ABOUT ME

I write about music and literature. Over the past 20 years my features, interviews, reviews and criticism have appeared in the Observer, New Statesman, the Guardian, Radio Times, The Word, Uncut, the Telegraph, GQ, Time Out, the Herald, Sunday Herald, MOJO, Esquire, Event, the Sunday Express, the Sydney Morning Herald, Oxford American and Rolling Stone. I was also an editor at theartsdesk for several years.

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I’m the author of several books. Under The Ivy: The Life & Music Of Kate Bush was described by the Irish Times as “the best music biography in perhaps the past decade” and by MOJO as “superb”. Record Collector called I Shot A Man In Reno (Bloomsbury, 2008) “one of the most informative and fulfilling music books you’re ever likely to read.” Behind The Locked Door, a biography of George Harrison, was published at the end of 2013 in the UK and early 2015 in the US. It was serialised in GQ and described by the Chicago Tribune as “magisterial”.

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My authorised biography of Philip Lynott, Cowboy Song, was published in the UK by Constable in February 2016, and in the US on May 1, 2017, by Chicago Review Press.

Small Hours, my biography of John Martyn, was published July 2020. It was a 2020 Book of the Year in The Times, Telegraph, FT, Standard, Hot Press, Herald, MOJO and Uncut.