New for 2022. An updated and greatly expanded edition (40 more additional pages) of the Autobiography “I Saw Her Standing There” - It’s back to Liverpool in the late 1970s, a time when it was still cool to be children of the revolution. A bohemian tale of love, other stuff and lots of rock and roll and when the world was younger and I fell in love with a girl from a distant shore. Featuring a new introduction by the band Hawkwind and concluding with an epilogue collaborating with Rod Clements and Lindisfarne who was more than kind and keen to allow some of his words at the books conclusion. Included in these extra forty pages and published here for the very first time are a selection of photographs of Diana Princess of Wales taken from my personal collection.
Excerpt:
Sometimes we put off or postpone projects and things for later or maybe we get a bit lazy. Well my excuse over the last four decades is that we moved flats and houses several times and each time a rather large packet of enveloped letters tucked away in a box found itself stashed away in a series of cellars, attics and garden sheds ……. until that is recently.
On a big tidy up and sort out during the start of the 2020 Covid 19 pandemic and obeying (to a degree) the “stay at home” directive I opened that old Pickford’s Removals storage box and rescued a giant sized Liverpool University brown envelope stuffed with two bundles of rubber banded handwritten letters starting in the summer of 1979 between two ordinary people otherwise known as correspondence d’amour or love letters.
When looking back as though it were yesterday, is it a case of growing older and becoming more wiser or knowing what I know now would I have done anything different or taken another path. Not likely.
It was 1979 and forgetting the politics, protests and strikes the music was ace. The glam rocker and electric warrior Marc Bolan had kick started the decade riding a white swan and ten years later AC/DC were taking off on the highway to global domination with their powerfully loud and exciting live performances … the future of progressive rock was in safe hands and whatever the music genre the 1970s had it in overdrive.
This autobiographical account of back and forth letters is both a glimpsing snapshot and decibel loaded soundtrack of the times. The songs of the chapter headings were already there, embedded within the pages of the letters, waiting to be released four decades later. In 1979 you could post a ten page letter for 9 pence or buy a round of five pints up north for just £1.
And so what you are about to read are our direct words exposed to the light of day for the first time in over 40 years … its all true … it really happened and this book has come to life because we didn’t throw those letters or diaries away.
