Until a year ago I was unaware of Guy Pratt. Although I’m a huge Pink Floyd fan, I mostly ignore anything they did after The Wall. I’m certainly not enough of an anorak to notice the name of the session bass player they hired after Waters’ departure. It was the combination of his involvement with Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets, who I’ve now seen a couple of times, and his excellent Rockonteurs podcast with Gary Kemp, that brought him to my attention. I bought this book after it was recommended to me by my friend Iain Holder (no relation to Noddy), who’d also raved about his stand-up routine. The book is great fun, a rollicking, gossipy, name dropping, world tour. He starts with his childhood in London, the son of a TV actor, and then moves on through the immediate post-punk period, when he played in a couple of minor bands, to his big break, the bass slot with Australian band Icehouse. He then goes on to tour the world with Robert Palmer and successively bigger artists until reaching the pinnacle, Pink Floyd, where he spends most of the late 80’s and early 90’s. I guess success in the world of session musicianship is really down to two things: being very good at your instrument, but also being genuinely likeable. Mr Pratt appears to have both of these qualities in spades. Being a sober and sensible character, on the other hand, is not required, or even necessarily a good thing. When your employer is a rock-n-roll hell raiser, it makes sense to be someone who can keep up with them. It also makes for a very good story. You get an insight into life on the road with some of the biggest bands in the world, and a succession of drunken escapades. It’s obviously highly censored though. For example, although groupies appear occasionally as “a guest in my room”, there’s very little actual sex, and certainly nothing about the peccadillos of his celebrity employers. I guess that wouldn’t be a good move for someone in his position. All in all a fun light read.