The Absence: Memoirs of a Banshee Drummer

by Budgie

ISBN: 9781399621564

Published: 2025-06-05

'This is not a musical memoir. It is a memoir about loss, grief, surviving abuse and recovery from addictions that just happens to have a musical career at its core. Siouxsie and The Banshees, The Creatures, The Slits, Big in Japan, and Spitfire Boys are all here to tell my story - I am not here to tell theirs. Against the backdrop of this life in music, I chart my relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, my struggle to make sense of what happened to me, and how it shaped the unrecognisable person I was becoming.' This is the story of the most famous drummer to come out of Liverpool after Ringo Starr, Budgie. Growing up in the sixties in working class St Helens (of which there will be a portrait comparable to Bobby Gillespie's writing in Tenement Kid), Budgie's life was impacted by the loss of his mother as a young boy. Nourished and excited by rock and roll and punk, Budgie became the drummer in legendary Liverpool new wave outfit, Big in Japan (with Bill Drummond and...