Budgie was a member of Big in Japan, The Slits and, most famously, Siouxsie and The Banshees and The Creatures; an era-defining drummer in the much-mythologised post punk scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s. But before he was Budgie, Peter Clarke was a boy growing up in working class St Helens in the 1960s.

The loss of his mum at a young age created the absence that haunts the pages of this book. But the beating heart of this at times painfully honest account of a life often sabotaged is, of course, his long-term position as Siouxsie and The Banshees' drummer and co-writer alongside his ex-wife Siouxsie Sioux. Their creative partnership produced some of the most seductive and celebrated pop music of the decade. Eventually, their personal relationship started to fall apart, with inevitable consequences for both bands.

'The Absence' is bravely unflinching in its dissection of how…