Clean Living Under Difficult Circumstances: A Life In Mod – From the Revival to Acid Jazz

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I was a bit too young to be a Mod in the second wave (born in 72) but having grew up in East Ham in the 70's and 80's I could relate to a lot of the places and venues mentioned in the book. We run with the crowd to decaying seaside towns, East End backstreet boozers and sweaty teenage gigs, all fizzing with an uncontainable excitement and often exploding into violence. If I'd have lived through the mod movement in London in the 60s my heroes would've been Guy Stevens and Pete Meaden - but as a teenage mod in the early 1980's Eddie Piller was that guy. Visceral and always entertaining, Clean Living Under Difficult Circumstances is a stand-out memoir that relives the thrill of the 70s and 80s, and the movement that helped make mod the most enduring and successful British youth culture of all time. Eddie was already a long way through his mod journey, and I had only really started mine (the advantage of always being 5 and a half years younger than him I guess!

He always strikes me as one of the lucky few who win the lottery by making up their own job description. CLEAN LIVING UNDER DIFFICULT CIRCUMSTANCES] never loses its percussive humour or whip-hand sense of style. As I was into the Soul and Jazz scene in the mid to late eighties, I first heard of Eddie around this time via Acid Jazz Records but so much of the information in this book I never knew about Mr Piller.Mod isn't about what decade you lived in, it's about your attitude, and this book has tons of it' Kenney Jones, The Small Faces WITH A FOREWORD BY PAUL WELLERThis is the memoir of a teenage mod from the East End of London. He is perhaps best known as the co-founder of Acid Jazz records which recently celebrated its 35th birthday and remains one of the most successful indie labels of a generation. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. He was managing the James Taylor Quartet, and running the coolest new record label that I knew, Acid Jazz.

Once mod touched your soul it changed the way you looked at life, unexpectedly broadening your horizons. Any of us who sat through them, wondering how, even now after thirty years of hearing some of them, they still sounded fresh, knew that they would make an amazing book. Visceral and always entertaining, CLEAN LIVING UNDER DIFFICULT CIRCUMSTANCES is a stand-out memoir that relives the thrill of the 70s and 80s, and the movement that helped make mod the most enduring and successful British youth culture of all time. Late in 1984 I went to the National Mod Meeting – really, don’t ask – and in amongst the pettifogging nonsense of such organised fun one thing stands out, and it was Eddie Piller, introducing ‘keynote speaker’ Irish Jack, dealing with a heckler. A charismatic storyteller, witty and unpretentious, he is at once an engaging protagonist and an indisputable authority, giving a live-wire, visceral perspective on mod life in that short flash of time.

Eddie Piller: ‘Clean Living Under Difficult Circumstances: A Life In Mod – From The Revival to Acid Jazz’. By the time I began to know him socially he was even further in – and also further out – as both of us had given up mod clubs and gotten into the jazz scene. Piller is one of those inspirational figures (a lot like Creations Alan McGee ) who has always acted like a conduit between creative talent, lighting the blue touch paper for those with musical chops and similar vision. MagazineWITH A FOREWORD BY PAUL WELLERThis is the memoir of a teenage mod from the East End of London. Written with humour, passion and attention to detail, CLEAN LIVING UNDER DIFFICULT CIRCUMSTANCES is perhaps the ultimate mod memoir, taking us from meeting the Small Faces as a toddler, to the 1979 Mod revival, through the more purist 1980s mod scene and eventually to Acid Jazz.

An unstoppable wave of like-minded kids fall headlong in love with 60s mod culture, revived and reformatted for the 70s and 80s generation. As we DJ’d together, sat in pubs and then eventually worked together (he employed me when no-one else would), he was always a riot of stories. Mod isn't about what decade you lived in, it's about your attitude, and this book has tons of it' Kenney Jones, The Small Faces'A charismatic storyteller, witty and unpretentious, he is at once an engaging protagonist and an indisputable authority, giving a live-wire, visceral perspective on mod life in that short flash of time.

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