Espedair Street

by Iain Banks

Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso

Genres: Fiction, Music, Contemporary, Scotland, Novels, Thriller, Banks

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

This author also published science fiction under the pseudonym Iain M. Banks.

Banks's father was an officer in the Admiralty and his mother was once a professional ice skater. Iain Banks was educated at the University of Stirling where he studied English Literature, Philosophy and Psychology. He moved to London and lived in the south of England until 1988 when he returned to Scotland, living in Edinburgh and then Fife.

Banks met his wife Annie in London, before the release of his first book. They married in Hawaii in 1982. However, he announced in early 2007 that, after 25 years together, they had separated. He lived most recently in North Queensferry, a town on the north side of the Firth of Forth near the Forth Bridge and the Forth Road Bridge.

As with his friend Ken MacLeod (another Scottish writer of technical and social science fiction) a strong awareness of left-wing history shows in his writings. The argument that an economy of abundance renders anarchy and adhocracy viable (or even inevitable) attracts many as an interesting potential experiment, were it ever to become testable. He was a signatory to the Declaration of Calton Hill, which calls for Scottish independence.

In late 2004, Banks was a prominent member of a group of British politicians and media figures who campaigned to have Prime Minister Tony Blair impeached following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In protest he cut up his passport and posted it to 10 Downing Street. In an interview in Socialist Review he claimed he did this after he "abandoned the idea of crashing my Land Rover through the gates of Fife dockyard, after spotting the guys armed with machine guns." He related his concerns about the invasion of Iraq in his book Raw Spirit, and the principal protagonist (Alban McGill) in the novel The Steep Approach to Garbadale confronts another character with arguments in a similar vein.

Interviewed on Mark Lawson's BBC Four series, first broadcast in the UK on 14 November 2006, Banks explained why his novels are published under two different names. His parents wished to name him Iain Menzies Banks but his father made a mistake when registering the birth and he was officially registered as Iain Banks. Despite this he continued to use his unofficial middle name and it was as Iain M. Banks that he submitted The Wasp Factory for publication. However, his editor asked if he would mind dropping the 'M' as it appeared "too fussy". The editor was also concerned about possible confusion with Rosie M. Banks, a minor character in some of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves novels who is a romantic novelist. After his first three mainstream novels his publishers agreed to publish his first SF novel, Consider Phlebas. To distinguish between the mainstream and SF novels, Banks suggested the return of the 'M', although at one stage he considered John B. Macallan as his SF pseudonym, the name deriving from his favourite whiskies: Johnnie Walker Black Label and The Macallan single malt.

His latest book was a science fiction (SF) novel in the Culture series, called The Hydrogen Sonata, published in 2012.

Author Iain M. Banks revealed in April 2013 that he had late-stage cancer. He died the following June.

The Scottish writer posted a message on his official website saying his next novel The Quarry, due to be published later this year*, would be his last.

* The Quarry was published in June 2013.

Reviews

[Marcus Markou · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this having wandered into a book shop aged 16, in the Summer of 1987. I was taken by its strange black and white lumpy cover. We were an immediate match. It was my Catcher in the Rye and Iain Banks was my hero. I have subsequently re-read it and it takes me back to being 16 and all those clumsy feelings about wondering who I would be when I was older and how it would all turn out still reverberate like a favourite song. I have no idea whether this is a good book or not - objectively speaking. But it is my favourite book. Years later, whilst working in London, I noticed that Iain Banks was signing a new Sci Fi book as Iain M Banks. It was my lunch hour. I just started my first job out of University. Again, it was Summer and I was wondering who I would be when I was older and how it would all turn out. I queued up with every Espedair Street the shop was selling - five copies. I had a good school friend who also loved this book. I didn't know what I would do with the rest of them but I wanted his signature on them all. "I hope you don't mind," I nervously asked, when I got to the small desk in the book shop where Mr Banks was signing Sci Fi. "As long as it's not a f**king Geoffrey Archer novel, I will sign it," he said laughing. The queue behind me also laughed. It is a precious memory. Many years later when he died, I cried. Last night I took my last signed copy of Espedair Street from my bookshelf (over the years I'd given all the others away - to lovers and friends) and gave it to my son. He is 14 and for some reason he has found himself playing base at lunchtimes at school and he is starting to wonder who he will be when he's older and how it will all turn out. We both Googled to see whether anyone had made a movie of this book. I am a filmmaker. But we came across this review site. I don't do reviews. Any reviews. For anything. But for this book, I made an exception. Thank you Iain. It's a really special book.

[Algernon (Darth Anyan) · Rating 4 out of 5]

[9/10]

It’s the wrong side of the wrong side of the tracks
The dead end just off Lonely Street
It’s where you go, after Desperation Row
Espedair Street

It rhymes with Despair! but also with Hope (‘speranta’ in Romanian). Let’s take a walk down this aptly named street. It’s a real place in the suburbs of Glasgow, something to get away from, if you can. Daniel Weir managed to escape from this poverty row, from a family history of alcoholism and domestic abuse and petty theft. He then got on top of the world, only to fall back down to earth in a tremendous crash. Now he hides away from people in a crazy house built like a church by a Victorian businessman who fought his own battle against the world and lost (St. Jute’s or Wykes’ Folly in the novel. It would be pretty cool if this was also a real place)

Danny Weir is Weird: his school nickname and his defining character tract. This is Iain Banks speciality in his non-speculative fiction. From the disturbing teenager in “The Wasp Factory” to the troubled family in “The Crow Road”, Banks has been fascinated by the misfits who refuse to adhere to conventional standards of behaviour. Like those other protagonists, Weir is not only strange but also very intelligent, insecure and articulate. From behind his wild face and his sunshades, he watches and judges both the world and his role in it.

Part of me is always detached, observing, watching the other people around me; reacting to how they react, not to what they’re reacting to.

Right from the start I accepted I was a misfit and I’d never really be comfortable anywhere, with anyone. I just decided that if that was the case then I might as well try to be as successful a misfit as possible, make a big noise about it as I could; give the bastards a run for their money.

In his mausoleum of stone, hemmed in by a jungle of Eastern European industrial output, Dan Weir is contemplating how he managed to burn out like a spent firecracker at the age of thirty-one.

It all begins with memories, the way most things do. First: making a cloud.

His journey is the story of rock’n roll : a teenager with a talent for writing songs who dreams of using his music as a means of escape from Espedair Street. His introverted nature makes it difficult to get up on a stage and perform, so he searches for a band to play his songs, and that’s how he meets and joins with a group of middle class young rockers who play popular cover songs in their garage. It’s the early seventies, and Rock is at its apogee, filling stadiums with fans and outselling every other genre. “Frozen Gold” jumps on the bandwagon, thanks to a guitar wizard, a gutsy lead singer and a moody bassist/songwriter in the person of Daniel Weir. And thanks to a helping hand from a good producer who signs them up with a good label. Their rise to fame is meteoric, their popularity rivals the Stones, their international tours are sold out and their albums and singles get to the very top of the charts. Yet here we are, a few years later, with Daniel Weir revisiting all the glory and all the misfortune that marked their ascension and their inevitable collapse.

I’d love to put everything into the one song, to sing a song of birds and dogs and mermaids, hammerheaded friends and bad news from far away (again, like confirmation, like a lesson, like vengeance), a song of supermarket trolleys and seaplanes, falling leaves and power stations, fatal connections and live performances, fans that spin and fans that crush ...

The song is called ‘Espedair Street’ and the novel itself is an expansion of the lyrics quoted above, a fitting and poetic resume of the events in the short lived career of Weird as a rock superstar.

>>><<<>>><<<

This is my third novel in a row dealing with the rock scene in the seventies, and all three have been excellent (the other two are “Utopia Avenue” by David Mitchell and “Daisy Jones and the Six” by Taylor Jenkins Reid). Curiously, all three seem to be inspired by the meteoric rise to fame of the band Fleetwood Mac, and by the criticism that they wrote pop songs instead of true rock. The music scene is masterfully captured in all three novels, yet Banks is probably my favourite of the bunch, because he did it in less pages without sacrificing anything in intensity and social commentary.

I was too conventional altogether. I ought to have spread my wings, flexed my muscles; all that shit. I could have written different songs, I could have been more radical, more adventurous, more daring. Instead I just kept on churning out the same old stuff.

Daniel Weir is pulled in two opposite directions by his past experiences in the music world. Mostly, he is disillusioned and badly scarred emotionally by the corrosive effects of fame, expressed in the pressure to deliver a commercially successful song, followed by the stress of live performance and by the harsh lifestyle of sleepless nights, hard drugs and alcohol. He feels he has been selling his talent for cheap thrills and entertainment. He mourns the friends he has lost, the betrayals of women he loved, his own mistakes that had ultimately led to the destruction of ‘Frozen Gold’.

Product. Jeez, the buzzword of the century. Everything’s ‘product’. Music is ‘product’; product produced by producers for the industry to sell to the consumers.

If you did nothing but give people what they already like, there’d be no new sounds at all (a state it’s possible to feel we are already fast approaching if you listen to some radio stations).

On the other hand, Daniel misses the vibrant interaction with the other group members, the thrill of the creative effort of putting their ideas into music, the ultimate high of singing live to an arena filled with fans.

A sort of ecstasy, all right; a charging, pulsing sense of shared joy; a bodily delight felt as much in the brain as in the guts and skin and the beating heart.
Ah, to go on and on like that, you thought; to be at that level forever ... Well, it was impossible, of course.

Like the other novels of Iain Banks, this may not be to everybody’s taste: his weirdness is funny to me, in particular when it is delivered in the Scottish dialect and I don’t mind much the lack of clear plot progression and the meandering, leisurely trip through flashbacks that mostly show us the protagonist wallowing in self-pity.
I consider my patience rewarded by those insightful passages that spell out the theme and the whole point of the exercise in a final moment of clarity after a long journey lost in the fog.

I left the flat depressed but, as I walked down Espedair Street, back into town under a glorious sunset of red and gold, slowly a feeling of contentment, intensifying almost to elation, filled me. I couldn’t say why; it felt like more than having gone through a period of mourning and come out the other side, and more than just having reassessed my own woes and decided they were slight compared to what some people had to bear; it felt like faith, like revelation: that things went on, that life ground on regardless, and mindless, and produced pain and pleasure and hope and fear and joy and despair, and you dodged some of it and you sought some of it and sometimes you were lucky and sometimes you weren’t, and sometimes you could plan your way ahead and that would be the right thing to have done, but other times all you could do was forget about plans and just be ready to react, and sometimes the obvious was true and sometimes it wasn’t, and sometimes experience helped but not always, and it was all luck, fate, in the end; you lived, and you waited to see what happened, and you would rarely ever be sure that what you had done was really the right things or the wrong thing, because things can always be better, and things can always be worse.

I know it’s a long quote, and itself spreading all over the place in this internal monologue of Dan Weir, but I could not decide what to cut our from it without losing its flavour or its meaning. We go on, against all odds, and if we cannot escape from Espedair Street, we can at least write a song about the experience.

[Brad · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve always been impressed by Iain (M.) Banks range.

Whether he’s writing about an hermaphroditic serial killer and his/her mechanical wasp oracle, a man in a coma living a second life on a vast hyperreal bridge of the mind, a bored gamer compelled by artificial intelligences to play the ultimate game on a distant planet, or a brilliant woman whose place in an omnipotent corporation takes her to a kingdom in the Himalayas, Banks always maintains his artistry and deliberate social relevance without compromising entertainment.

Despite Banks’ excellence, however, his books tend to be too edgy for mainstream audiences. My biggest challenge has been finding the right work to pass on to my friends, to ease them into the mind of Banks, to prepare them for his more challenging works and the intellectual challenges that often lie in wait. That novel is Espedair Street.

It isn’t just close to mainstream, it is mainstream.

It tells the story of Daniel Weir, ex-bass player and musical genius behind the 70s’ supergroup Frozen Gold. Daniel, also known as Weird, is a bit depressed when the novel opens, depressed enough to consider suicide, and he relates his life story to us so that we understand why he’s feeling down but decided to hang around. He talks about missed opportunities, wild successes, the deaths of people he loved (which were marginally his fault), the people he let slip away, the talent he leaves fallow, sex, drugs and even some Rock and Roll. And when Weird’s told us everything he needs to tell us, after he’s made us love him without pity, he goes off and finds happiness.

Yep, Iain Banks wrote a happy ending. He wrote a book that was made for the screen (and the fact that it hasn’t been adapted is criminal). He wrote a book whose primary purpose seems to be escape, although it still retains elements of Banks’ conscience and politics. He wrote a book that even the most genre-phobic reader would be thrilled to read.

And it is proof positive that there is nothing that Iain Banks can’t write. What wouldn’t I give for a gram of his range.

Aside -- (over the course of Espedair Street I couldn’t get this thought out of my head: Banks “Weird” tale is a Nick Horby novel without the smug cheek and slacker superiority. I wonder how Hornby fans would like Espedair Street. I’m betting they would like it very much.)

[Paltia · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Everything seems to take about the right amount of time at the time, but later...Jeez, where did it all go? You look back, and sometimes you think, Did I really do all that? And other times you think. Is that all there is? Is that all I managed to get done? We are never satisfied. Don’t even know the meaning of the word.”
Daniel Wier has a story to tell. A story of his search for satisfaction. A writer of songs, a bass player and a man who nearly loses his way as a member of the successful band, Frozen Gold. Despite, or due to his tendencies towards self doubt and pessimism, he knows how to make music. He surprises himself once the words that previously existed only in his head go live particularly with Christine singing his words. His music takes the band and fans to places of ecstasy and abandonment. On his journey he is saddled with the hefty baggage of Catholic guilt, an absent father in prison, childhood trauma, and what he describes as a less than pleasing countenance. Is he confused? He is. Better confused than bored, miserable and serious. His confusion teaches him to think for himself which at times is in conflict with acting the rock star. He feels he has a duty to his public. He must act the part. In these moments he can almost convince himself that nothing is really all that important, so why not party. These irresponsible moments are the most comic. But, just when you think you know this character he upends the chaos and reveals his other sides. He is gentle, humble, longing for closeness and genuinely caring for and about others. Rarely self absorbed or self righteous he strives for a balance amidst the decadence. In his most self reflective moments he reminds us that life is a dance and if you aren’t dancing but holding fast to rigid frameworks you might consider allowing the tide of music to sweep you away. There is immense loss in his story. These losses are so vast they nearly take him along. Fortunate enough to see another sunrise he acts on his final decision of the story. A decision so important it’s as if he knew all along he would arrive exactly where he does.
This is an altogether gratifying story which offers insight into survival - how to survive the random and unexpected events life throws at us. Daniel finds his strength and satisfaction through surviving and this is what makes him a real star.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

First of all, this is NOT a book by "Iain M. Banks" - it's by Iain Banks (in other words, it's fiction, not science-fiction). Second, why he's so difficult to find in the US I'll never know. Every book I've read is just good, solid fiction writing, equal to Julian Barnes, Robertson Davies and many other top echelon writers.

Espedair Street is a real street, but it barely figures in this tale of Wierd, the stage name for one Daniel Weir (in school he was Weir, D. - get it?). He's the lyricist and bassist for Frozen Gold, a hugely successful rock band in the 70s-80s until their lead guitarist dies. Told partly in flashbacks of his days with FG and partly in his present guise as Jimmy Hay, caretaker of St. Jute's, the folly that Weird bought, drinking his way through life and occasionally creating a jingle or a movie score. His current friends don't know who he is, or that he's stinking rich; his former friends/fans think he's dead (or perhaps living in the Caymans). It all comes abruptly to an end when he realizes that his brilliant ideas have killed (inadvertently) two of his bandmates. So, what was that about a future?

The characters feel real - even though you know this is fiction, you could plausibly meet someone just like them. The writing is crisp, not the bloated stories that often appear today because somehow bigger = better.

Seriously, if you don't know Banks' non-scifi work, find one of his works of fiction and read it, now.

[Manny · Rating 3 out of 5]

They're supposedly just friends. But now they're lying naked on the beach together, looking up at the stars with no one else in sight, and he's trying to find a tactful way to explain how he feels about her. (This kind of thing seems to happen more frequently to rock stars than it does to me). Luckily, she's a practical girl with good night vision.

"Are you pointing at anything in particular?" she asks.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm still yet to read a convincing novel about music stardom. Utopia Avenue byDavid Mitchell, The Thrill of it All by Joseph O'Connor, Daisy Jones & The SixProbably the best book on the subject I've read is Brett Anderson of Suede's autobiography, Afternoons with the Blinds Drawn. This novel is rife with clichés. The author tries to disguise his clichéd take on rock stardom with an offbeat prose style and an excessive strain to make his narrator charming and comical. I didn't find it engaging. Too much whimsy and the band itself is unbelievable.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

After learning about the untimely passing of Iain Banks a few years ago, I made it a task that I would finish reading his quite substantial body of work, both his contemporary novels (of which I had read several over the years, starting with the infamous Wasp Factory back in the very early 1990's) and his Science Fiction based ones, written under Iain M. Banks. In fact I had started on the Culture novels before I learned he was dying. He was a great writer, his contemporary, more 'mainstream' books all usually contain some dry humour and wit, along with quite bizarre plots, protagonists and a usual 'twist'. Espedair Street is no exception, but it is more of a straightforward (well...maybe not quite so) tale, lacking the twists compared to say, The Crow Road for example.

It deals with a working class Glaswegian youth called Daniel Weir (nicknamed 'Weird'), who has high ambitions of becoming a rock star, which, through incredible luck succeeds in doing throughout the 1970s with a progressive rock band called 'Frozen Gold'. The band he is in (being the main songwriter and bass player) soon become a stadium rock outfit, making millions, and the book traverses all the typical lifestyle and tragedy that those big mega-groups of the mid '70s are infamous for; sex, drugs n' rock n'roll - in a nutshell. I was trying to place, with my own knowledge of prog-rock banks of the 1970's (which is not inconsiderable) who possibly Frozen Gold could have been based on, but found it hard. Perhaps the whole tale is really a send-up of the excesses of the big bands of the '70's, a wry look at what fame does to people and how manipulated by record companies they were (and probably still are to an extent). Perhaps Frozen Gold could have been as much Led Zeppelin as the Rolling Stones as Fleetwood Mac, maybe. Whatever, if there is a message here in Espedair Street, it is what fame and excessive amounts of money can do to you. Daniel Weir however appears slightly more balanced with it all compared to some of the band - perhaps coming from a real deprived working-class area of Glasgow keeps his mind in check, his feet on the ground. Iain Banks' dry humour is here, but there is some sadness throughout the book as well. Also, there is not that much of twist here that his novels are famed for, as I mentioned above, and the book ends happily and positively for the protagonist (returning to his roots after experiencing over a decade as a famous Rock Star, finding his old girlfriend). A good tale, but still not quite as good as The Bridge (which, of the ones I have read, I consider his best - but that is a different format anyway and deals with a much more deeper theme than Espedair Street) and a few others.

EDIT: --
Espedair Street...is located in Paisley, Glasgow, and Daniel Weir, according to Iain Banks, was loosely based on Fish, the ex-Marillion singer/solo artist. And, from reading the Wikipedia page - Frozen Gold was again, loosely based on Pink Floyd AND Fleetwood Mac (so I got part of the influence correct).

[Ruxandra Grrr]

DNF@ 9%

Going to go to book club like a bo$$, without having read more of this book. I shall drink whiskey and listen to people talk about it (which I've never done before), but there's no way I can handle more of this narrator / main character talking about hot chicks, complaining about his stutter and boring me terribly. Don't want to read about someone whose friends hate him (done that like a thousand times already in so many male-written books).

Gah, is this the same Banks from The Bridge who actually managed to write a very interesting and nuanced non-monogamous relationship configuration two years before this and a pretty well-rounded female character?!?! Maybe the next one will be better.

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first I was wondering what all the fuss was about, why some friends thought this was Banks' masterpiece. It seemed a fairly simple tale of a rock star looking back [from the dizzy heights of his early thirties!] on his life so far with the way his band was formed and how he felt about it now. But gradually I realised there was more to it than that, the book's structure more complex and the layers within the plot more intriguing. As Danny's life was revealed, so I became more fascinated with the characters he knew and the life-style he led then and now. I appreciated the hints Banks left occasionally about tragedies and dramatic events yet to be told ... I was hooked. I wanted to know more about the band, Frozen Gold, and the lad himself. Was he based on Mick Fleetwood [physically and past habits!], Fish from Marillion [as Banks once claimed] or another rock-star of the 1970/80s?

It's difficult to say too much about what happened later as this would leave spoilers but suffice it to say that I was drawn into the world of Weird/Danny/Jim, especially all the characters from McCann and Wee Tommy in the present to Christine and Inez in the past. Each was believable and well drawn. The settings too were clear, from Ferguslie Park in Paisley to the tours and back to Clydeside.

I have some hesitations about the ending ... perhaps too neat, too happy ... but overall an excellent book.

[Kate Stone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Confession: I’ve never read any of Iain Banks’ work, with or without the middle initial. I’ll be correcting that now that I’ve had my first taste. I’m also a hobbyist musician so the premise here was practically perfect for drawing me in. Draw me in it did, as I found every opportunity to read another few pages, another chapter, just one more revelation to help paint a more complete picture.

The book’s meandering narrative timeline was used as a really effective tool without the handholding I usually associate with the device. It isn’t always clear where the passage you’re reading fits into the big picture, and yet I never found it confusing so much as engaging and intriguing. The story told has moments worthy of celebration and despair, and somehow both are filtered through the protagonist’s viewpoint in a way that adds another layer to his character study. An intriguing story well told, one that is over all too quickly.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The dead end just off Lonely Street
It’s where you go, after Desperation Row
Espedair Street”

I had my first taste of Iain Banks’s work last year with The Crow Road and was glad to have an excuse to read more by him (for Annabookbel’s BanksRead challenge). This was Banks’s fourth novel. I recognized the Glasgow and western Scotland settings and witty dialogue as recurring elements. The Scottish dialect and slang were somehow easier to deal with here than in books like Shuggie Bain. Daniel Weir (nicknamed “Weird”) is a former rock star, washed up though only in his early thirties and contemplating suicide. He has all the money he could ever want, but his relationships seem to have fizzled.

Dan takes us back to the start of his time with the band Frozen Gold in the 1970s. He acknowledges that he only ever had limited musical talent; although he can play the bass well enough, his real gift is for lyrics. Songwriting was mostly what he had to offer when he met bandmates Dave and Christine after their gig at the Union:

What am I doing here? I thought once more. They don’t need me, no matter how good the songs are. They’ll always be heading in different directions, moving in different circles, higher spheres. Jesus, this was life or death to me, my one chance to make the great working class escape. I couldn’t play football; what other hope was there to get into the supertax bracket?

Boldly, he told them that night that they were a good covers band but needed their own material, and he had sheaves of songs at the ready. From here, it was an unlikely road to a world tour in 1980, but a perhaps more predictable slide into the alcohol abuse and gratuitous displays of wealth that will leave Dan questioning what of true value he retains.

Dan’s voice, as in the passage above, is mischievous yet confessional. The sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll theme made me think of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones & the Six, a rather more enjoyable novel for its interview format and multiple perspectives, but both include pleasing made-up lyrics. Here Dan’s frequent use of ellipses threatened to drive me mad. It might seem a small thing but it’s one of my pet peeves.

I think I’ll make The Bridge my next from Banks – my library owns a copy, and he called it his favourite of his books.

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Codfather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well what to make of this book, not what I was expecting at all.

The book starts with a stream of consciousness that describes the scene that will eventually be told during the novel, but don't be put off, as it is worth reading through that.

The story about the sudden flight to stardom of an unlikely youth and the tales around that make for fun reading. It touches on quite a few themes of friendship, lies, deceit and sudden immense wealth.

It never touches on the "oh it was hard" trope we so often hear from the pampered minstrels, which was a great relief.

In the end, it is a decent story with a good finale, so what is not to like?

I have loved reading many of his books and can heartily recommend this one.

[Paul Holden · Rating 5 out of 5]

A compelling character piece, lyrical and funny in places. Perhaps it’s because I play in a band or maybe it’s just reading about an ordinary guy who makes it big but is wracked with self doubt and guilt. But either way, I flew through this.

[Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I shelved this in October 2009, so it's been at least that long since I read Espedair Street. I feel I've read it twice or thrice before and it was always one of my Iain no-M Banks favourites (although doing a quick google this might not be a widely held belief).

I re-read this on impulse after watching Daisy Jones & The Six - another fake rock history loosely inspired by that band of bands, Fleetwood Mac. On this read I still thoroughly enjoyed the book, although it's interesting that my memory had much more "band time" than "Weird time" in the story as it was. We are evocatively captured back into a Glasgow from a certain period where the culture of Scotland and the UK were in the last dying throes of whatever it was it had before the beige revolution of the 90s and onwards arrived. Supergroup anecdotes are drawn with a broad brush, certainly inspired by Fleetwood Mac and maybe a bit Led Zeppelin, but don't dominate the story. The protagonist is certainly in a much worse way than earlier reads had led me to believe - blackout drunk while also being 6+ feet amongst other things is worrying - which maybe puts more a question on the story's conclusion, but I feel this book was also not particularly going for a deep statement or complex narrative.

Nowadays this might just be a 3-star - a little quick, straightforward, enjoyable, but missing any rousing fist pumping moments or times of real crisis, nary even a twist (although that might be a re-read problem) - but I'll leave it at 4, because I'd like to nip into the Griffin for a pint.

[Jday · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another great book from Banks. I've read a few Biography/auto-biography type books about rock bands; including the Stones, The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac and David Bowie. This had a lot of the same elements to it, but with an honesty that the others can't match.

I want to quote a little piece from near the end of the book. To me, this portion of a long, run-on sentence, is the entire point of what Banks was trying to say with Espedair Street.

"...it felt like faith, like revelation: that things went on, that life ground on regardless, and mindless, and produced pain and pleasure and hope and fear and joy and dispair, and you were lucky and sometimes you weren't, and sometimes you could plan your way ahead and that would be the right thing to have done, but other times all you could do was forget about plans and just be ready to react, and sometimes the obvious was true and sometimes it wasn't, and sometimes experience helped but not always, and it was all luck, fate, in the end; you lived, and you waited to see what happened, and you would rarely ever be sure that what you had done was really the right thing or the wrong thing, because things can always be better, and things can always be worse."

[Owain Lewis · Rating 2 out of 5]

No, sorry, I just didn't buy it. I think setting up his narrator as a former big name in the world of late sixties/early seventies rock, operating in the same arena as Zepp and Hendrix, was a bad move. We can read biographies/autobiographies of actual rock mega stars and their debauched shenanigans so a fictional narrative is never going to cut it for me. I rather read a story about the ones that didn't make it big. That would be much more believable.

[Dean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just brilliant. I love Iain Banks' books. I laughed. I thought. I cried. I walked in another's shoes. You can't ask for more.

[Adrian Bloxham · Rating 5 out of 5]

A perfect book. I don't know how many times I've read this, it's like talking to an old friend

[Patsy Whiteman · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
I am pleasantly surprised by this book, going into it I thought it was going to be just like the Wasp factory; depressing. However, this one has a happy ending!...kind of.
You follow Daniel Weir, a Scottish rockstar through his midlife crisis. This is punctuated by flashbacks to his crazy life as a rockstar in the band Frozen Gold. You get to know his band mates, previous friends and acquaintances managers etc. as he looks back on them.
For the first half of this book I thought, damn Iain reaaaaally wanted to be a rockstar and is trying to live vicariously through Daniel, but as the book continues you begin to realise how boring/ annoying/tiring/problematic/dangerous being famous is.
I particularly liked the sprinkle of Scottish dialect; "soar fetch" SOMEHOW means sore fight?? Thank you Iain for translating. I could grasp all of it apart from that last phrase.

This book has no plot, if you like biographies, funny anecdotes and characters I would say this is for you. It's not a particular fast read and I think it's good for people who like a book that you can pick up and put down whenever.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

My reading group decided to tackle this book with Daisy Jones and the Six and they made a great pair and whilst I enjoyed the former this felt altogether more down to earth in its portrayal of a former song writer/bass player for a huge 1970's rock band coming to terms with life after fame in the 1980's particularly the events that brought an end to the band. The book opens with Dan Weir contemplating suicide in his Glasgow folly of a home, and stumbling from one alcoholic encounter to another with his local drinking buddies whilst alternating the story with the rise and fall of the band. Overall the response in our group was mixed but I very easily fall into Iain Bank's writing style and happily immersed myself in this book .

[Sankalp Davar · Rating 2 out of 5]

I believe I didn't fall into the target segment for whom the book was released. (Not helped by the fact it was released way back in the 80s).

Had I found this book 15 years back, when I was buying pirated CDs of heavy metal bands by traveling half the way across city in the pre Internet age, I would have taken it in as my own bible.

This one can be used as a primer to get dumb screen-chained teens into reading. Has everything you name it:

A loner becoming a rockstar, earning money he can't even count, drugged out shenanigans, punk edgy girls, getting laid, pseudo emo songs, romance you feel like retching.

Ideal fodder for hormone infested brains of adolescents.

This book has certainly not aged well.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a (amateur) musician a lot of the backstage antics really rang true. The main character was well developed, most of the other characters stayed a bit flat. The plot was nicely laid out, but the ending maybe just a bit too cliche, which is usually something Banks avoids.

A good read, it's not one of Banks best works: it's obvious it's one of his earlier works.

[Lee Osborne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another novel down in my effort to plough through Banks's fine body of work. I really enjoyed this one, and got through it very quickly, although it's shorter than some of his other books.

It's a story of an awkward kid from a run-down sink estate in a dodgy town, who gets a lucky break and becomes part of a hugely successful rock band in the seventies. He ends up very rich and very famous, and reflects on his life some years after the band broke up - the book is set in the mid-eighties, the time when it was written, and the band split after a tragedy befell them on tour in the USA.

Like a lot of Banks novels, it's a slow burn and takes a while to get going, and it's hard to see the direction it's going to take, but it all unfolded most satisfyingly. I like the themes it deals with - the main character is a reflective and thoughtful guy, who recognises he's been lucky, but can also see that a couple of seemingly trivial decisions and events in his life have had dreadful consequences. He's never quite left his hometown behind, and faces a crossroads in his life when he hears bad news. Unsure of what to do, he contemplates suicide.

I won't give too much else away, but this is a much more conventional and easy-to-stomach read than some of his other works, especially the deeply disturbing weirdness of "The Wasp Factory". Although it's more accessible and perhaps less challenging to get through, there's still a lot here to make you think, and it deals effectively with a lot of themes - how we handle success and failure, the search for meaning in our lives, and how the things we say and do can have huge consequences we can't even remotely comprehend before they unfold before us.

The ending is perhaps a little cheesy, but there's nothing wrong with it, as it all fits together very well, and it left a satisfying feeling when I'd finished. Very enjoyable.

[Dane Cobain · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first thing to say about this one is that I was recommended it first by a poet friend called Nigel Cresswell and then later by a writer friend called Ken Boyter, who also happens to be a medium. He told me that the spirits were telling me I should read it, so I thought I’d give it a go.

It was a good call, because it’s basically about a bunch of washed up musicians who are looking back at their earlier success. I say “washed up” – one of the characters was the same age that I am, so if he’s washed up then I guess so am I.

There was some pretty good stuff here, along with some similarities to an as-yet-unpublished novel of my own, but I think there’s just something about Banks’ writing that doesn’t particularly gel with me. He’s a pretty good writer, but he’s not amazing. It’s a bit like comparing James Herbert to Stephen King. Herbert is competent, but King is a master.

All in all then, it felt like a watered down Irvine Welsh, and that’s not particularly a compliment. It was worth reading, but it also wasn’t anything particularly special, and I didn’t like it as much as I was expecting to. Still, it was decent enough and I wouldn’t say that I’ll never read any more Banks. He’s not an auto-buy author, though.

[GONZA · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is by far the book by Iian Banks that I have enjoyed the most. I think I have read 6 or 7 and of all of them this novel is the only one with a nice linear story, with no absolute follies other than those done by some personages, but falling within a Euclidean context.
The main character then, bass player of a band that no longer exists and tenant of a fake cathedral with a false cemetery attached, is truly remarkable. I am sure that of all the books of his that we will read over the next six years in our quarterly cycle, I will not forget this Iain Banks.

Questo é in assoluto il libro di Iain Banks che mi é piaciuto di piú fino ad ora. Credo di averne letti 6 o 7 e, tra tutti, questo romanzo é l'unico con una bella storia lineare, senza follie assolute se non quelle fatte da alcuni personaggi, ma che rientrano in un contesto euclideo. Il protagonista principale poi, bassista di una band che non esiste piú e inquilino di una falsa cattedrale con annesso finto cimitero, é veramente notevole. Sono sicura che di tutti i libri suoi che leggeremo nei prossimi sei anni nel nostro ciclo trimestrale, questo Iain Banks non me lo dimenticherò piú.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read wasp factory, but I have to say this book touched me in different ways. I love Iains' writing style so far, it always manages to grasp me in such a gripping way. Daniel or "Weird's" character was detailed in such a descriptive way, and his progression felt rewarding while still staying true to character. I found the story overall rewarding, and can't say I had any complaints.

[HENRYK ANDRUSZKO · Rating 4 out of 5]

While reading this book, which was written and set in the late 1980s, brought to mind issues that were dominate at the time. (The cold war , nuclear arms race punk rock! etc). It just goes to show we're living through history.

[Sergey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Секс, наркотики и рок-н-ролл, а если точнее рок-н-ролл, бухло, секс и наркотики.
Понравилась меньше, чем те что читал из Бэнкса до того.

[Joe Middleton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this a long time ago and loved it. Banks was an incredible author of both SF and superior quality Scottish fiction.