Basically this is just for those who were teenagers in the 70s and early 80s. Full of anecdotes about Bowie, Hawkwind, Ozzy, Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed and Neil Young. Recommended by a friend who said it made him laugh out loud. It didn’t for me but the stories about Angie Bowie taking to the stage or irritable Lou Reed raised a smile.

Interesting enough but the tales of drunkenness or drugged up partying gets a little tired after a while. Alright for a jokey intermission now and again.

Sadly not as enjoyable as I'd expected. It's overlong and repetitive, to the point where the "we were all drunk/high/faced at the time" humor and the "cranky antisocial musician is also brilliant" ego turns kind of sad and pathetic the longer it goes on. And closing with a somber funeral for a musician friend is maybe not the ending this book really needed.

So let's say you end up down the pub with a delightful, if random chap. He's FULL of stories (and for the sake of this story, let's say he keeps buying rounds). He has amazing tales to tell about people you definitely know in music (and some you really don't know, but the tales about them are amusing enough - particularly one about a hungry horse). Some of them are sad, too - especially one about Eddie Vedder grappling with the death of Kurt Cobain. But mostly, it's a riotous collection of one man's meticulous destruction of his liver as he builds his music journalism career. If that's your cup of tea, this is certainly worth checking out.

There haven’t been many careers that I have wanted: musical theatre performer, rock star, author. Those have mainly been the prevailing ones over my 36 years. In all honesty though all I have ever really wanted to do is have a job that lets me stand at the side of the stage of rock and roll history watching my rock star heroes perform. Basically, I want Allan Jones’s life.

In his book Can’t Stand Up for Falling Down I got to sample what this life was like. He has had some of the most amazing experiences and encountered some of the most exciting artists of modern history. I won’t lie to you, reading this book made me more than a little jealous. However, I have to be happy that I books like Can’t Stand Up for Falling Down exist. I know I probably won’t get the same experiences that Jones has had (I work in a high school) so through his writing I get to live them vicariously through him.
And I guess, for now, for me, that is enough.

Can’t Stand Up for Falling Down – Rock ‘n’ Roll War Stories by Allan Jones is available now.