WHAT DOES JOHN SAY ABOUT FOOTY ROCKS?

I'm not a conventional football writer. I figured there were already plenty of them out there.
Back in 2000 when this adventure started for me, all things interwebby were still new and revolutionary. So I wanted to bring an equally new kind of attitude to this new, liberating media that didn’t have to rely on many of the old values and attitudes; this new media that could respond within minutes to breaking stories, that was more democratic and instinctively rebellious.

My favourite writers have always been the whack-jobs who went about their work with a wanton disregard for convention. People like Lester Bangs, Hunter Thompson, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsburg.

But being a very self-consciously proud Northern lad, born in Hull, Yorkshire and growing up in Stockton-on-Tees, on Teesside (I could never bring myself to call it Cleveland) I also liked that whole gritty, northern tradition of writing that was embodied in the books of Alan Sillitoe, Keith Waterhouse, John Braine, Stan Barstow and even Alan Bennett.

Then there’s my deep and life long passion for noisy electric guitars and for the purveyors of the riff. It’s been my religion. I even bleed in E major. The Holy Rock ‘n’ roll in all its forms is always with me and informs everything I do.

So I poured all these influences into one big mental bucket, added a lot of strong drink and a passion for football that borders on the clinically obsessive and sat back to see what came out.

Instead of just offering up my opinions on the current issues of the day, I thought it would be far more interesting to try and make bizarre, often tortuous analogies between my own anecdotes and whatever was pressing my football buttons at the time.
Thus was born my now infamous style of ‘a long story with a bit of football tagged on at the end’.

And thanks to the liberal, creative and open-minded editorship of F365 over the years, I have quite literally been given my head to go on about anything I want to go on about, in any manner I want, even if it involves all things seedy, druggy and downright dirty and barely any football at all.

Which brings us to Footy Rocks
The 50 Best Rants And Dribbles

You know when you feel like reading something, but you can't be bothered to committ to reading a big new book; you want a light literary snack rather than a big wordy gravy dinner - well that's what Footy Rocks is. It's the salted peanuts to go with your lager.

You can pick it up, read a couple of chapters and then go to sleep, get off the bus or get off the toilet. Ideal.

Over nearly 6 years I've written well over 500 columns for football365.com and these 50 are some of my favourites.

If you've never read me, I'm obssessed by football and rock n roll and often draw comparisons between the two in what have been called whacked out analogies that are full of swearing and references to all the rude things that make life worth living.

I do some serious ranting too when things get my goat (my goat is called Colin and he's got a hell of temper on him)

Basically, if you like football, sex, drugs and rock n roll you'll enjoy reading this.

Now, get the beers in eh. It's your round.

John Nicholson writes for Football365.com
and Johnny's Footy and Rock Bar.
He's written for the Daily Record and various other media!

Paperback: 293 pages
ISBN: 0-9554029-0-5
Publisher:  Northern Monkey Publishing | wishlist | login | contact | your stuff