Young Soul Rebels

Northern soul is the ultimate underground music scene. Hidden away from the mainstream, it has defied the logic of fashion and outlasted more visible youth culture movements such as punk and rave. Author Stuart Cosgrove is an insider who has been a well-known collector on the scene for decades. Here he takes the reader on a rollercoaster journey to the stubborn heart of soul music's secret society and the legendary clubs that became the cathedrals of rare soul: the Twisted Wheel in Manchester, the Golden Torch in Stoke, Wigan Casino, the Top of the World in Stafford, and the evergreen 100 Club. As in the author's cult book Detroit 67, Young Soul Rebels tells a wider social history, looking at the all-nighters and the flamboyant characters who shaped the scene, the obsessive collecting of rare vinyl, the amphetamine abuse, police raids on soul clubs, the north-south divide, the Yorkshire Ripper murders, the miners' strike, the collapse of the industrial north, bootlegging and the rise of new technologies, which against all expectations have breathed new life into the scene. This is a candid and witty story of the cult they couldn't tame.

Auteur

Stuart Cosgrove originally from Perth, was a fanzine writer on the northern soul scene before joining the black music paper Echoes, as a staff writer. He became media editor with the NME and a feature writer for a range of newspapers and magazines. In 2005 he was named Broadcaster of the Year in the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Awards and in 2012 he won numerous awards including a BAFTA and Royal Television Society award for Channel 4's coverage of the London Paralympics 2012. He is the author of Young Soul Rebels (Polygon, 2016).

Résumé
The Ultimate History of Northern Soul. Young Soul Rebels is the intimate story of Britain's most fascinating underground music scene northern soul. Stuart Cosgrove has been a well-known collector on the scene for decades, and here he takes the reader on a rollercoaster journey to the heart of this secret society: the iconic clubs The Twisted Wheel, The Torch, Wigan Casino and the Blackpool Mecca, the infamous bootleggers, and the DJs and crate-digging collectors who voyaged to America to unearth rare sounds. The book sweeps across fifty years of social and cultural history, taking in the rise of amphetamine culture, the brutal policing of the youth scene, the northsouth divide, the rise of Thatcherism and the miners' strike, and concludes with a picture of northern soul today: as popular now as it was in its 1970s heyday.