Don't Mention the Night

Writing about Nick Drake leads seventeen-year-old David to Nottingham, where, in the late 1970s, he encounters the formidable singer/songwriter Kevin Coyne and, most weeks, goes to see local legends, Gaffa. This original, beguiling memoir weaves Belbins story, from teenage depression to becoming a best-selling author, together with those of Drake, Coyne and Gaffa, drawing on interviews conducted over forty-four years. A very well written book about music and life. Ian McMillan.

David Belbin fell for Nicks music as a schoolboy during Nicks lifetime, and wrote one of the earliest posthumous appraisals of his music. He has just written this clear-sighted and touching account of his relationship with Nicks music in the 1970s, which is mercifully free of the errors that pepper most publications about Nick. Richard Morton Jack (Drakes official biographer).

Belbins latest book is not exactly a coming-of-age story itself; instead, it is a scattered memoir of the authors transition into adulthood through the music that made a lasting impression on it... Throughout the book, the author conjures up a 1970s music scene that is grittier and more immediate than its contemporary equivalent, but in which two important themes maintain themselves throughout. The first concerns mental health, a topic that most rock historians are likely to handle at some point though not necessarily as compassionately and candidly as Belbin manages. We are allowed into his own struggles as well as those of his peers both inside and out of the music industry. It is an insight into a crisis that has become more visible in recent times, without romanticisation or oversimplification.

Not entirely unrelated is the second theme, that of artistic success. In their own unique way, the three artists discussed in Dont Mention the Night were underappreciated during their respective careers—a key ingredient, it seems, for establishing cult followings. It is tempting to try and identify why exactly this is, particularly as the author reflects on his own creative output... By the end, were left with the feeling that tomorrow might bring another band to love, or another gig to discover, or another memory of a song that at one point in our own coming-of-age stories—for one fleeting moment—made everything make sense. Daniel Swann, Leftlion

David Belbins books include the Bone and Cane crime novels and novels The Pretender and Student. His young adult fiction includes The Beat series, Love Lessons, Festival and Secret Gardens. David lives in Nottingham, where many of his books are set. He teaches Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University.