“I didn’t actually want to write a music biography. There was a story to be told, but it wasn’t the tale of the meteoric rise and demise of Wreckless Eric. I was more concerned with my upbringing, the social background that shaped me and lead to this meteoric rise and demise. And I wanted to write about what happens after the firework fizzles out.”
This is an honest coming of age story from both sides of instant pop success: bands, squalid flats, menial jobs, making records, the rise to the point of fame and falling off into poverty and alcoholism in Thatcher's Britain, where Goulden ultimately survived the 1980’s to achieve his own kind of success.
Twenty-one years after its original publication, in a time when pop stars telling their own hard stories was a comparative rarity, A Dysfunctional Success rings truer than ever, reminding readers how we all come from somewhere, pay a high price for our dreams, and enjoy modest glories in return for staying the course.