Renegade: Austin Collings
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square
No booking required
Mark E. Smith, who died in January this year at the age of sixty, recorded 32 studio albums as frontman of legendary independent band The Fall. To celebrate a body of work that is at turns highly literary, unconventional, mischievous and abrasively honest, Austin Collings will discuss the experience of ghost-writing Smith's memoir, Renegade, published in 2008 and described by Sean O'Hagan in The Observer as 'a relentlessly splenetic piece of work. It may also be the funniest music book ever written.'
Renegade uses unconventional structuring and direct transcription to capture Smith's voice, locating the reader as the pub companion of the hard-drinking Smith. In conversation with Birkbeck's Dr Mark Blacklock, Austin will discuss the process of the ghost and the work of his subject, his own work as a short story writer, musical entrepreneur and film-maker, and the themes that unite his varied outputs: pulp Modernism, the Northern Gothic and the edgelands of culture.
Book your free place for this conversation with Austin Collings via Eventbrite