Cocaine
By Phil Strongman
The real story of the hedonistic 1990s music scene is revealed in this fastmoving first-person narrative. For Cocaine – with it’s casual spotlight on broadcast corruption – inadvertently channels the rise of Britpop and all the accompanying PR hype. This novel also tells the tale of Pete, a freelance music journalist who has a scoop on the latest big band and whose life revolves around the next after-party and, increasingly, the next line of coke.
Set in the fickle Soho music/media world, where every drink, ticket, CD or gram is free – if you know the right guy with the right guest-list – it’s a sharp, often funny but by no means amoral novel about music and drugs: a still-relevant portrait of an environment where every smiley face hides a taste for blood, and where charlie is always the most popular guy in town.
Phil Strongman is a well known music journalist and author, who has contributed to MOJO among many other publications. He has written Pretty Vacant, the definitive account of the punk movement, and made the well received documentary Anarchy! The McLaren Westwood Gang. He has also written the only study of John Lydon’s Public Image Ltd – Metal Box– and John Lennon: Life, Times and Assassination.