Complete with a brief but lovely intro from John Cooper Clarke (“a voice that aches like the yearning snarl of a jaded child”), this is a stylishly written and richly entertaining account of a suburban boy turned rock’n’roll animal.
The Only Ones never really quite delivered, in terms of quantity at least, on their musical promise – reading this account, it’s amazing they produced anything at all.
It’s amazing also that Perrett has come through, clean and with his marriage to Zena intact, after early years of infidelity, physical and drug abuse, scrapes with the law due to his other life as a dealer, and misadventures with similarly dissipated yet durable types like Keith Richards.
Somehow, the charmed, if not always charming Perrett has survived, as if made stronger by the chaos that he caused and endured./o:p
