Failure is Always An Option: Glorious Adventures on the Beta Band Front Line and Other Tales | Steve Mason

Steve Mason is a Scottish singer-songwriter and founding member of the Beta Band. After forming in 1996, the band were embraced in the media as the Next Big Thing. Their sound was completely original: a captivating blend of guitars, house, blues, folk and psychedelia, tied together with Steve's poignant and enigmatic lyrics. They were an idiosyncratic, self-contained, Dadaist counterpoint to the bloated death throes of Britpop in the late '90s. The band were lavishly praised in the press with all three of their studio albums reaching the top twenty, but they disbanded in 2004, owing their record label £1.2 million.

Since then, frontman Steve Mason has forged a singular, highly lauded solo career, releasing five albums under his own name, and in 2025, following a twenty-year break, the Beta Band reformed and played a series of rapturously received shows around the world.

Failure is Always an Option is a scrapbook of a life. It is a picture of someone who was lost but found belief in himself through music. It is a story of someone battling demons that were on constant patrol in his mind until he succeeded in purging them from his life. It is a beautiful story of youth culture, success, failure, sadness and ultimately redemption.

*another of my record selling regrets was parting with my copies of the first three EPs when funds were low. At one point in the late '90s everyone seemed to love the Beta Band - Bobby Gillespie, Ian Brown, Noel Gallagher - the inkies were full of love and praise, and well justified it was. I wonder how the long lens of music history will view them - i'd like to think, with their musical experimentation and refusal to adhere to a formula, that they will be our Soft Machine or Beach Boys. Brilliant band.*

Size: 241 x 164mm (hardback with dust jacket)

Pages: 320 (8 pages of colour photos)

Publisher: New Modern