Overview

Illusions of Happiness picks up the story as John recovers from his injuries and returns to performing and recording. On this often turbulent journey back, he is heckled by The Sex Pistols, negotiates a tricky Criminal Injuries Compensation case, has his portrait hung in The National Portrait Gallery and makes a series of singles with Trevor Horn (Frankie Goes To Hollywood) and Steve Levine (Culture Club), along the way being briefly managed by Tom Watkins (Pet Shop Boys, Bros) and re-signing with CBS. The flame of ambition, having been extinguished once before, briefly flickers - but life is busy making other plans. Offered the chance to move to ‘the other side of the music business desk’, John seizes the chance and begins a fruitful new career in A & R, “when I finally began to take hold of my own destiny”. The book - and this to-be-continued story - ends in 1986; John has a new career, a new apartment and exciting new prospects. The future’s looking bright. But, hovering over the horizon like a gathering storm, is the realisation that the initially ignored AIDS epidemic is a crisis which is only just beginning.

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9781913170578

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Reviews

In his first book, Howard tells his story humorously, smartly, without lament. An interesting and very entertaining look at the downsides of the music business, the often dangerous gay lives in London in the seventies and is a memorial to all the highly talented geniuses who have not made it with their art. - Rolling Stone Magazine; An authentic hidden treasure of eccentric pop: the kind of music that one could imagine had been reissued as a vestige of a time when Bowie still haunted the cabarets and Elton John preferred writing to shopping. - Celine Remy, Les Inrockuptibles

Author Information

Being sensitive, creative, musical and gay weren’t the ideal qualities for a successful upbringing in Ramsbottom, a gritty northern town on the shoulders of the Pennines. As soon as he could, John Howard shed the guilt of his Lancashire life for the gilt and glitz of a piano playing singer\songwriter’s career in glam-rocked London. And what a start it was. John arrived in London in Autumn 1973 and was snapped up by an enthusiastic manager and publisher who was utterly convinced that he had, in his hands, a pop star chrysalis who would soon burst spectacularly into a major British pop star. In January 1974 John was commissioned to write and record the theme song for a Peter Fonda/William Holden movie: Open Season and he travelled to Rome to record it. He was also signed to the mighty CBS records. His career was building momentum. In April 1974, John began recording his debut album ‘Kid in a Big World’ at Abbey Road and Apple Studios. Later in that same year, he released his first single: “Goodbye Suzie.” He made television appearances, hung out with Johnny Mathis and David Essex and launched his album with a concert at the Purcell Rooms on London’s South Bank. Told repeatedly that he was on the cusp of stardom, John’s heady pop-star career was matched by a love life that was equally eventful, but for life-threateningly different reasons. He was attacked by a knife-wielding lover, was beaten up by an East End crook and boyfriend, was almost gang-raped in Malta and had to be rescued from a serial killer in New York. Life wasn’t like this in Ramsbottom! The whole edifice came crashing down when John jumped from his apartment balcony one night to escape a sex-crazed attacker his flatmates had brought home. Lying in a hospital bed with crushed ankles and a broken back, through the waves of pain and dosed up with powerful pain killers, John wondered if he would ever walk again, let alone play the piano.

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