As part of Big In Japan, The Slits, Siouxsie & The Banshees and The Creatures, Budgie (born Peter Clarke) was one of the stand-out drummers of the post-punk era. His forthcoming memoir, The Absence, tells the story of Budgie’s life from a childhood in working class St Helens overshadowed by the death of his mother, to early musical adventures in social club bands, before the escape to art school in Liverpool at the moment it became one of the most fertile music scenes in the UK. The Absence, which will be published on 5 June and can be pre-ordered here charts his playing on The Slits’ Cut to the life-changing moment when he was asked to join Siouxsie & The Banshees, where he became both writing partner and lover of Siouxsie Sioux, not just in that band, but the innovative side project The Creatures. The Absence explores the pomp of the Banshees at the height of their commercial success, as well as the slow and painful decline, in which Budgie writes about dependency on alcohol and drugs, and how “angels emerged, many of them female, to show Budgie that a mother’s lost love can be replaced.”
Speaking about the memoir, Budgie says, “Damned if you do, denied if you don’t. To remember, revisit and to write, was traumatic and cathartic. To be published? Terrifying! I prepared my apologies, and anticipated rejection. I received mostly love, understanding, and affection. To those still hurting from the way things were, I can only empathise and offer a prayer. I present my mistakes that I may learn and others may avoid.”
“The postpunk period has bequeathed us some of the most interesting, moving and entertaining rock and roll stories over the past decade or so from Viv Albertine to the recent book by The Jesus and Mary Chain,” says White Rabbit’s Lee Brackstone; “The Absence is Budgie’s story: a native of St Helens, a crucial figure on the Liverpool scene, the only man in The Slits and then, of course, the beating heart of Siouxsie and the Banshees in their Imperial Phase in the Goth-Pop Eighties. An insider’s account of life inside a band that left a legacy like no other, this is a book that hits as hard as its author did on their most celebrated tracks and required reading for anyone with an interest in the band and their extraordinary legacy.”
