"What a brutal business pop music is"

So says a rueful Bob Geldof, as quoted in this Guardian article, which serves as an appetiser for Nick Duerden's book Exit Stage Left: The Curious Afterlife Of Pop Stars, published today.

Duerden explains how Viv Albertine's superb memoir Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys provided the necessary inspiration: "I wanted to know what it's like when that awkward next chapter begins, where anonymity replaces infamy, and the ordinary reasserts itself over the extraordinary." After all, he observes, "falling back down to earth, in this business, is an inescapable certainty. Like sportsmen and women, [musicians] peak early". Some artists may breathe the rarefied air of sustained success for longer than others, and never have to crawl back to a job in Starbucks, but even the biggest stars endure protracted periods in the critical and commercial wilderness.

The difficulty, Duerden suggests, is twofold. Not only do artists struggle to cope with the gradual or sudden loss of status and adulation, they are also very often not "the best people to operate the heavy machinery of adulthood". The implication is that being cocooned inside the pop bubble permits a naive Peter Pan-type existence, and so being outside it leaves musicians in limbo, forced to grow up and confront daily realities.

In the article, Geldof, Suzanne Vega, Kevin Rowland, Terence Trent D'Arby, Lisa Maffia and more talk about their experiences of finding themselves no longer in the limelight. It's possible to discern bewilderment, frustration and sadness, as you might expect - but also, Duerden notes, a striking stoicism. Many of those he spoke to continue to feel a compulsion to write, record and perform, even though few people are listening anymore. There's something commendable and cheering about this blind, dogged commitment to creativity and sense of hopefulness in the face of indifference and countervailing trends - even if it is Robbie Williams we're talking about.