Live At the Brixton Academy: A riotous life in the music business - Softcover

For me, the Brixton Academy has something of a mythical status. As a young teenage boy in south east London I'd always see the listings in the NME or Melody Maker, listings for bands that I desperately wanted to see, but at the time was too young. I remember a school friend claiming that he "knew a back way in" and perhaps we should chance it for the Food Records Christmas Party - playing host to Jesus Jones, and at the time a lesser known Blur. That prospect of this 'back way in' stayed with me until a few years later, when at the height of their powers, the Lemonheads' Evan Dando treated those of us who'd hung around the side alley to an impromptu acoustic set of covers and requests as he straddled the dressing room windowsill.

The thing that I always remembered was that it felt like outside inside. If they'd have painted stars on the ceiling I would have believed it was so. Those turrets and balconies... It seemed vast. Playing there with Hot Chip, our front of house engineer pointed out the 'sweet spot' where you could clap your hands and hear a never ending echo as the sound bounced from floor to ceiling to floor and back, proving there was indeed a roof, but to me it sounded like a flock of birds. From the stage, the width of the audience is what first surprised me, twice as wide as it is deep, and on a full house you can still see every face.

In 1982, aged twenty-three, Simon Parkes paid £1 for a virtually derelict building in Brixton. Over the next fifteen years he turned it into Britain's most iconic music venue. And now he's telling his story: full of fond - and wild - reminiscences of the famous musicians who played at the venue, including Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, Lou Reed, The Ramones, New Order, the Beastie Boys and The Smiths.

This is about one man's burning desire for success against the odds, his passion for live music and the excitement of those wilderness years, a far cry from the corporate world that controls the scene today. From rock-star debauchery and mixing it up with Brixton gangsters to putting on the first legal raves in the UK and countless backroom business deals, this is the story of how to succeed in business with no experience and fulfil your teenage fantasies.