This is the updated UK and European version including reviews, Q & A and photos.
‘Ticket to Ride’ is a satisfyingly filthy yet delightfully innocent, romp through the bars and clubs of late 60’s Germany as The Cheetahs, a young band from small town southern England chase their dreams along the trail blazed by the Beatles in Hamburg. Along the way they discover the realities of life on the road in all of its…
Dirt & Glory – Sex & Drugs – Life & Death – Rock & Roll
…and it’s all here in one gangster and hooker infested plate of realism, which was the Reeperbahn at that time…
Pulling no punches telling it like it was Sclater, who lived in this world himself for much of the 60s, tells us first hand through the eyes of characters based on real life kids who grew up fast faced with this in at the deep end rollercoaster ride of debauchery and ultimate demise. Not all gloom and doom though as the tale takes us beyond Hamburg, with occasional human kindness and discoveries of new loves of the strangest kind.
You’ll be pulled into their world and the Horrors & Highlights befalling Reg, Jimmy, Adrian, Gerry and their leader Dave and their ever changing entourage, will keep you reading as the pace moves on just quickly enough to keep you hooked, never overblown with drama but full of the contrast between the naivety of our characters and the grittiness of events, mostly recognisable to anyone who’s spent any time in the live music business, here, however, experienced in extremis. This book will leave you amazed that any of them survived, not all of them did, and there is a certain sadness to the conclusion, alien to any Hollywood version of books like this, but it’s a melancholy which gives this slice of modern history the humanity it deserves. “Don’t let your kids join a rock band Mrs Worthington!”
Dean G Hill
