Читать книгу Buzzcocks - The Complete History - Tony McGartland - Страница 7

BY RICHARD BOON

‘All good stories,’ my late father would say to little me, introducing bedtime tales, ‘start this way: Once upon a time …’ As does the tale here. But all stories are subject to different interpretations. Did it begin with Howard Trafford befriending me at school? With his befriending Peter McNeish at college? With the three of us being so engaged by a review of a band in New Musical Express by Neil Spencer that we spent a now mythologised ‘lost weekend’ seeing that band – the Sex Pistols – at High Wycombe and Welwyn Garden City, 20 and 21 February 1976, changing, challenging and occasionally ruining our lives as a result?

That’s as good a start as any to this story. Yet, as it unfolds, other players, in various roles, making different contributions, enter the narrative, each with their own voice, interpretation and memories. And, as we passively succumb to the silent invasion by a silicon-based life form by outsourcing our phone numbers, family and other photographs, and personal data to impersonal smart devices and cloud files, it’s those memories, from primary sources, that become more vital and valuable. As here, in this remixed, extended version of the story of a small group of people over a short period of time.

Richard Boon