In A Dysfunctional Success Eric Goulden writes with an acute eye for detail about growing up in the 60s and 70s in suburban South East England, discovering music and girls; life as an art student in the frozen north eastern town of Hull; the formation and dissolution of bands with desperate equipment, a home-made ethos and not much idea; his move to London in 1976 and subsequent recording debut on the newly formed Stiff Record label.

This is an honest coming of age story from both sides of instant pop success: bands, squalid flats, menial jobs, making records, the rise to the point of fame and falling off into poverty and alcoholism in Thatcher's Britain, where Goulden ultimately survived the 1980’s to achieve his own kind of success. Coming from a time when pop stars telling their own hard stories was a comparative rarity, A Dysfunctional Success rings as true today as it did when it was originally published twenty-one years ago.