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KEEN to show that Buzzcocks had not lost touch with their roots after enjoying the most successful year of their musical career, Pete Shelley published the band’s August 1977-August 1978 accounts in the band’s Secret Public fan club magazine, showing that, in the year of “Ever Fallen In Love”, the greatest pop-punk band of all time made a mere £3,108. “When everyone’s making the kind of money people think is being made, we’ll probably not tell you,” he wrote.
A modest prophet, infinitely richer artistically than he ever was financially, the oddly inscrutable Shelley died suddenly in 2018, aged just 63, having left the account of his own life reasonably unclear. In Ever Fallen In Love: The Lost Buzzcocks Tapes, writer and sometime Buzzcocks merch lady Louie Shelley (no relation) strives to tell the singer’s story based on a series of interviews she did with him in 2012 and 2013, with a view to writing a song-by-song Buzzcocks guide. True to form, Shelley proved to be a funny, open interviewee while simultaneously not giving that much away.