Young Soul Rebels

The Ultimate History of Northern Soul.

Young Soul Rebels is the intimate story of Britain's most fascinating underground music scene – northern soul. Stuart Cosgrove has been a well-known collector on the scene for decades, and here he takes the reader on a rollercoaster journey to the heart of this secret society: the iconic clubs – The Twisted Wheel, The Torch, Wigan Casino and the Blackpool Mecca, the infamous bootleggers, and the DJs and crate-digging collectors who voyaged to America to unearth rare sounds.

The book sweeps across fifty years of social and cultural history, taking in the rise of amphetamine culture, the brutal policing of the youth scene, the north–south divide, the rise of Thatcherism and the miners' strike, and concludes with a picture of northern soul today: as popular now as it was in its 1970s heyday.



Stuart Cosgrove originally from Perth, was a fanzine writer on the northern soul scene before joining the black music paper Echoes, as a staff writer. He became media editor with the NME and a feature writer for a range of newspapers and magazines. In 2005 he was named Broadcaster of the Year in the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Awards and in 2012 he won numerous awards including a BAFTA and Royal Television Society award for Channel 4's coverage of the London Paralympics 2012. He is the author of Young Soul Rebels (Polygon, 2016).



'Sheer poetry . . . it truly is a personal history, but it weaves its way through our own history as well. Buy the book, you won't regret it'



'Cosgrove recalls [the Northern Soul scene] with a passionate honesty that never shirks, laying bare the dark side behind his personal eulogy to a whole musical genre… there are many striking moments that provide continuing food for thought. That’s what I call a good book'



'A thoughtful and impassioned memoire, complete with sociopolitical analysis'



'it simply scintillates'



'an enjoyable account of the northern soul scene...It's not just first-hand memories here, we also get a detailed history from the scene's root to the present day...fascinating'



'Not so much a book, but an LP with pages and pictures. Cosgrove gives northern soul the loud, upbeat voice it deserves'



'Witty . . . and hard-hitting in equal measure'