Your Money or Your Life
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Putman Publishing
Published:10th Sep '26
Should be back in stock very soon
'An utterly essential purchase 9/10' Classic Rock
'Hilarious, touching and essential 4/5' Classic Pop
'Fascinating, funny, colourful and completely riveting. Highly recommended' Gary Crowley
'Dry, laconic and hilarious. Much like you’d imagine the man himself.' John Niven
'Winningly wry, his sardonic eye enlivens his rollicking memoir' The Guardian
'A searingly honest, unstintingly revealing and brutally funny memoir from one of punk's true originals.' Dylan Jones
In the mid 1970's, Marco Pirroni was a shy Kings Road punk kid. He played guitar with a nascent Siouxsie and the Banshees at their debut 100 Club gig in 1976. Future Sex Pistol Sid Vicious could often be found round at Marco's parents with a bag of laundry and a cup of tea. But as the early promise of punk rock's cultural liberation quickly soured, Marco's dreams of proper pop stardom only grew.
In a few short years, alongside an ambitious fellow punk survivor called Adam who was also looking to break out of the musical ghetto and onto Top of the Pops, Marco became the musical architect of the global Antmusic phenomenon. By the time he was 21, Marco was the co-writer of the two classic number one singles - ‘Prince Charming’ and the Ivor Novello-winning ‘Stand and Deliver’ - alongside the million selling, idiosyncratic new pop masterpiece 'Kings of the Wild Frontier' and its follow up album 'Prince Charming'.
Your Money or Your Life is Marco’s long-overdue and much-anticipated account of his time amidst the maelstrom of Antmania. It chronicles the breakneck period in Pirroni’s life which ends in March 1982, when Adam and the Ants split up amongst heartbreak and acrimony. Revelatory, caustically hilarious and with a cast of the biggest names in entertainment including Liberace, Liza Minelli and David Bowie, Your Money or Your Life is one of the unforgettable music stories of the 1970s and 1980s.
'Marco Pirroni arrives with attitude to spare… A breathless depiction of pop’s absurdities, captured in sardonic prose 4/5' * Mojo *
'Astonishingly, often hilariously, frank. Its as if he's taken you aside conspiratorially, maybe in a quiet boozer off the Kings Road, and spilled his remarkable tale over a few pints. An utterly essential purchase 9/10' * Classic Rock *
'Hilarious, touching and essential for fashionistas as much as pop addicts 4/5' * Classic Pop *
'A compelling, authentic read which Pirroni stands and delivers with lugubrious style and sly charm. A true and reliable narrator, who has all the stories. We should be thankful that he has been persuaded to spill the beans for posterity, to set his record straight' * Louder than War *
'Fascinating, funny, colourful and completely riveting. Highly recommended' -- Gary Crowley
'Revealing, opinionated and often very funny' * The Scottish Herald *
'Adam and the Ants guitarist's memoir delivers and then some. Honest, detailed and full of Pironni's mordant humour. One of the funniest, most poignant and memorable rock biographies in a long, long time 4/5' * Record Collector *
'Dry, laconic and hilarious. Much like you’d imagine the man himself.' -- John Niven
'Winningly wry, his sardonic eye enlivens his rollicking memoir' * The Guardian *
'A searingly honest, unstintingly revealing and brutally funny memoir from one of punk's true originals.' -- Dylan Jones
ISBN: 9781917923811
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
336 pages