Deaf School ― Non-Stop Pop Art Punk Rock Party

Liverpool has been a city of bands for decades, a dynamic center of musical innovation that gave the world one of the most iconic groups ever to grace popular music—The Beatles. Years later, in 1974, it nearly did it again. Rehearsing in the very same rooms that John Lennon did at the Liverpool College of Art, the band Deaf School formed, a chaotic and wildly entertaining group with a flair for rock cabaret. Avant-garde to the max, they were slated for instant stardom, signing with Warner Brothers. But the band would never have their heyday, lost in the vicissitudes of taste as Britain’s punk rock revolution took hold, drowning their potential out. In Deaf School: The Non-Stop Pop Art Punk Rock Party, veteran music writer Paul Du Noyer pays tribute to this groundbreaking band, offering at least a little bit of the tremendous recognition that they deserve.

Deaf School’s influence is acknowledged by bands from Madness to Dexy’s Midnight Runners to Echo & the Bunnymen. Indeed, the Sex Pistols’s own manager, Malcolm McLaren, said of them “It’s just as bad being too early as too late.” Though their hopes were dashed, they have never surrendered, and forty years later they still perform in madly glamorous and eccentric reunion shows, tribal gatherings of a dedicated fanbase who never forgot them. Celebrating their insider achievements, their rockers-to-rockers influence, Paul Du Noyer brings readers inside the raucous clubs where musical history would be determined, offering not just a needed biography of an overlooked band but a hidden and important story of artistic development—whispered in our ear beneath the noise. “Deaf School are such a delicious secret,” he writes, “it’s almost a shame to reveal it.”

Paul Du Noyer has been a music journalist for more than thirty years. He is the founding editor of Mojo and was editor at Q and a writer for the NME. He is the author of many books, most recently Liverpool—Wondrous Place: From the Cavern to the Capital of Culture.