Biography
After twenty years spent working in the airline industry, during which time I lived in both Los Angeles and Houston, I decided to pursue my passion for music. I began by writing and producing over 2,000 ads and jingles for both radio and TV before going on to make in-flight radio shows for a number of airlines. Somewhat bizarrely this led to me being asked to go to Istanbul where I spent six months setting up and launching one of Turkey's first commercial radio stations. On my return I began working on live music production for artists including America, The Beach Boys, Chicago and Paul McCartney. After doing a series of concerts with the Beach Boys in India I moved to the hills of the Scottish Borders in 1998 – the two things were connected.
Bill Wyman and I had been friendly for a number of years before we collaborated on Bill Wyman’s Blues Odyssey a project for TV that I wrote, produced and co-directed. In the midst of making the programme we were approached by Dorling Kindersley and asked to write a book that would expand upon the two, one hour, shows. The TV programme was nominated for a Peabody Award in America and the book was published in 2001. The book, Bill Wyman’s Blues Odyssey, won the ‘Handy Award for Literature’ from The Blues Foundation; it was also translated into German. In 2002 DK published Rolling With The Stones, which was also written in conjunction with Bill. This lavishly illustrated book of almost 300,000 words was written using Bill’s diary from his days with the band – these amounted to seven million words. Rolling With The Stones was translated into eleven languages and was published in seventeen countries; sales are approaching 400,000 copies worldwide.
In the wake of the two collaborations DK asked me if I would like to write a book about Frank Sinatra. Sinatra was published in autumn 2004; it was also translated and published in German and French (October 2005). Sinatra has sold over 50,000 copies. I also wrote Read’s Musical Reciter, a book of musical anecdotes published in October 2004.
Bill and I then collaborated on a book about archaeological discoveries throughout Britain and Ireland; it concentrates on treasures discovered by metal detectorists. Bill Wyman’s Treasure Islands (Sutton Publishing) came out in March 2005.
In 2006 Bill Wyman and I worked on two more books; both about the Rolling Stones. The Stones – A History in Cartoons (Sutton Publishing) came out in April. The other was with a Danish photographer, Bent Rej, called The Rolling Stones – In The Beginning, (Mitchell Beazley August 2006). The photographs all taken in 1965/6 are in Bill’s opinion, “the best single collection of Stones photographs I have ever seen.”
In October 2006 Bloomsbury published Gary Barlow’s My Take, which I co-wrote. I have just finished writing with record producer Tony Visconti his autobiography, which Harper Collins published in February 2007. In the summer of 2007 Sutton’s will publish my book about how BBC radio provided news coverage during the Second World War (Here is the News - July 2007), and another book, co-written with a friend, about the funny side of flying and the airline business (Airline Confidential – May 2007).
