Nick Saloman
Bevis Frond |
"I worked with Phil briefly a
few years ago and found him to be a charming, talented and thoroughly likeable chap. If he
hadn't moved to the Czech Republic who knows what might happened! I noticed he wore two
big rings on one hand and I interpreted this as a sign of great self confidence. I'm not
sure how accurate that was. His songs were/are mostly miner key homages to a life spent in
the seedier parts of the world - New York, Berlin, Kidderminster. Dark, yet somehow
melodic and paignant. Phil somehow instinctively knows how far to take the listener. He'll
drop you off just at the edge of town, just when it could all get out of control, so that
your feet remain on safe ground while his run across the minefield. You can watch, you can
listen, you can admire what he does - what he's about - but his is intrisically a lone
trip. Phil has always gone his own way, and if there's anything like a God, he'll continue
to do so long after we (and he) are all gone..." |
Barbara Manning
Go-Luckys!
|
"I can tell you about a time
when I was hurt by an explosion of misguided self hatred, just at a moment when my
compassion peeped through its aged and tattered curtain. Fury slapped my emotional face. I
showed the teenaged middle finger and went to my room. What to listen to? I was raging
now. I needed music that could match the sullen anger and isolation; some thing to play
loud enough to disturb outside of my little space; something that would touch the deepness
of my hurt and comfort me!I put Phil Shoenfelt and I felt understood and
validated..." |
Nikki Sudden
Jacobites, about Phil's novel "Junkie Love"
|
"You can always tell a good
book by the first line - this is a good book! I first read PS's description of his 1980's
Camden Town lifestyle in Prague some five years back and was immediately struck by the
quality of his writing. In a way, for the subject matter, this book is as important as
William Burrough's Junkie. Too much writing about heroin addiction merely enforces the
romance of the drug but Shöenfelt also reveals the darker side of addiction. Not in the
grotesquely tainted style of an Irving Welsh but with far greater purity. Some of the
scenes depicted are remarkably sleazy but the author never falls into cliché. If this
book suffers through anything it's only in its bad timing at appearing after such an
overrated book as Trainspotting. If nothing else Junkie Love would make a far better
movie. The thing about a junkie lifestyle is it may be sordid and at times unspeakably
sleazy but it's still a form of living that is at odds with the way civilisation expects
us to behave. When you're a junkie all that really matters is the next fix and how to get
it. As Shoenfelt points out the drug is, "For nihilists and hedonists - for people
who have either given up trying to make sense of existence... or who don't give a shit
about a future they can't see or believe in." It's also a drug that artists have
sought solace and inspiration in through the years - it will continue to be so. With his
music, especially on his last two albums, Blue Highway and Dead Flowers For Alice
Shoenfelt has conjured up a place all of his own. Junkie Love joyously shares the same
territory. The best book about heroin since Junkie. An essential read!" |
Nick Cave
The Bad Seeds, about Phil's novel "Junkie Love" |
"Junkie Love - A nice, nasty
read. I enjoyed it a lot!" |
Ruth Weiss
American poet, about "Junkie Love" |
"This book is tough love.
Junkie Love shoots straight for the gut, puts the picture in your face, what a junkie
faces from moment to moment, through each night, through each day. That Phil Shoenfelt,
the author, is well today to tell it, is a triumph of a soul in its struggle to the light.
The art of Jolana Izbická draws a haunting line through Phil Shoenfelt's story, ending
with a spiral upward." |
Iva Pekárková
Czech novelist, about "Junkie Love"
|
"Filled with refreshing
graveyard humour, Junkie Love is a gripping soldier's story from the times when a junkie's
worst worries were himself and the badly cut drugs." |
Michael Gira
Angels Of Light/Swans, about "Junkie Love"
|
"Shoenfelt brings a sure,
cold, almost empirical precision to his descriptions: ever-descending scenes of brute
squalor, self-inflicted wounds and abjection. Ultimately though, what's revealed is an
underlying compassion for the characters in Junkie Love, their helplessness in the face of
their obsessions, and their misguided, naked need for transcendence and love. A trenchant,
cautionary tale that successfully avoids the self-righteous tone of the
'recovered'..." |
Interview mit Garageland
Interview mit Rock & Pop
Interview mit Ni Gudix
Interview
mit Rock Sound