Former Liverpool ECHO writer remembers nights with The Clash, Joy Division and U2
- david1170
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
Paddy Shennan's new book serves as a prequel to his 2022 release The Talk of Liverpool, which chronicled his more than three decades at the ECHO.
Former Liverpool ECHO journalist Paddy Shennan has written a new book described as a love letter to music fans everywhere - and a tribute to his own teenage obsession with post-punk.
Not JUST About The Fall: 50 adventures in a post-punk paradise will be published by Earth Island Books on November 14. It serves as a prequel to Paddy’s 2022 release The Talk of Liverpool, which chronicled his more than three decades at the ECHO.
Paddy, who worked at the paper from 1987 until 2020, said: "I was lucky enough to interview so many of my music heroes - people like Mark E Smith of The Fall, Pete Shelley of Buzzcocks, Mick Jones of The Clash, Vic Godard of Subway Sect, Nigel Blackwell of Half Man Half Biscuit, Pete Wylie of Wah! Heat and The Mighty Wah!, Julian Cope of The Teardrop Explodes, Ian McCulloch of Echo and the Bunnymen, Henry Priestman of Yachts, It's Immaterial and The Christians, and Frank Sidebottom - the man with the magnificent papier-mâché head!"
The new book focuses on his teenage years in Preston, where he first fell in love with music. He said: “Music mattered most to me - like it does for many people - in my teenage years. In the late 1970s, John Peel and The Fall changed my life.
"Through listening to the John Peel Show at 10pm on Radio 1, four nights a week, I fell in love with a whole host of groups - most notably The Fall. Hearing Peel play their single Rowche Rumble in August 1979 was the start of my Fall obsession."
Like so many young fans at the time, Paddy began experimenting with music himself, forming a "useless, hopeless" bedroom band called The Ambitious Merchants.
He also launched his own cassette label, Apple Crumble Tapes, releasing everything from underground groups to a recording of Tony Benn which earned a five-star review in the now defunct national music paper Sounds.
He explained how the book, which ends in 1984 when he left his "tedious" office job to train as a journalist, is a celebration of the power of music fans: "Music fans are worth their weight in gold.
"They are needed by every musician who has ever written a song, entered a recording studio and taken to the stage."
Alongside tales of his teenage gigs – seeing the likes of The Clash, Joy Division, The Cure, U2 and The Smiths - Paddy also reflects on Liverpool’s own music culture.
Paddy's parents were originally from the city before moving to Preston before he was born, and he and his wife Sandra, who also worked at the ECHO (and designed the book's cover), once dreamed of opening a club here called The Apple Crumble Club.
He added: "Sadly, it never got off the drawing board.
"It was a noble idea, though - we wanted it to be the biggest thing in Liverpool since Eric's, the club that hosted anyone who was anyone in the punk and post-punk scenes between 1976 and 1980 - including, of course, the likes of Echo and the Bunnymen, The Teardrop Explodes and Wah! Heat."
Paddy added: "The legend who formed Wah! Heat - Pete Wylie - is mentioned in my book five times, even though it ends in 1984 and I didn't meet him until 1994!
"And while Preston is where I happened to grow up, the book's main theme - being a music fan - is a universal one.
"The book is a celebration of post-punk music and those of us who loved it - and still do - and recalls the teenage joy associated with buying records, going to gigs and falling in love with our favourite bands."
This is Paddy’s fourth book. Alongside The Talk of Liverpool, his other titles include The Liverpool ECHO Pub Guide (co-written with Mike Chapple in 2002) and The Radfords: Making Life Count, the 2024 Sunday Times bestseller which he ghost-wrote.
'Not JUST About The Fall: 50 adventures in a post-punk paradise' by Paddy Shennan is officially publishing on 14th November 2025 (and there'll be a launch event at The Ferret in Preston on 7th December) but you can pre-order your first-edition copy of this time-machine to the post-punk and new-wave of the eighties right now.
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