Limited Edition: To Ease My Troubled Mind: The Authorised Unauthorised History of Billy Childish by Ted Kessler

from Heavenly Recordings

Book/Magazine

Limited Edition: To Ease My Troubled Mind: The Authorised Unauthorised History of Billy Childish by Ted Kessler main photo

To Ease My Troubled Mind: The Authorised Unauthorised History of Billy Childish by Ted Kessler (Strictly Limited Edition)
Foreword by Stewart Lee

Published by White Rabbit on August 15, 2024
£140.00
Royal Hardback, 336 pages

PLEASE NOTE WE CANNOT SHIP BOOKS WITH RECORDS

THIS ITEM IS LIMITED TO ONE PER CUSTOMER, ADDITIONAL ORDERS WILL BE REFUNDED.

Deluxe Edition designed by Billy Childish:

- Bound in lime green linen-covered boards with foiled titles designed by Billy Childish, unique to this strictly limited run of 500 copies
- All copies signed and numbered by Ted Kessler and Billy Childish on a bound in limitation page
- Comes with a 7” black vinyl EP – white label with rubber stamped titles and “Xerox” label on cover – with four tracks from four different Wild Billy Childish bands, and an original one colour woodcut print signed by the artist with Billy’s customary gallows symbol
- All housed in a custom kraft paper covered solander box with colour inside printing featuring Billy’s crow motif, with foiled titles and rubber stamped ‘Ltd Edition’

The story of Billy Childish by legendary music journalist Ted Kessler

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.

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.

Due to the value of this book and to reduce the risk of it being lost in transit shipping will be via the Royal Mail Tracked & Signed service