Fried & Justified

AN UNCUT BOOK OF THE YEAR 'A wild rock 'n' roll fairground ride of the damned.' OBSERVER 'Excellent.' NEW STATESMAN 'Entertaining . . . recalls twenty heady years at the centre of the British music business.' FINANCIAL TIMES A candid frontline account of an illustrious gonzo career as an independent music publicist during the post-punk heyday of the 80s and 90s, featuring an introduction by Bill Drummond and a new foreword by Julian Cope. Mick Houghton worked with some of the greatest, most influential and downright dysfunctional cult groups of the post-punk era and beyond - Ramones, Talking Heads, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Undertones, Felt and Sonic Youth among them. But the three acts Mick is most closely identified with are Echo & the Bunnymen, Julian Cope, and the KLF. As confidant and co-conspirator, he navigated the minefield of rivalries and contrasting fortunes which make Fried & Justified such a candid, amusing and insightful picture of an exciting and inspirational period for music.

Mick Houghton began his career writing about music before starting as a PR at WEA in 1978. Two years later he set up the independent Brassneck Publicity. He began writing again in 2001 for Mojo and later Uncut, and has since published two books, I've Always Kept A Unicorn: The Biography of Sandy Denny and Becoming Elektra: The True Story of Jac Holzman's Visionary Record Label, as well as being one of the Grammy-nominated compilers of Forever Changing: The Golden Age of Elektra Records 1963-1973.