Deadstar by Nick Griffiths is a book that is set in the decades of my youth, so I was intrigued immediately. Garth Tyson was a character who made me really want to find out what had happened to him after Glastonbury in 1985. I couldn’t wait to dive into this book after it arrived!
What’s it like to reach for the stars, but end up floating in a tin can?
Garth Tyson wanted to be the next David Bowie. He fell short. Waaaay short. Burnt out, he fled the stage at Glastonbury ’85, having been pelted with mud, and was never seen again.
You’re familiar with the stars of this era: the Adam Ants, Duran Durans and Depeche Modes – musicians who successfully navigated punk and New Wave to become icons.
Bet you’ve never heard of Garth Tyson – singer, brother, dreamer. Stallholder.
That’s why we’re here.
Decades after Garth’s disappearance, former bandmates, friends, relatives, lovers, music-biz execs and two fans (you try finding more) reunite to tell Garth’s compelling, tragicomic tale. Can any shed light on what really happened to him?
Not everyone appears willingly. Here’s Garth’s 80-year-old mother, Doreen Thyssen: ‘I don’t like people who dig dirt. Fuck off.’ The charmer.
Loved Daisy Jones? Try this perfectly squalid British version.
Nick Griffiths has written the book by way of interviews. The people interviewed range from Nicks sister, to his band members and agents. The way Nick has so skillfully managed to allow the reader to get to know the characters only through these interviews is so clever. I felt I knew them all and could even picture these people.
We discover everything about Garth – his past with his damaged childhood, broken relationships, all things that can be so normal for people these days. We also learn of the highs of love. Being in love and having the love of the family around you.
I thoroughly loved the humour within the story. Even as we see people who aren’t happy to be involved in the interviews for whatever reason. Nick Griffiths has managed to bring a story that had me chuckling throughout.
I was so eager to find out what had happened to Garth, and the story was so readable that I couldn’t stop reading. Seriously addictive reading this was. It may make you want to really find out what Garth Tyson did that much; you want to do your own research….well as convincing as this book is, it is fiction.
Thanks to ZooLoo’s book Tours and Nick Griffiths for the copy of the book and my place on the tour.
Buy Links
Amazon UK
https://www.amazon.co.uk/DeadStar-Who-Hell-Garth-Tyson-ebook/dp/B09NGQM5MP
Amazon US
https://www.amazon.com/DeadStar-Who-Hell-Garth-Tyson-ebook/dp/B09NGQM5MP
Author Bio
Nick Griffiths first printed work was a review of The Shamen, in Sounds, dated November 1989. The once psychedelic band had gone house and he simply didn’t understand.
After Sounds – his music weekly of choice throughout his youth, so a dream come true – he was headhunted for the launch of Select magazine, for whom he wrote reviews and features, involving a brief but swoonsome meeting with his all-time hero, David Bowie. David gently advised Nick to given Lodger another listen, so he did. Moving on to women’s and computer games magazines by the mid-1990s, Nick settled freelancing for the Radio Times and Daily Mail, reviewing TV shows and interviewing their stars, too numerous to mention. He became Radio Times’ Doctor Who correspondent after the show’s return in 2005, which led to him being commissioned by Gollancz/Orion to write his first book, a memoir about growing up as a Doctor Who fan, titled Dalek I Loved You (2007). A Whovian travelogue, Who Goes There, followed, from Legend Press, who also published Nick’s comic novels, In the Footsteps of Harrison Dextrose, and Looking for Mrs Dextrose. Having also written freelance for several of the national broadsheets, Nick quit journalism in 2011 to move from London to Cornwall (where his wife grew up) with his young family.
Since 2014 he has been running the vintage-lighting shop, Any Old Lights, in Fowey, but really missed writing. Hence his first book in ten years: DeadStar.
DeadStar, a fictional music oral history, set during punk and New Wave, launches on 25 January 2022.
Follow him at:
https://www.facebook.com/nickgriffithsauthor
https://www.instagram.com/nickgriffithsauthor/
sharonbeyondthebooks.uk 
Thank you so much for this fab review and taking part in the tour x
LikeLike