Why read Beware of the Bull?

Book cover of Beware of the Bull: The Enigmatic Genius of Jake Thackray

Book description

Beware of the Bull - The Enigmatic Genius of Jake Thackray is the critically-acclaimed first biography of the late, great singer-songwriter.
Admired by Neil Gaiman, Jarvis Cocker, Alex Turner and Thea Gilmore, among others, Jake was one of the greatest and most original artists of the twentieth century; a unique…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Beware of the Bull as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Dave McKean

Author

Jake Thackray is an almost forgotten figure, but he was a national treasure in the 70s and 80s and an utterly unique singer-songwriter in the French chanson tradition of Georges Brassens.

He was a proud Yorkshireman and English teacher, and his love of language and dialect infuses his comic songs with a complexity and specificity you rarely hear now. He was a nervous performer, a drinker, and a hard man to pin down.

Still, his songs are amongst the best, most technically accomplished, and brilliantly observed of anything in the English canon, and he deserves to be rediscovered. This book…

From Dave's 3 favorite reads in 2023.