Growing Out Of It – Machinations Before Madness
★★★★
Lee Thompson OMNIBUS. £16.99
Hyperactive saxophonist’s ripping yarns – from approved school to Top Of The Pops.
The pre-history and early years of Madness have been deeply mined and Lee Thompson has already revisited them in his excellent 2018 documentary One Man’s Madness. But his is undoubtedly a brilliant and unusual story – taking him from a teenage life of petty criminality to performing on the roof of Buckingham Palace with the band to mark The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Co-authored with Ian Snowball, Growing Out Of It allows Thompson to go into great detail while often colouring outside the margins of his self-imposed narrative framing, which is supposed to end in 1979 just as Madness have become pop stars. Footnotes hint at other stories, such as his late-’80s wilderness years experimentation with an overload of magic mushrooms. But clearly that’s a tale for quite possibly another book.