The Low-Slung Saint of the Tyne

I’ve got a confession…I’m not necessarily who you thought I was…I’ve lived a double life, erstwhile part-time science writer David Bradley, but always art-school bluesman Stardust Stanhope. Here’s the write-up that’s destined for the Chronicle scoop… Born in the shadow of the shipyards during the coal-dusted winters of the early 1970s, Stardust Stanhope was never destined for a quiet life. While the rest of the North East was looking at the gutters, Stanhope was looking at the stars, or at least at the flickering lights of the club jukebox and the valve-driven amps through the windows. His story is the definitive arc of the British songsmith: a journey from the velvet-lined dreams of the glam-rock era to the raw, unvarnished grit of a 21st-century master. The Early Years: Coal Dust and Seaspray Stanhope’s musical education began at the kitchen table, balanced between the sophisticated harmonic structures of the Great American Songbook and the distorted, stomping joy of the British…