Wreckless Eric at West Malvern Social Club

Greenwood Events and Off The Road Music present the legendary Wreckless Eric at West Malvern Social Club.

Wreckless needs little introduction — he wrote and recorded the classic Whole Wide World and had a hit with it back in 1977. Since then it’s been a hit for countless other artists including The Monkees, Cage The Elephant and Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day, featured in the 2022 Expedia / Superbowl / Ewan MacGregor travel ad, and most recently in the podcast Smartless.

As Eric Goulden it’s a little more complicated – a musician, artist, writer, recording engineer and producer, he didn’t like either the music business, the mechanics of fame or the name he’d been given to hide behind, so he crawled out of the spotlight and disappeared into the underground. He went on to release twenty something albums in forty something years under various names – The Len Bright Combo, Le Beat Group Electrique, The Donovan Of Trash, The Hitsville House Band, and with his wife as one half of Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby, finally realizing he was stuck with the name Wreckless Eric.

Eric’s three most recent albums Construction Time & Demolition, Transience and Leisureland (all available online) are widely praised as his best work to date. His albums encapsulate pop, bubblegum, garage trash and psychedelia. His live performance is a sonic journey through time and space incorporating songs from all stages of his long career. Unmasked, unhinged and still alive – a survivor of Covid-19 (resulting in a near-fatal heart attack), Eric presents himself alone if not simply with electric and acoustic guitars, and electronics of his own making.

“The achievement for Wreckless Eric is to have made new music that connects to old music without maudlin nostalgia or huffy defensiveness, refusing to let age dim the passion for the music that means the most to him. In other words, he rocks.”

Many are unaware of his prodigious recorded output since his beginnings on Stiff Records in the mid-seventies.His live performances are sonic journeys through time and space. Eric presents himself alone if not simply with electric and acoustic guitars, and electronics of his own making. Recent sets have focused on his two most recent albums, 2024’s Leisure land and its predecessor, Transience, with readings from his autobiography, A DysfunctionalSuccess. He tends to do what he wants to do rather than what might be expected. He’ll most likely play his big hit from the seventies, the enduringWhole Wide World, and he may play other songs from various career, but don’t expect a recreation of 1977 - the past 47 years have made him so much more than that.