marksimpson.com

James Maker, for­mer lead singer with cult 80s Indie band Ray­monde and 90s drag metal sen­sa­tion RPLA, and one of Morrissey’s longest-serving friends, is writ­ing a memoir.

And what a mem­oir. It has one of the best, and unques­tion­ably the most hon­est title for an auto­bi­og­ra­phy ever: ‘Autofellatio’.

Maker recently posted a very short excerpt from it, recount­ing his first meet­ing with Mor­ris­sey in 1977, titled ‘Gide the Rip­per’, on his MySpace web­page. Inevitably, despite the pro­file being set to ‘Pri­vate’ and only hav­ing two and a half autho­rised friends, the excerpt ended up on a Mor­ris­sey fan­site in less time than it takes to read most Mor­ris­sey song titles.

Now that the excerpt is ‘out there’ Maker’s given per­mis­sion for it to be posted it on marksimpson.com. As you can see, Maker’s prose more than lives up to the promise of his memoir’s title.

I’ve been given a peek at sev­eral chap­ters, and can report that this is one of the fun­ni­est, sharpest pieces of writ­ing I’ve come across: a ver­i­ta­ble com­edy of apho­risms. A very Eng­lish rock and roll mem­oir, with nary a wasted or ill-chosen word: Ronald Fir­bank meets the New York Dolls, has a sweet sherry or three and causes a scene on the night bus home. In court shoes.

But when will it be pub­lished? James says that he’s ‘bro­ken the back’ of his Aut­ofel­la­tio, but wants to be entirely happy with his tech­nique before show­ing it to agents.…

Here’s Mr Maker in 1994 per­form­ing RPLA’s court shoe-tapping stonker ‘Absolute Queen of Pop’ (and no, it’s not about Guy Ritchie’s hus­band), kindly afford­ing us a look at his agile tonsils:

And here, in Ray­monde in 1988, in a nice fur hat and lippy belt­ing out the irre­sistible and ineluctable ‘Des­ti­na­tion: Breakdown’: