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View from a Hill
'View From A Hill is the story of Mark Burgess, singer and founder member of legendary Manchester cult heroes The Chameleons. The band were catapulted to the forefront of the post-punk scene when John Peel awarded them a much coveted session after the band had played only a handful of low-key gigs. Mark takes us through four decades of pop culture as he charts The Chameleons' development, as well as their cruel treatment at the hands of a corrupt music industry. Amidst intrigue in the Middle East, expeditions in search of the Loch Ness Monster, and acid trips that inspired the band's language and sound, there are myriad music industry anecdotes that will make your jaw drop. Moving and hilarious by turns, View From A Hill is a highly entertaining rollercoaster ride of a rock memoir.
- GenresMusic
782 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2010
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90 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 12, 2015
I co-edited this along with Jaz Long, wrote the introduction, and published it, so I am probably biased! Here's an excerpt from the introduction:
"View From A Hill is a many-faceted thing. Mark Burgess renders four decades of pop culture vivid by his participation and communication, taking us round the world on musical and spiritual quests. Highlights include the best ever way to get kicked off your record label, a poignant definition of success , and the psychological terror of a close encounter with evil. These moments, as well as his reports of supernatural phenomena, make this a remarkable rock memoir that rewards the reader time and again.
One element of Mark’s story - and the one we can hardly be unaware of - is that he was the vocalist, lyricist and bassist of The Chameleons. For many of us, The Chameleons are a mythical band. One that, should Scroobius Pip hold up a copy of Script Of The Bridge and then cast it aside with a shout of "just a band!", we would protest mightily, and never stop protesting as to their profound musical value and chimerical status.
In this introduction I want to explore something of The Chameleons' strange and shimmering nature. The starting point has to be their output: the oceanic guitarscapes crafted by Reg Smithies and Dave Fielding, John Lever's innovative percussion, and Mark's extraordinary lyrical and vocal abilities. The first incarnation of the band, emerging from the same kind of wonderful historical accident that produced groups like The Smiths or The Beatles, sent forth three albums’ worth of faultless material. While it’s easy to imagine a world without The Chameleons, I feel that the question to ask is how did this miracle even happen?
The history that Mark recounts here takes us part of the way towards an answer. A child who could sing before he could speak is forced through an education system that sometimes succeeds - but in the end grossly fails - to nurture a soul yearning to play, to create new worlds through the joyful adventures of art. Condemned through class prejudice to an engineering school at the age of fourteen, his energies blast out sideways into typically teenage escapades. Careering around, with the safety net of education no longer there, he is caught in the empowering arms of punk rock. Punk - art in its truest form, the most explosive impetus to creativity many of us have ever known - takes his heart and sets it on fire, and in those rapturous and often dangerous times he finds solace and forges new connections. Then, bouncing on punk’s aftershocks, he cannot fail to release what has been growing within him. It’s just a matter of time, those aforementioned accidents of history, and a shedload of drugs.
In these pages we can glimpse the forces that brought Reg, Dave and John to these same coordinates in space/time - otherwise known as right place/right time, and how they adopted Mark as the singer of their new, unnamed band. We’re treated to heart-stopping recollections of their LSD-fuelled meanderings on Tandle Hill, where they discovered that a bridge could have a script, and where they first heard the hypnotically eerie whistling sound that would become the ethereal motif of their early songs. Mark retraces the exciting steps that led to their first Peel session, and then to the release of their debut single, ‘In Shreds’, a thunderous anthem of disaffection and alienation that placed them firmly on the post-punk map.
Of course, such serendipity was purely artistic. The Chameleons had all the dark intensity of Joy Division combined with the power and presence of early U2 (and a whole lot more besides), yet they were never to penetrate the mainstream. Their habit of getting robbed blind by managers and record labels, like innocent babes lured to the wolf’s lair, was to ultimately to take years - and albums - off the band’s life. From the moment their first drummer, ‘Scoffer’, pocketed most of the fee from their very first gig, through to the elaborate heists performed by a succession of managers and record labels, they were manipulated by cunning thieves who understood that all The Chameleons really wanted to do was play music, and who held this youthful passion to ransom. You’ll read, in heartbreaking sequence, how they were betrayed almost every step of the way. Those three pristine studio albums emerged despite it all; you can’t help wondering what they would have achieved without the leeches."
We're selling the book at the Mittens On website - mittenson.com
"View From A Hill is a many-faceted thing. Mark Burgess renders four decades of pop culture vivid by his participation and communication, taking us round the world on musical and spiritual quests. Highlights include the best ever way to get kicked off your record label, a poignant definition of success , and the psychological terror of a close encounter with evil. These moments, as well as his reports of supernatural phenomena, make this a remarkable rock memoir that rewards the reader time and again.
One element of Mark’s story - and the one we can hardly be unaware of - is that he was the vocalist, lyricist and bassist of The Chameleons. For many of us, The Chameleons are a mythical band. One that, should Scroobius Pip hold up a copy of Script Of The Bridge and then cast it aside with a shout of "just a band!", we would protest mightily, and never stop protesting as to their profound musical value and chimerical status.
In this introduction I want to explore something of The Chameleons' strange and shimmering nature. The starting point has to be their output: the oceanic guitarscapes crafted by Reg Smithies and Dave Fielding, John Lever's innovative percussion, and Mark's extraordinary lyrical and vocal abilities. The first incarnation of the band, emerging from the same kind of wonderful historical accident that produced groups like The Smiths or The Beatles, sent forth three albums’ worth of faultless material. While it’s easy to imagine a world without The Chameleons, I feel that the question to ask is how did this miracle even happen?
The history that Mark recounts here takes us part of the way towards an answer. A child who could sing before he could speak is forced through an education system that sometimes succeeds - but in the end grossly fails - to nurture a soul yearning to play, to create new worlds through the joyful adventures of art. Condemned through class prejudice to an engineering school at the age of fourteen, his energies blast out sideways into typically teenage escapades. Careering around, with the safety net of education no longer there, he is caught in the empowering arms of punk rock. Punk - art in its truest form, the most explosive impetus to creativity many of us have ever known - takes his heart and sets it on fire, and in those rapturous and often dangerous times he finds solace and forges new connections. Then, bouncing on punk’s aftershocks, he cannot fail to release what has been growing within him. It’s just a matter of time, those aforementioned accidents of history, and a shedload of drugs.
In these pages we can glimpse the forces that brought Reg, Dave and John to these same coordinates in space/time - otherwise known as right place/right time, and how they adopted Mark as the singer of their new, unnamed band. We’re treated to heart-stopping recollections of their LSD-fuelled meanderings on Tandle Hill, where they discovered that a bridge could have a script, and where they first heard the hypnotically eerie whistling sound that would become the ethereal motif of their early songs. Mark retraces the exciting steps that led to their first Peel session, and then to the release of their debut single, ‘In Shreds’, a thunderous anthem of disaffection and alienation that placed them firmly on the post-punk map.
Of course, such serendipity was purely artistic. The Chameleons had all the dark intensity of Joy Division combined with the power and presence of early U2 (and a whole lot more besides), yet they were never to penetrate the mainstream. Their habit of getting robbed blind by managers and record labels, like innocent babes lured to the wolf’s lair, was to ultimately to take years - and albums - off the band’s life. From the moment their first drummer, ‘Scoffer’, pocketed most of the fee from their very first gig, through to the elaborate heists performed by a succession of managers and record labels, they were manipulated by cunning thieves who understood that all The Chameleons really wanted to do was play music, and who held this youthful passion to ransom. You’ll read, in heartbreaking sequence, how they were betrayed almost every step of the way. Those three pristine studio albums emerged despite it all; you can’t help wondering what they would have achieved without the leeches."
We're selling the book at the Mittens On website - mittenson.com
January 15, 2019
Enjoyable and absorbing read about the trials and tribulations of the bassist/vocalist of one of the most criminally overlooked and unappreciated Indie bands of the 1980s, The Chameleons.
A really decent, down-to-earth, guy, appallingly treated and let-down by some of his band members, managers and rip-off record-labels.
As a consequence, never received the commercial success or financial rewards that he deserved - although he makes clear he was never in it for the money, just the love of making music (which he's still doing today).
A really decent, down-to-earth, guy, appallingly treated and let-down by some of his band members, managers and rip-off record-labels.
As a consequence, never received the commercial success or financial rewards that he deserved - although he makes clear he was never in it for the money, just the love of making music (which he's still doing today).
February 17, 2023
Fantastic biography. Never boring. It reads like a novel at times. Mark should seriously consider writing fiction as well. He is a fantastic writer.
May 10, 2025
This review is a long long time coming.....
Having been a cham fan for a good while. a friend bought this book for my Birthday circa 2015.
I wasn’t a crazy super fan. I don't have everything they ever put out, but enjoyed their music quite a bit.
This book was eye opening. The first thing I noticed is that this person thinks and talks and holds many of the same opinions as I do. When I read further on, another thing we have in common is that we are both only children. Much to my surprise, many of the stories of things that happened to him in his childhood, many are the same as mine. Our mums were even born the same year.
We share many, many, of the same interests.
He went on to pursue that music career. When it was my time, I learned that the music industry wants more from females than just talent. The whole casting couch was NOT something I was into.
I continue to make and self-release music and it is distributed to many sites on the web. It feeds my soul even if the only people who hear it are the spiders in the corners of my basement. The theme of feeling alienated and alone. I deeply understand and have empathy for him. It is nice to know I may have just met someone from the same planet as I am from.
Is anyone there who understands me? Um…yeah… I do!
I connected with this book and enjoyed it very much!
I would love to see another book. I KNOW there are a lot more stories to be told.
Like the VOX of a seagull rises and is reborn into the Phoenix.....
so I await ""View From A Hill 2.0. Another Point of View. ""
Wishing you the very best!
Having been a cham fan for a good while. a friend bought this book for my Birthday circa 2015.
I wasn’t a crazy super fan. I don't have everything they ever put out, but enjoyed their music quite a bit.
This book was eye opening. The first thing I noticed is that this person thinks and talks and holds many of the same opinions as I do. When I read further on, another thing we have in common is that we are both only children. Much to my surprise, many of the stories of things that happened to him in his childhood, many are the same as mine. Our mums were even born the same year.
We share many, many, of the same interests.
He went on to pursue that music career. When it was my time, I learned that the music industry wants more from females than just talent. The whole casting couch was NOT something I was into.
I continue to make and self-release music and it is distributed to many sites on the web. It feeds my soul even if the only people who hear it are the spiders in the corners of my basement. The theme of feeling alienated and alone. I deeply understand and have empathy for him. It is nice to know I may have just met someone from the same planet as I am from.
Is anyone there who understands me? Um…yeah… I do!
I connected with this book and enjoyed it very much!
I would love to see another book. I KNOW there are a lot more stories to be told.
Like the VOX of a seagull rises and is reborn into the Phoenix.....
so I await ""View From A Hill 2.0. Another Point of View. ""
Wishing you the very best!
December 2, 2018
This was a good read, providing loads of intimate details surrounding one of the greatest English guitar bands ever, The Chameleons, and its lead singer Mark Burgess.
May 4, 2015
I love the Chameleons. They occupy a very special place in my heart.
It was fascinating hearing about the formation of the band and the stories of different musicians from the era, but I felt some additional information was unnecessary. There was a great deal of exposition describing his camping adventures, pointless travel, commonplace mix-ups, etc that didn't add much to my knowledge of the band or history. Taking the book as a biography of Mark (and not the Chameleons) this suits much better but i ended up skimming some of the material.
It was fascinating hearing about the formation of the band and the stories of different musicians from the era, but I felt some additional information was unnecessary. There was a great deal of exposition describing his camping adventures, pointless travel, commonplace mix-ups, etc that didn't add much to my knowledge of the band or history. Taking the book as a biography of Mark (and not the Chameleons) this suits much better but i ended up skimming some of the material.
August 23, 2014
if you're just wanting a music bio - this is probably not the book for you. i enjoyed the meandering tales of mark with and without the band. it would have been nice if there were more specific dates on some of the events because sometimes they were a bit vague as to when they were happening in context to other things.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews