To Ease My Troubled Mind

For forty-five years now, Billy Childish has been making visual art, performing and recording in garage punk bands, and writing novels and poetry. His output and productivity are truly phenomenal, and it has all, up to now, been an underground pursuit by an artist who refuses to compromise, pander to the Establishment, or sell out. This book will tell the remarkable story of Billy Childish, artist, poet, novelist and musician. About the abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of a family friend. How his father ended up in prison for smuggling hashish. It will explain how he self-sabotaged a career as a stone mason in Chatham Docks as a teenager, why he was expelled from St Martin''s Art School. The impact that seeing the earliest London gigs by The Clash and Jam had upon him, how he took his own band The Milkshakes to live in Hamburg in homage to The Beatles, the trouble they found there. It will explore his artistic philosophy, detailing the powerful impact it had upon his girlfriend throughout the mid-''80s, his relationship to Tracey Emin, and much more. Ted Kessler''s relationship to Billy Childish stretches back to 1990, when he first interviewed Childish for Lime Lizard fanzine. He has subsequently profiled him for NME , Q and The Observer Magazine . Childish also contributed a chapter for Kessler''s My Old Man anthology of writing about fathers, published in 2016.

Auteur
Ted Kessler was on the staff at NME as a writer and editor between 1993 and 2003, before joining Q magazine's staff, working there for 16 years. He was Q's editor for four years, until it closed in 2020. He also devised and edited the acclaimed My Old Man: Tales of Our Fathers, published in 2016 by Canongate. His first book, Paper Cuts: How I Destroyed the British Music Press and Other Misadventures, was published by White Rabbit in 2022. Stewart Lee grew up in Solihull and began stand-up in 1988 at the age of 20, having been inspired by seeing the post-punk anti-comic Ted Chippington open for The Fall in Birmingham in 1984. He won the Hackney Empire new act of the year award in 1990 and for the next decade was a five nights a week regular on the stand-up club circuit. In 2001 he was asked to contribute to the libretto for the composer Richard Thomas' JERRY SPRINGER: THE OPERA which went on to win four Olivier awards. His most recent stand-up shows have been Stand Up Comedian (2004), 90s Comedian (2005), 41st Best Stand-up Comedian (2007), If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask for One (2009), Carpet Remnant World (2012) and Content Provide (2016). STEWART LEE'S COMEDY VEHICLE, featuring his stand-up, ran for four series on BBC2, and won the BAFTA for Best Comedy Programme in 2012. Stewart is also the author of the stand-up comedy studies HOW I ESCAPED MY CERTAIN FATE (2010) and IF YOU PREFER A MILDER COMEDIAN PLEASE ASK FOR ONE (2012). He has written for THE WIRE, UNCUT, the OBSERVER and MOJO, and won CELEBRITY MASTERMIND answering questions on the guitarist Derek Bailey. Stewart has two children and has lived in Stoke Newington, Hackney, since the 1990s. He recently recorded a half hour piece inspired by his contribution to this book, TELLY SAVALAS LOOKS AT BIRMINGHAM, with the free-jazz trio capri-batterie.

Résumé
In 1977, 17-year-old Steven Hamper was a stonemason in the dockyards of Chatham, Kent. His heart, however, beat in sync with the punk rock tremors of the era, seduced by its celebration of amateurism. So, in a gesture of revolutionary defiance, he took a 3lb club hammer and smashed his hand, vowing to never work again. In doing so, Steven Hamper metamorphosed into Billy Childish, a true renaissance man.

Childish has since remained steadfastly true to punk's DIY cred, becoming one of the most recognisable and authentic voices in whichever artistic endeavour he undertakes. He has released over one hundred and fifty albums of raw rock and roll, punk, blues and folk, written many volumes of searing poetry as well as several autobiographical novels. But what he is perhaps best known for in recent years is his painting, for which he is now critically, commercially and internationally feted. He hasn't changed course in any of his disciplines, though. The world just caught up with the sheer volume of his brutally honest work.

To Ease My Troubled Mind is a mosaic portrait collated over a year of interviews with Childish, as well as with close family, ex-girlfriends, bandmembers past and present, friends, foes, collaborators, even his therapist. It is an unflinching, yet frequently spiritual and funny portrait of an artist whose obstacle-strewn upbringing formed the backbone of his work: raised in a broken home and abused as a child, Childish was an undiagnosed dyslexic in remedial class at school who is nevertheless now Britain's most prolific and uncompromising creative force.