Black Vinyl White Powder

This is almost certainly set to be the definitive history of the UK popular music industry, from the 1950s to the beginning of the 21st century. Napier-Bell has impressive credentials for this task: co-writer of the Dusty Springfield hit 'You Dont Have To Say You Love Me', manager of the Yarbirds in the '60s, then Marc Bolan and, in the '80s, Wham! and George Michael. This tome is part autobiography, part social history, and clearly written with a combination of detailed inside knowledge and research. It provides not only an extensive bibliography but also an index of quotations and a 'cast of characters'. Napier-Bells quasi-sociological explanations ('since the Stone Age, drugs and music have gone hand in hand') sometimes make one wonder if he is aware of the gulf between the music industry and the world outside can it really be true that in the '50s Benzedrine was taken by truck drivers throughout the American South? But inevitably it is the inside gossip which is most intriguing: Gerry Marsden subtly altering the words of his songs when playing in Germany, such that German musicians could later be heard singing the amended versions, word for word, in other venues ('All my life Ive been waiting tonight therell be no masturbating'). John Lennon in Greece having left his drugs behind in London: 'What goods the bloody Parthenon without LSD!' The often brilliantly funny, though at times alarming, anecdotes of drugs, violence, money and, inevitably, sex in multifarious permutations often eclipse the music itself. (Kirkus UK)