Review of The Last Mad Surge of Youth on City Life (Manchester Evening News) website
THERE are many reasons why it’s right that Mark Hodkinson’s debut
novel is entitled The Last Mad Surge Of Youth.
The book itself is a brilliant story of friendships formed amid the monochrome
days when the new-born punk ethos led schoolboy pals to pick up guitars and
plot how they were going to change the world.
It contrasts the paths taken by “brooding” local newspaper reporter
David Carey and “ballsy” John Barratt, the former spending his life
regretting not having stuck it out as guitarist with Killing Stars, the latter
lead singer staying for the duration and dragging us first to Top Of The Pops
and then into alcoholic, middle-aged meltdown.
The title is symbolic in terms of context, too.
They are the words contained in a sample at the start of Don’t Fall,
a record by Middleton band The Chameleons, whose career of tragic under-achievement
spans perfectly the era recreated in print, and who Hodkinson used to write
about a lot as a fresh-faced reporter at the Middleton Guardian.
Childish things
And on a more personal level, this is also the book which sees Hodkinson
put childish things to bed.
Those who know his work will be aware that he has written numerous books about real life pop stars (The Wedding Present, Marianne Faithful, Queen),.
The might also recall him as author of oodles of soccer writing (writer in
residence at Manchester City and Rochdale FC, footy columns and match reports
in The Times) and that his 2007 soccer memoir, Believe In The Sign,
was a charming biographical journey through his own childhood in Rochdale.
One fan confronted him with the obervation that “you’ve been living
my f****** life”.
But Hodkinson says he won’t be writing about music and football any
more.
Sunny Yorkshire
“In many ways, football and music are quite juvenile, although that’s not quite the right word,” he says down the line from sunny Yorkshire, his home these days.
“They’re not grown up stuff and that’s what I want to do now.
Not boring adult/grown up stuff though, but interesting stuff. I feel like
I’ve moved on now.”
In part, it’s the experiences garnered while writing The Last Mad
Surge Of Youth which have brought Hodkinson, a 44-year-old father of two
sons, to this conclusion.
What’s so clearly rooted in his late teens has taken almost 20 years
to get down on paper in a form in which he’s happy for it to be paraded
before the public.
Paddle in the sea
He’s anything but work-shy, one of those annoying people who grab opportunities
by the balls and make waves while others are still wondering whether they
should paddle in the sea.
In addition to his writing career, he’s also the founder of Pomona,
which started life as a music plugging business getting new bands written
about and played on the radio and more recently expanded into the world of
independent publishing.
The Last Mad Surge Of Youth is typical of the Pomona imprint. Hodkinson
wrote the words, selected the paper, organised the design for the cover and
is now selling it into shops.
A bit conceited
He’d had interest from lots of big name publishers but opted for the
DIY alternative because he couldn’t stomach the changes demanded by editors
with egos and ideas of their own.
“You bump into other people’s egos and ideas,” he explains.
“I’ve done five versions of that book and now I’ve ended up
with the one I should have started with. It sounds a bit conceited, but I
couldn’t do it any better. I felt like I’d been beaten up at the
end of it.
“The one thing about Barratt and Ian Brown and Martin Coogan (of Mock
Turtles fame), is that very, very young, they realised that: ‘we do what
WE do and the world faces us’. You need that kind of arrogance almost
and it’s taken me 20-odd years to realise that.”
Personal experience
People of a certain age, raised in northern towns in working class families,
while fans of a certain type of music, could well find parts of The Last
Mad Surge Of Youth familiar.
It’s about hope and aspiration, camaraderie and changing the world,
all against an Eighties indie scene northern outpost background .
Hodkinson says that it’s a “funny kind of middle ground” between
personal experience and fiction.
“These are things which did happen to me or to people I know but it’s not autobiographical. The main characters are kind of amalgams of lots of people I know.
“I’ve just written about what I knew about because I have been
in bands since I was 16. I have met hundreds of people at all stages of it
as well, from forming your first band to being on Top Of The Pops and what
came after that.
Punk and New Wave
“But although it’s about music, it’s more about people. It could have been based around anything.
“The main difference is that one of the main characters got to be successful
and that’s always fascinated me: how do you move on from year zero, with
punk and New Wave, and the idea of never getting a job, or having kids, or
getting a mortgage, and thinking that they were the first generation that
wouldn’t grow up.
“Everybody has to compromise and how they reconcile that with what they
once were fascinates me. How do you embrace what punk stood for and live the
rest of your life?
“What I tried to do with that character, John Barratt is show that as
he got more famous, at every point he was wrestling with his conscience. He
at least had bo***cks.”
Worthy of celebration
And for Hodkinson, too, The Last Mad Surge Of Youth is something worthy
of celebration.
“I’ve wanted to be a novelist since I was 10,” he adds. “At school I wasn’t very academic but I could write. It’s been almost pathological.
"I love nothing better than to be locked in a room with my PC, but I
want to be out there and I want to be read. I want people like that bloke
in Rochdale to tell me that I’ve been living their life.”
The Last Mad Surge Of Youth is available now from Pomona
Books.