Biography
After twenty years 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 2000 ads and jingles for both radio and TV, followed by a spell making in-flight radio shows for a number of airlines. Somewhat bizarrely this led to me being asked to go to Istanbul to set up one of Turkey's first commercial radio stations on behalf of Pepsi who were sponsoring Michael Jackson’s World Tour. On my return I worked 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 many 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 Dorling Kindersley asked us 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 Bill Wyman’s Blues Odyssey was published in 2001; it won the ‘Handy Award for Literature’ from The Blues Foundation as well as being translated into German. In 2002 DK published Rolling With The Stones, 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; it’s sold 400,000 copies.
DK asked me to write a book about Frank Sinatra. Sinatra was published in autumn 2004; it was published in German and French (October 2005). Sinatra has sold 70,000 copies. Also in 2004 there was Read’s Musical Reciter, a book of musical anecdotes.
In March 2005 Bill and I 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). In 2006 we worked on two more books, both are about the Rolling Stones. The Stones – A History in Cartoons (Sutton Publishing), the other was with Danish photographer, Bent Rej; The Rolling Stones – In The Beginning, (Mitchell Beazley). His photographs were all taken in 1965/6 and are in Bill’s opinion, “the best single collection of Stones photographs I have ever seen.”
In October 2006 Bloomsbury published Gary Barlow’s autobiography, My Take, which I co-wrote. I also co-wrote Bowie, Bolan & The Brooklyn Boy, record producer Tony Visconti’s autobiography Harper Collins (February 2007). In the summer of 2007 there was, Here is the News my book about how BBC radio provided news coverage during the Second World War and Airline Confidential, co-written with a friend, about the funny side of flying and the airline business. This September Ebury will publish Better Late Than Never, Len Goodman’s autobiography, which I co-wrote; he’s the head judge from ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ and ‘Dancing With The Stars’. In October two lavishly illustrated books were published, Pop! and When Football Was Football (Haynes Publishing).
