I've just been back over thus thread, and oh, oh, oh! One fears to discuss the book at all, but I should like to.

Pages of stuff and I can only be certain that two people had read the book in question. Some folk early on commented on its price.

I got it cheap on line.

Some information I had not known before, happy to be corrected if this is wrong:

MacColl's father had been a performer/entertainer, albeit occasional, part-time. So he had to some extent a role model in terms of being a performer. Interesting how often this sort of thing does go in families.

His mother ended up working like a lunatic to keep the family; his father lost himself a lot of jobs through politics: interesting life choices here ..

Kirsty MacColl was his daughter, but hardly knew him at all.

When his son put up football posters and pictures of pop stars in his bedroom, he threw a wobbly and tore them all down.

At one point he threw a wobbly and dumped Peggy Seeger for singing a gospel song.

In the critics group, Peggy Seeger and MacColl himself were not subject to the criticisms; Peggy later said that this had been a mistake.

Late in life he found he had alienated a lot of friends and family and he did not understand why. But by the end of the book you can sort of work it out.

As far as I can tell, this book gives good and bad points.

It was interesting on the US and Russian and Brechtian influences on his dramatic ideas. Interesting how ideas from dance got applied as ways of talking about singing styles: one of the radio programmes goes into this.