Bringing It All Back Home

by Ian Clayton

The author loves jazz, blues, rock, soul, the works. He'll go virtually anywhere in the world for a positive musical a festival in Ireland, a hole-in-the-wall in New Delhi, a record store in, well, anywhere. . . Sometimes charming, sometimes rambling."" Kirkus Reviews 11/15/07

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

271 pages, Hardcover

First published May 5, 2007

About the author

Ian Clayton has been a jobbing writer, storyteller and broadcaster for over 30 years. He has written on subjects as varied as the environment, homelessness, jazz and rugby league. His stories are about making sense of where we come from. He has written three memoirs: Song For My Father about his lifelong search for a father figure; Bringing It All Back Home about his love of music; Our Billie about loss; It’s The Beer Talking, about adventures in public houses; In Search of Plainsong tells the full story of the original 1972 incarnation of the folk-rock group and their debut album In Search of Amelia Earhart. Right Up Your Street is the first volume of columns he’s written for Pontefract and Castleford Express. He is the co-compiler of Wisdom of Our Own, a book that tells the story of a learning centre that grew out of the Women Against Pit Closures movement. He is the co-author of Anne Scargill and Betty Cook’s memoir Anne & Betty, and he co-wrote Iain Matthews’s memoir Thro’ My Eyes

Ian still lives in the town where he was born, with his partner Heather, a social worker and artist.

source: Ian Clayton

Reviews

[Sibyl · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a very enjoyable, aimiable book.
Although there's also a sadness lurking around the edges of the story.
I much preferred Ian Clayton's account of his obsessive, eclectic love of popular music to Nick Hornby's novel 'High Fidelity'.
I'm about the same age as the author - so every now and then there was the stab of recognition, when a particular album or musician was name-checked.
If there was something missing, it would be the fact the author can't quite seem to explain why music moves him as it does. There are moments when I felt Ian Clayton was on the edge of telling me something original and powerful - but then he'd remember some other amusing anecdote and move on.
But it's a great account of how bad times can be survived - transceneded if you like - through music.

[Nick Davies · Rating 3 out of 5]

On the one hand, this was approachable, readable, with a gentle humour. Clayton writes about a lifelong love of music, how he came to be that way, where it has taken him, and how it makes him feel. Regardless of what sort of music someone is into, I've generally found it much easier to feel kindred with them - as compared to someone who doesn't have a strong need for music and is happy just with the charts or something.

Alas though, partly because despite not being too far removed geographically in upbringing but a couple of decades difference in age, I didn't fully connect with the author's passions. At times I found his name dropping and anecdotes became a little tedious and repetitive - more interested in his childhood and family than 'that time I went to a gig and met X' or the places he has been as a journalist and writer. It seems a shame to criticise what was generally pretty enjoyable (tragic events aside) for the fact there was limited breadth in what was discussed, but I got less from the second half than I did the first, and it felt a longer read than the ~270 pages it was.

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bringing it all back home is the story of a personal musical odyssey from up the road in Featherstone - an odyssey in which, as the title suggests, so many roads lead back home to Yorkshire. Packed with interesting facts and stories (not only did Louis Armstrong play a two week residency at Batley Variety Club in the 1967, but he also played in Leeds in 1932!) this is an entertaining enough read, but after a while I did find the author's rather flat delivery started to grate, particularly the endless stories of getting drunk or stoned. Nevertheless, his love and enthusiasm for great music - whether that's jazz, blues, folk or the Grimethorpe colliery band - shines through. He's a regular at the Cambridge and Whitby festivals both of which have great line-ups. As other reviewers have noted, the final chapter is unbearably sad. C

[Malcolm Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

A professional Yorkshire man writes a memoir and it proves good. For myself reading this book I grew up in the next county south of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and the Lincolnshire I knew seemed always to be in the shadow of it's bigger northern neighbour. I understood part of what this book was about-it was about the wonder and frustration of finding brilliant music on old records and then realising that the records were pale shadows, minor miraculous leftovers, compared with what it would have been like to see the same performers playing the same songs live. This book is about the lack of live music and live music venues, and the plentiful number of recordings from artists near and far away, both in time and in geography. I liked descriptions of his 1978 pilgrimage to see Bob Dylan at Blackbush. It was a pilgrimage. Whatever the music was like, seeing the man live in the flesh was more important and even more than that, as his close family observed in a back handed way, life transforming. But then comes the rest of the book and there is something wearing about reading about where ever the author is in the world the compass and the memory always points to Yorkshire. There is also a 'boys toys' thing going on with the accumulation of vast amounts of vinyl records, and the grieving over the occasional necessary sale of some of them. Disc Jockeys collect vast numbers of records as part what they play live at discos and on radio programmes, but have literally tons of records and playing them by and for yourself-it does not read the same. It is obsessive, to be plain about it, and yes some obsessions do entertain others and repay the effort in maintaining them, but here it flags a little, just as the professional Yorkshireman display does.

The end of the book is a sharp and sobering descent and a positive moral reminder that for music to be played live the instruments have to be there and the singer must sometimes die to the song, if the song is to live, both metaphorically and more than metaphorically.

[Benjamin Richards · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am so happy to have spent some time with the author. He loves so many of the things I do - Yorkshire, West Yorkshire no less! Rugby League, music, gardening, travelling and drinking. I was really unprepared for the closing part of the book.

One of my favourite passages which encapsulates, for me, everything that is good and green about the northern (justified) hatred towards government:

'My gran's family we farmers' labourers who stood in the squares of little Yorkshire market towns while potential employers felt at their muscles before hiring them. The family at some point in Victorian times gravitated to the coal towns to find digging under the ground they had once ploughed. My gran had four uncles who were all killed in the First World War before they were twenty-five. She had two brothers who left the mines for the second war and never came home. During the miners' strike, Margaret Thatcher called miners and their families 'the enemy within'. My grandad swung his boot at the television and refused to ever watch the news again. He stuck to his word. In the last five years of his life, the five years that fell outside the forty down the pit and the six in the army, he only watched the snooker.'

This is England.

[Rob Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ian Clayton thinks back about what music means to him and tells some great stories about how music has touched his life. He's funny, he's led an interesting life and he's worth listening to.
Once I'd finished this book, I immediately wanted to get up and write, see the world, do something. Inspiring, I guess you could say. I should probably up my rating of it.

[Robert Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable. Similar to Nick Hornby or Andy Kershaw in his enthusiasm for music and popular culture, but has a less obvious 'writerly' style, which for me is a plus. Also love the self-deprecatory humour of Nothern England.

[Mike B · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the quotes promoting the book on the back says, "the best book popular music". It really is. And about a child, who grew to be a great man with a pretty cool tale to tell. America, India, Yorkshire. Blues!

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s been a real joy reading Ian’s book. I’m from a few miles from where Ian was brought up and lives. So much of his rich writing really did resonate with me and this book was one that made me want to keep reading. I look forward to reading more of this author’s work!

[Ian Fiddes · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10. Written with a wonderful enthusiasm for music. Was coasting along nicely in this book when an awful event happens which is very upsetting.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brought it all back to me.