Mike Scott

Lyrical, driven, singular as his peers Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Van Morrison, Mike Scott is a man made manifest through his music. Scotland's most celebrated rock 'n' roller and singer-songwriter tells his story in Adventures of a Waterboy, laying down a remarkable body of work across thirty-five years and over two continents. As a teenager Mike Scott fronted his first garage bands, playing original songs and punk covers, and wrote his own rock fanzine before moving to the lights of Edinburgh and London in quest of glory. In the 1980s he formed The Waterboys with musicians selected to interpret the 'noises in his head', from the tumbling saxophone of Anthony Thistlethwaite to the fiddle-mastery of Steve Wickham. With the burgeoning success of A Pagan Place and This Is the Sea, The Waterboys became one of the biggest acts in British music. Before his sensational performance at the 1986 Glastonbury Festival Scott came to Ireland for a week with Steve Wickham, and stayed for six years, taking him deep into the West, folk music, Yeats ... and Fisherman's Blues, one of the great albums of the decade, blending country, blues and gospel with rock 'n' roll in a freewheeling cycle of reinvention and artistry. After scaling the heights and living the NewYork dream, Scott then turned his back on rock stardom to discover his inner resources with the Findhorn community in his native Scotland during the 1990s, emerging from time to time to reassemble his iconic band and to make music. In 1998 he was reunited with his father, unseen since 1970. Adventures of a Waterboy unravels the myths surrounding one of Scotland's charismatic modern heroes and Ireland's adopted sons, while describing the shamanic journey of a loner in quest of musical perfection; it is a tale of fame and isolation; of shared elation with a music that entranced a generatin of rock fans. Beautifully crafted like his lyrics, this is a devastatingly honest memoir.