Any of us who sat through them, wondering how, even now after thirty years of hearing some of them, they still sounded fresh, knew that they would make an amazing book. Visceral and always entertaining, Clean Living Under Difficult Circumstances is a stand-out memoir that relives the thrill of the 70s and 80s, and the movement that helped make mod the most enduring and successful British youth culture of all time. Written with humour, passion and attention to detail, Clean Living Under Difficult Circumstances is perhaps the ultimate mod memoir, taking us from meeting the Small Faces as a toddler, to the 1979 Mod revival, through the more purist 1980s mod scene and eventually to Acid Jazz.

CLEAN LIVING UNDER DIFFICULT CIRCUMSTANCES] never loses its percussive humour or whip-hand sense of style. Once mod touched your soul it changed the way you looked at life, unexpectedly broadening your horizons. As we DJ’d together, sat in pubs and then eventually worked together (he employed me when no-one else would), he was always a riot of stories.As I was into the Soul and Jazz scene in the mid to late eighties, I first heard of Eddie around this time via Acid Jazz Records but so much of the information in this book I never knew about Mr Piller. In Eddie it awakens a can-do attitude that sees him setting up a fanzine, putting on club nights, hustling jobs in the music industry, and eventually setting up a record label. Mod isn't about what decade you lived in, it's about your attitude, and this book has tons of it' Kenney Jones, The Small Faces'A charismatic storyteller, witty and unpretentious, he is at once an engaging protagonist and an indisputable authority, giving a live-wire, visceral perspective on mod life in that short flash of time. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Visceral and always entertaining, CLEAN LIVING UNDER DIFFICULT CIRCUMSTANCES is a stand-out memoir that relives the thrill of the 70s and 80s, and the movement that helped make mod the most enduring and successful British youth culture of all time.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. If I'd have lived through the mod movement in London in the 60s my heroes would've been Guy Stevens and Pete Meaden - but as a teenage mod in the early 1980's Eddie Piller was that guy. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. He is perhaps best known as the co-founder of Acid Jazz records which recently celebrated its 35th birthday and remains one of the most successful indie labels of a generation.I was a bit too young to be a Mod in the second wave (born in 72) but having grew up in East Ham in the 70's and 80's I could relate to a lot of the places and venues mentioned in the book. Written with humour, passion and attention to detail, CLEAN LIVING UNDER DIFFICULT CIRCUMSTANCES is perhaps the ultimate mod memoir, taking us from meeting the Small Faces as a toddler, to the 1979 Mod revival, through the more purist 1980s mod scene and eventually to Acid Jazz. A thirty-year career in specialist radio has included successful spells presenting at radio stations such as Jazz FM, BBC Radio London, 6 Music, and Kiss FM. He always strikes me as one of the lucky few who win the lottery by making up their own job description. By the time I began to know him socially he was even further in – and also further out – as both of us had given up mod clubs and gotten into the jazz scene.