Ever Fallen In Love: The Lost Buzzcocks Tapes

★★★

Pete Shelley with Louie Shelley OCTOPUS. £20

Song-by-song insights into the Buzzcocks’ late ’70s albums, plus much more.

Plans for Buzzcocks frontman Pete Shelley to publish a memoir would come to nothing – until, following the singer’s untimely death in 2018, super-fan Louie (no relation) began shaping the numerous taped conversations she’d had with him into this fascinating tome. An interview here with Pete’s cousin reveals the Buzzcock’s interest in cosmology and ‘big questions’ dated back to his Lancashire schooldays. Yet the lasting impression from Shelley’s own analysis of his songs is not of the depth of meaning behind them, but the amount of oldfashioned craft – and off-beat humour – that fed into them. The bleak, existentialist gem Something’s Gone Wrong Again, for example, began life as a “jokey” creation, partinspired by Northern comedian Hylda Baker’s routine about a faulty watch and, yes, ’Cocks’ first frontman Howard Devoto missing a bus. Ultimately, the strange genius of Shelley remains comfortingly shrouded in mystery.