PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Johnny Rogan is the author of over twenty books, including highly acclaimed biographies/musical studies of the Byrds, the Smiths, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, John Lennon and Morrissey. His groundbreaking Starmakers & Svengalis: The History Of British Pop Management was adapted for a six-week BBC series. Morrissey & Marr: The Severed Alliance was one of the best-selling and most controversial rock biographies of its time, receiving various music biography of the year awards, and has been in print continuously for over twenty years. More recently, Van Morrison: No Surrender was chosen by the Sunday Timesas one of its Top 10 Music Books of the Year. He is currently completing an epic two-volume study, Byrds: Requiem For the Timeless.
Masterfully teases out the warring impulses wrestling in [Davies's] psyche ... [Rogan is] adept at relating the social history of the 1950s and 1960s to Davies's brooding character and lyric obsessions ... He uncovers psychological traumas everywhere and is fascinating on the bitchy rivalries between 1960s pop titans ... Such tales make this ... oceanically researched biography go with a swing * Sunday Times * It's [Ray Davies's] quirks that make him a worthy study, and Johnny Rogan is the man for the job, a writer renowned for going to extraordinary lengths to research his subjects ... a social history as well as character study. Rogan illuminates the labyrinth of Swinging Sixties record labels, managers, bookers and pluggers, and spares no blushes in his depiction of the young Kinks * Irish Times * Rogan is exceptionally good at painting a picture of the moment he is exploring ... engrossing ... you're left with a sympathetic understanding of [Davies'] ways and motives * New Statesman * In the tradition of the most interesting biographies, a troubled subject makes for a gripping read * Evening Standard * As definitive a view of the man as anyone could hope for * The Times *
