BOOK OF THE MONTH : OCTOBER 2025 : ‘REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT : A POST-PUNK EXORCISM’ by PAUL SIMPSON

“Paul Simpson is one of the great underappreciated and underrated figures from the late 70s post punk scene in Liverpool. I highly recommend his book Revolutionary Spirit to anyone curious about that unique and fertile time frame in music. It is a perfect companion read to Julian Cope’s Head On.”

The words of drskridlow last month when responding to Dirk‘s posting of the Wild Swans 45 from which the book takes its name.  And while I agree that it is a perfect companion to the earlier autobiography by Julian Cope, it is a book that more than stands on its own merits.  Indeed, I’d be happy enough to say that is one of the best of any rock autobiographies……but it’s a story that I was a bit wary of reviewing, as I’ll explain a bit later on.

In many ways and across many of its pages, Revolutionary Spirit is a love letter to Liverpool, and more specifically, to the Liverpool of the 1980s. And yet the book begins, rather unexpectedly, in Manila, the capital city of the Philippines, in September 2011 where Paul Simpson and one of the bands he played in, The Wild Swans, are feted as superstars. The band is on a nine-day trip and is due to appear on national television and play two gigs that, with the hoped for/anticipated accompanying merch sales, will finally give this impoverished musician a small degree of financial security.  The only problem is that their arrival coincided with the city and country being hit by a massive cyclone, which throws everything into a state of chaos and uncertainty.   It sets the scene perfectly for all that follows, as Paul takes us on an epic ride from his 60s’ childhood to the completion of the book in 2022.

There is a great deal of self-deprecating humour, much of it drawn from the fact that Paul in later years came to acknowledge just how ridiculous it was that he so often self-sabotaged his career:-

“I’d been living in a bubble for so long that I hadn’t realised that I had acquired a reputation. In 1979, I’d left the band most likely, The Teardrop Explodes, to work in a city-centre tearoom. In 1984, I’d walked out of Care, my collaboration with Ian Broudie, after a hit single. And as far as the world was concerned, The Wild Swans had had their moment and blown it. Twice. What I had viewed as perfectionism in myself was interpreted by the industry as a self-destructive streak.”

But there is also a huge amount of poignancy and pathos, which reveals itself early on when Paul writes about his family, and in particularly his fraught relationship with his father, which is more than compensated for through the love and encouragement offered by his mother. By his late teenage years, and having been friends from a very early age with Les Pattinson, he begins to meet those with whom he would later play such a significant role in the musical renaissance of his home city.  Like so many other people, he begins to properly form emotionally and intellectually once he has left school and, in his case, gone to a Further Education college to ‘study’ advertising and exhibition design, and where he falls in love for the first, but not the last time, all the while becoming something of a music and clothes obsessive.  All of this across what really is a rivetting 88 pages of prose taking us up to December 1976 and his first visit to Eric’s in Matthew Street, the venue making a name for itself as the place in the city for those with an interest in the emerging punk rock scene.

And from there the book rolls along at an incredible pace, with a cast of dozens, many of whom have been mentioned frequently and lovingly on this blog over the past 19 years.  What is most striking is just how many people become close friends with Paul, which is a fair indication of how affable, amenable and approachable a person he genuinely comes across as.   Or maybe the drugs that he and everyone indulged in had a lot to do with it…..

His recollections of his response to the news that his ex-flatmate Pete de Frietas had died in a motorcycle accident will resonate with anyone who has lost a dear friend unexpectedly and at a tragically young age.  His tales of the way that Courtney Love caused absolute havoc when she arrived unannounced and unexpectedly in Liverpool will resonate with anyone who has been in the orbit of a disruptive force whose levels of self-awareness are next to non-existent.  And maybe that’s what lies at the heart of why I really fell for the charms of this book – it is very much the tale of a man and his place in a musical scene of a city at a particular point in time, but there is much in his life that we can all relate to, no matter how seemingly mundane, dull or ordinary our own existence may appear on the surface.

Paul Simpson should have been a superstar in so many other places other than the Philippines.  His book offers up explanations as to why it never came to pass, and at no point in time does he ask readers to feel sorry for him.  This is a frank, honest and above else, hugely engaging autobiography.

mp3 : The Wild Swans – God Forbid
mp3 : Care – Flaming Sword

From an appearance by Care on the BBC’s Oxford Road Show, which was broadcast direct from Manchester between 1981-1985.  I’ve a copy of this on VHS tape somewhere, and a huge thanks to parkhill62 for taking the time to transfer his copy across to youtube.

Oh, and the reason I was wary or indeed reluctant to review the book stems from the fact that Adam, from Bagging Area, did so in September 2024, and I can only dream of matching his way with words.  Adam called Revolutionary Spirit ‘a delight…..that he can’t recommend highly enough.’.   I’m more than happy to echo those sentiments.

 

JC