Sick On You: The Disastrous Story of The Hollywood Brats, the Greatest Band You've Never Heard Of

CRANKY'S BOOK CLUB REVIEW Sick On You is the story of Andrew Matheson's group, The Hollywood Brats, a band that should have been massive but was several years ahead of its time and hopelessly mismanaged, leading to absolute failure during the band's existence and cult status almost immediately after it disbanded. Our club prides itself on reading out of our comfort zones and, generally, for choosing books that none of our regular group of attendees has read. We broke this rule with Sick on You as we wanted an easy read for Christmas and one of our group recommended it as 'perhaps the funniest book she's ever read'. This book really pushed the majority of us out of our comfort zones, however, and resulted in the full spectrum of responses from loathing through to love, with every degree of 'meh' in-between. A lot appeared to rest on how interested we were in the underground music scene of the early 70's, which admittedly is a bit niche, or had relatives involved in the rock music scene and could recognise the types of characters from their own lives. Those of us without those interests or links tended to find the relentless cycle of getting close to success but then failing repetitive and dull and several of us skipped ahead to see whether any success was forthcoming - spoiler alert: it wasn't. Something that most of us agreed on was that the book is frequently hilarious. One of our group, reading the book on a flight and getting funny looks because of the title, was trying not to laugh too loudly at the section where Matheson is trying to get rid of a dose of crabs and repeatedly having to tell her other half, 'I'll tell you later' when he kept asking her what was so funny. There are several extremely funny anecdotes in the book which redeemed it substantially for a lot of the readers who weren't interested in that particular music scene. Dettol, a box of eels and a Chinese vase at Cliff Richards' house all deserve a mention. Those of us who were already interested in the rock music scene could find loads more humour in Matheson's descriptions of the band's manager and other bands and promoters they encountered and we generally agreed that his skills of description and humour were spot on. What about Matheson himself? One of us remarked that for someone who'd failed so spectacularly in his early adulthood, it was surprising to realise that he was actually really intelligent and she also felt that he was to be admired for his staunch self-belief in the face of so-called experts of the time who wanted him to change. A few of us actively loathed him – one of us called him 'a pig' – and his arrogant, sexist swagger would be pretty hard for even the biggest fan to put up with in real life – but was that really Matheson or simply a persona he has learned to wheel out, like an entertaining pantomime villain? What kind of person emerges, decades on, from knowing that he is onto something new and brilliant but having years of his best efforts rejected absolutely as utter tripe by virtually every music expert of the day, only to have it all discovered as a lost gem when relentless rejection and failure has finally defeated him? Several of us thought that Matheson has had a lot of time to reflect on the value of his early adulthood failures and can see the pathos and humour in it all without bitterness. Humour is tragedy plus time, after all. Would any of our book group invite Matheson into our homes? Most said, 'absolutely not' but a few of us would be delighted to have him hold court at a party – with a few caveats: hide the silverware, make sure no-one's hogging the loo when he staggers off for a pee, and don't leave him alone with whatever's left of the Sunday roast. We gave the book an average score of 6/10.