The Closest Thing to Crazy
- Author Mike Batt
- Narrator Mike Batt
- Publisher Bonnier Books UK
- Publish Date 26 September 2024
- Run Time 9 hours and 28 minutes
- Format x-book®
- Genre Autobiography: arts and entertainment, Biography and non-fiction prose, Composers and songwriters, Music, Music industry, Music: styles and genres, Television production: technical and background skills, The Arts.
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What to expect
'Wildly entertaining' DAILY EXPRESS
'Rollicking ... ebullient ... Christmas present problems are instantly solved' MAIL ON SUNDAY
Nominated for the 2025 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Awards for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research
Described variously as a 'polymath', a 'renaissance man' and 'one of the most colourful characters in the music business', Mike Batt has led an extraordinarily vibrant and challenging life that has been full of both glorious victories and bitter failures.
For better or for worse, he is a man who has always lived life on his own terms. Idiosyncratic but mainstream, complicated but compassionate, steadfastly maverick in spirit but avowedly commercial in outlook. He is a man of great contradictions, but even greater talent.
After starting out in the music business as a teenager, Batt shot to fame in the early 1970s for his part in the creation of the Wombles pop group. But this success proved to be just the beginning as he then went on to work with various artists as a songwriter, composer and producer, including Art Garfunkel, George Harrison, Cliff Richard, Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Katie Melua.
Featuring cameos from some of the biggest stars in the business from Paul McCartney to Prince, The Closest Thing to Crazy takes us not only on the rocky (and classical) journey of Mike Batt's life but also on a tour around the inside of his mind.
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