To Ease My Troubled Mind: The Authorized Unauthorized History of Billy Childish

by Ted Kessler

Overview

The story of Billy Childish, the most famous artist you’ve never heard of, by legendary music journalist Ted Kessler

In 1977, seventeen-year-old Steven Hamper was a stonemason in the dockyards of Chatham, Kent, in England. His heart, however, beat in sync with the punk rock tremors of the era, seduced by its celebration of amateurism. So, in a gesture of revolutionary defiance, he took a three-pound club hammer and smashed his hand, vowing to never work again. In doing so, Steven Hamper metamorphosed into Billy Childish, a true Renaissance man. 

Childish has since remained steadfastly true to punk’s DIY cred, becoming one of the most recognizable and authentic voices in whichever artistic endeavor he undertakes. He has released over 150 albums, written countless volumes of poetry and autobiographical novels, and is perhaps best known for his painting, for which he is critically, commercially, and internationally feted. 

To Ease My Troubled Mind is a mosaic portrait collated over a year of interviews with Childish, as well as with close family, ex-girlfriends, band members past and present, friends, foes, collaborators, even his therapist. It is an unflinching, yet frequently spiritual and funny portrait of an artist who is now one of the most prolific and uncompromising of his generation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781636142135
Publisher:	Akashic Books, Ltd.
Publication date:	01/07/2025
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Ted Kessler was on the staff at NME as a writer and editor between 1993 and 2003, before joining Q magazine, working there for sixteen years. He was Q’s editor for four years, until it closed in 2020. His first book, Paper Cuts: How I Destroyed the British Music Press and Other Misadventures, was published in 2022. He also devised and edited the acclaimed My Old Man: Tales of Our Fathers, published in 2016.

Editorial Reviews

"Kessler’s ability as a storyteller results in a profound portrait. Part life story, part art history, part investigation, part lover’s quarrel, it weaves a complex, compelling tapestry of Childish from fragments of his existence—ones that in the hands of another would likely have remained shapeless chaos. Here? It’s cosmic dust given form."

Terri White

"[Childish is] the UK’s most prolific creative force—painter, poet, musician, publisher, memoirist, and novelist."

Financial Times

"An engrossing tale of someone following their own path . . . whose artworks now change hands for serious money, and is feted by the very institutions and publications that previously dismissed him."

Mojo

"A wildly compelling narrative. Packed with equal parts trauma and joie de vivre . . . A fascinating, all-but unbelievable story."

Roy Wilkinson

"Compulsively readable and hugely inspiring, Kessler’s book is an overdue tribute to a man who not only contains multitudes but projects them relentlessly into the world."

Guy Picciotto (Fugazi)

"The book is not a conventional biography. It was done at Childish’s suggestion, with his cooperation, on the basis that he would never have to read it."

Uncut

"To negotiate the convoluted life of Wild Billy Childish in text is roughly the literary equivalent of attempting to count the hairs on a copulating yak’s back. But somehow Ted does it brilliantly—with style and grace. A story of domestic violence, abandonment, misunderstood artistic integrity, dyslexic poetry . . . and guitars . . . Billy told me he probably won’t read this book. If so—he’ll be missing out."

Marc Riley

"This is a wild, frank, and yet friendly biography of the musician, artist, poet, and writer . . . Funny, sad, and uplifting in equal proportions—you can’t read it without seeking out an album or twenty."

Record Collector

"A revered cult figure whose prolific output in the fields of painting, writing, and music have never failed to enlighten, annoy, and confuse in equal measure . . . With a unique mixture of gallows humor, uncomfortably confessional literature, strangely beautiful paintings, and incendiary manifestos, he has relentlessly carved the niche of a true original."

Dazed

"Increasingly in life I ask myself, What would Billy Childish do? Thanks to Ted Kessler’s kaleidoscopic, inspiring, and affectionate portrait of this complex true original I think I now know the answer."

Benjamin Myers

"A portrait of a man as fascinating as he is flawed, someone who is committed to exposing truths about himself while creating all sorts of fabrications . . . Kessler’s detached, freewheeling biography is ultimately about someone who, for better or worse, has unquestionably done it his way."

Times (UK)

"Ted Kessler gets as close as anyone is ever likely to get to one of the most enigmatic artists of the modern age, with an electric text that brings in multiple voices and viewpoints to present a complex portrait of a damaged boy alone with his art against the world. It is a touching, sad, sometimes hilarious, and ultimately inspirational work."

David Keenan (singer-songwriter)

"Ted Kessler has elegantly, wittily documented Billy Childish’s maverick life, achievements, and persona with insight and skill, never allowing himself to be slavishly captivated—or repelled—by Billy’s ‘dangerous charisma.’"

Miki Berenyi

"Billy Childish, he of the extravagant moustache, is not a household name, but he was known as a high priest of underground music and art scenes. In this unusual collage of prose, oral history, telephone conversations between author and artist, and correspondence, Kessler creates as whole a portrait of the elusive Childish as we are likely to get. Kessler calls him the UK’s "most prolific creative force—a painter, poet, photographer, musician, memoirist, and novelist who is in constant production of the goods" . . . Always the outsider, Childish has done what he wanted to do without succumbing to popular taste or bowing to fickle trends. An unconventional "history" of an unconventional artist."

Booklist

". . . [A] portrait of a man as fascinating as he is flawed, someone who is committed to exposing truths about himself while creating all sorts of fabrications . . . Kessler’s detached, freewheeling biography is ultimately about someone who, for better or worse, has unquestionably done it his way."

The Times (UK)