Book Review: Don't Mention The Night

For a certain film lover, nothing better encapsulates one’s coming-of-age than the 1993 comedy Dazed and Confused. Despite not possessing much of a plot, the film captures the spirit of this unique period in our lives through characters, conversations, and, importantly, music. Director Richard Linklater made mixtapes for each actor to form the specific dynamic of the cohort and forewent his earnings to pay for the now iconic soundtrack. As the characters prepare to leave their adolescence behind, the songs they listen to are seemingly more capable of making sense of this heady mixture of excitement and anxiety than anything else.

This seems as true for graduating high-schoolers in Texas as it is for a budding writer arriving in Nottingham. The latter is the story found in David Belbin’s recently published Don’t Mention the Night, in which this transitional moment—“a time when we’re still learning, still shaping our view of the world”—is told through his love of rock music. Belbin’s latest book is not exactly a coming-of-age story itself; instead, it is a scattered memoir of the author’s transition into adulthood through the music that made a lasting impression on it.

Don’t Mention the Night is divided into three sections, each one dedicated to an artist in increasingly closer orbit to Belbin’s own journey to becoming a writer. Firstly, the elusive and ethereal Nick Drake—whose serendipitous discovery takes the author from an adolescence in the embers of Colne hippy culture to editing Nottingham magazine Liquorice from a Victoria Centre flat. The next section courses his encounters with Derby’s Kevin Coyne, Belbin now a more established journalist though still struggling to be entirely rid of the “student” epithet. Lastly, we are told the story of legendary local band Gaffa, taking us from their weekly residency at The Imperial in the late 1970s up until their reunion in 2022, including some (though certainly not all) of the details from the author’s life in between as a devotee.

Undoubtedly, the music itself takes front and centre. Belbin authoritatively conveys the sensation of having one’s life changed by a certain song that will resonate with anyone who has experienced the same, regardless of era or genre. Music aficionados, meanwhile, will be left equally satisfied by details of forgotten album tracks, archives of live recordings, and conversations with some of pub-rock’s most influential figures.

Within this, however, is also the story of a writer’s fledgling days. The excellent edition by Five Leaves Publications—the in-house team at Nottingham’s radical bookshop—includes reprints of some of Belbin’s first forays into music journalism for fanzines and student papers, alongside scanned album covers and wonderfully nostalgic photographs. Leaning in a little closer to the page to read the younger David’s own words is a pleasure in itself; the writing has certainly become more refined, but the passion remains evident.

Throughout the book, the author conjures up a 1970s music scene that is grittier and more immediate than its contemporary equivalent, but in which two important themes maintain themselves throughout. The first concerns mental health, a topic that most rock historians are likely to handle at some point though not necessarily as compassionately and candidly as Belbin manages. We are allowed into his own struggles as well as those of his peers both inside and out of the music industry. It is an insight into a crisis that has become more visible in recent times, without romanticisation or oversimplification.

Not entirely unrelated is the second theme, that of artistic success. In their own unique way, the three artists discussed in Don’t Mention the Night were underappreciated during their respective careers—a key ingredient, it seems, for establishing cult followings. It is tempting to try and identify why exactly this is, particularly as the author reflects on his own creative output. However, according to Belbin, it is luck that decides the most: questions of whether Nick Drake’s work could have been respected as much during his life as it has after it, or whether Kevin Coyne’s unorthodox brand of blues rock could have reached a wider audience, or whether Gaffa could have cracked the UK mainstream with a savvier manager are not particularly of interest. The cards fall where they may, and art is vital because it allows us to put them together in a way that somehow makes sense. To both ourselves and to others for years to come.

 The book is frequently referred to by the author as an accidental memoir and often this shows. Don’t Mention the Night could not be described as polished, and the reflections offered in the final pages are thought-provoking but somewhat anticlimactic. Yet none of this takes away from what is a valuable and enjoyable contribution to music history from David Belbin. At just over a hundred pages long, the book can be appreciated in a single evening—even more so when interspersed with selected works from Drake, Coyne and Gaffa. The result is not a life told in detail or a philosophical tract on the meaning of being a music-lover, but something more akin to an intimate conversation with a stalwart of the Nottingham music scene who draws upon their extensive knowledge, recounts conversations, and sheds light on the stories that sometimes fall between the cracks.

 By the end, we’re left with the feeling that tomorrow might bring another band to love, or another gig to discover, or another memory of a song that at one point in our own coming-of-age stories—for one fleeting moment—made everything make sense.