Simon Napier-Bell: Sour Mouth, Sweet Bottom - Lessons from a Dissolute Life

Simon Napier-Bell

Hardcover | 16.51 x 3.81 x 24.13 cm | 336 pp

Unbound | 2022 | 9781800181892 

Simon Napier-Bell has been a composer, songwriter, record producer and author, but he is best known for having managed such artists as the Yardbirds, Marc Bolan, Japan and Wham!.

Sour Mouth, Sweet Bottom is the book Simon Napier-Bell’s fans have always hoped he’d write. His previous bestsellers lifted the lid on the industry, combining brilliant analysis with unforgettable stories of fame and wild excess. But those books hardly scratched the surface. Here he’s turned the spotlight on himself.

From a childhood spent in the cinemas of post-war London and a brief spell playing trumpet in the seedy bars of Montreal, to getting stoned by the pool with Peter Falk and Jack Lemmon in 1960s Beverly Hills and co-writing a hit single for Dusty Springfield, this book is a kaleidoscopic sequence of more than sixty episodes drawn from Simon's life that makes most memoirs look like thin gruel by comparison. 

There are stories of the stellar acts Simon has managed – from the Yardbirds and Marc Bolan to Wham! and Sinéad O'Connor – and there’s also the wisdom gathered from a louche existence of clubs, restaurants, gigs, award ceremonies, bankruptcies, bereavements, booze and sex, both gay and straight. You could call the book ‘How to Use the Music Industry to Create a Lifestyle’. You might equally call it ‘How to Use Your Lifestyle to Gain Access to the Music Industry.’

Either way, Simon pulls no punches, and the result is a frank, funny and fascinating account of a life truly like no other.