Animal House, James Brown
Animal House, James Brown
List: $27.99 | Sale: $19.59
Club: $13.99

Animal House

Author: James Brown

Narrator: James Brown

Unabridged: 11 hr 43 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Quercus

Published: 09/15/2022


Synopsis

A dangerously enticing welcome to the now lost world of magazines and the excesses of the 1990s.

Music, Magazines & Mayhem

Between 1994 and 1997, James Brown's loaded magazine became the the must-buy and must-be-in publication of the decade. It won every award going, year after year, and came to define not only its audience but also a generation. Bright, loud, funny, provocative, ambitious and careless, loaded was read from the barracks of Afghanistan to the England dressing room at Euro '96. It captured a hedonistic lifestyle of alcohol, cocaine and more. The last great hurrah before the end of the century. It was the biggest noise in the golden generation of magazine publishing, rocketing from zero to half a million sales in a matter of months. What MTV had been to the 80s, loaded was to the 90s.

ANIMAL HOUSE follows James Brown's remarkable career from a high school drop-out fanzine writer with few qualifications to NME features editor aged 22, and loaded founder at 27. In between, his mother died in tragic circumstances and gradually his own drug and alcohol use began to take over. Loaded's unexpected success legitimised (and paid for) James's lifestyle, and it wasn't until he crashed and burned at GQ, and went through rehab, that any sense of perspective kicked in.

Recuperating on the island of Mustique whilst plotting his return with Oz founder Felix Denis, James was asked by neighbour Lord Patrick Lichfield: "How on earth did you manage to sell so many magazines whilst taking so many drugs?"

This audiobook is his answer.

(P) 2022 Quercus Editions Limited

About James Brown

James Brown started his career producing his own fanzines, joined the NME staff aged 21 and wrote over 50 cover stories, championing Beastie Boys, KLF, Happy Mondays and many others. He created the award-winning and hugely popular loaded magazines, and went on to edit British GQ where he launched the Man of The Year Awards. He floated his own publishing company on AIM and became an in-demand public speaker and creative consultant for leading brands, agencies and publishing houses. He wrote the best-selling book Above Head Height: A Five-A-Side Life.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Tyrone

"You can't go home again" is an old saying that simply means that fondly remembered events from the past are impossible to recapture. Things change. We change. Yet when I think back to the 1990's, the decade that made me and was one of great social and cultural change in this country, I really wish......more

Goodreads review by Lauren

This book is an interesting look in to how the publishing industry operated in the 1990's. It mainly follows James up until he left GQ magazine in 2000, any subsequent work is either not mentioned or very briefly covered. Following a few anecdotes and a brief overview of James' early years, James be......more

Goodreads review by Omolara

Animal House takes us on a journey of what James Brown describes as his second childhood in the world of magazine publishing at NME and loaded through to his adulthood at GQ. It’s about, celebrities, football, drugs, a crisps World Cup, travelling, partying and a dose of self reflection. It captures......more

Goodreads review by Matt

At first this book seemed like it was right up my street, especially given that I had actually completed some work experience as a late teenager at Loaded magazine. The first few chapters reeled me in in excited anticipation, so I decided to reach out to the author and applaud him on a good read, and......more

Goodreads review by Miles

Name dropping and bar-propping, the loaded founder’s memoir is a sometimes enjoyable, but more often obnoxious tribute to excess. Whether that works for you will depend on your enjoyment of seeing how functioning alcoholics can pull their shit together to craft great copy. Brown at least displays sel......more


Quotes

A boisterous and often touching autobiography. What shines through most of it is that Brown really did love the trade of journalism, a sort of Harry Evans with a habit Financial Times

A gripping read... A brilliant memoir! Closer

A shocking read that we couldn't put down Bella