The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise

This book was shortlisted for the Penderyn Music Book Prize 2017.

The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise is the extraordinary story, told in her own words, of Brix Smith Start. Best known for her tenure in The Fall during what was arguably their most powerful and influential anti-authoritarian post-punk period – encompassing albums like This Nation's Saving Grace and The Wonderful and Frightening World Of... – Brix spent ten years with the band before a violent disintegration led to her departure and the end of her marriage to Mark E. Smith.

However, Brix's story extends far beyond the rock 'n' roll highs and lows within one of the most radically dysfunctional bands around. Growing up in the Hollywood Hills in the 1960s, in a dilapidated pink mansion, her life has encompassed extremes from luxury to destitution, from gracing the cover of NME to waitressing in California, via the industrial landscape of Manchester in the 1980s.

What emerges is a narrative of constant reinvention, marked by jubilant highs and depressive ebbs; a singular journey of a teenage American girl on a collision course with English radicalism, ultimately leading to mid-life success in television and fashion. Too bizarre, extreme, and improbable to exist within the pages of fiction, The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise could only truly exist within the pages of a memoir.