000, after which the album’s sales jumped “from 6,000 to 74,000”.