Ticket to Ride

"'Ticket to Ride' is a satisfying filthy yet delightfully innocent romp through the bars and clubs of the late 60's Germany as the Cheetahs, a young band from a small town in 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 & GRIT - SEX & DRUGS - LIFE & DEATH - ROCK & ROLL
... and it's all here in one gangster and hooker infested plate of reality, which was the Reeperbahn at that time...

Pulling no punches, telling it like it was Sclater, who lived and played in this world himself for much of the 60's, 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 roller-coaster ride of debauchery and ultimate demise. Not all doom and gloom 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