This is the memoir of a teenage mod from the East End of London.
A journey of discovery for a schoolboy dabbling with punk, funk, record
shops, discos and clothes, and then... WHAAAM! An unstoppable wave of
like-minded kids fall headlong in love with 60s mod culture, revived and
reformatted for the 70s and 80s generation.
The ultimate mod memoir - from Britain's best-known 'face'.
Eddie Piller was one such kid. His life was changed forever. Written
with humor, passion and attention to detail, CLEAN LIVING UNDER
DIFFICULT CIRCUMSTANCES is perhaps the ultimate mod memoir, taking us
from meeting the Small Faces as a toddler, to the 1979 Mod revival,
through the more purist 1980s mod scene and eventually to Acid Jazz.
A born storyteller, Eddie takes us evocatively into a world of scooters,
clothes, and music. We run with the crowd to decaying seaside towns,
East End backstreet boozers and sweaty teenage gigs, all fizzing with an
uncontainable excitement and often exploding into violence.
Once mod touched your soul it changed the way you looked at life,
unexpectedly broadening your horizons. In Eddie it awakens a can-do
attitude that sees him setting up a fanzine, putting on club nights,
hustling jobs in the music industry, and eventually setting up a record
label. It even takes him to Ireland at the height of the troubles and to
Australia where the local mods take him on a military exercise...
Visceral and always entertaining, CLEAN LIVING UNDER DIFFICULT
CIRCUMSTANCES is a stand-out memoir that relives the thrill of the 70s
and 80s, and the movement that helped make mod the most enduring and
successful British youth culture of all time.
