We’ve known Alan Edwards since the days when we’d ring him for a quote from Blondie or the Stranglers in the late ‘70s and he’s still one of the key figures in music PR. He’s looked after the Stones, Prince, Michael Jackson, Blondie, Amy Winehouse, the Beckhams and many others. No-one is better positioned to see how that world has changed, from the pre-Google days when you could invent a story and the press would happily buy it to a 21st century where his flat was burgled in pursuit of lucrative celebrity leads. PRs, he believes, "are not messengers but storytellers” and his memoir ‘I Was There: Dispatches From A Life In Rock And Roll’ is full of them. He looks back here at …
… striking a £1m photo deal for the Beckhams’ wedding.
… Midge Ure, Gen X and other prime examples of fake news.
… hotel workers, waiters and airline pilots who sold stories to the press.
… the days when a battery-operated portable phone gave you the edge.
… why he was hired by Blondie.
… the chilly, manipulative and inscrutable Lou Reed.
… Bowie’s disappearance in Berlin in the ‘70s and other things that would be impossible in the age of social media.
… Keith Moon in mid-air.
… and how it feels to be hacked.
Order Alan’s book here …
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Was-There-Dispatches-Life-Rock/dp/1398525243
The Outside Organisation …
https://outside-org.co.uk/
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Great album trilogies, suing Madonna and "the pantheon of psychedelic heaviosity"
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The genius of Little Feat, the Man with the Twang & pop’s greatest scandal in the making
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Rock snobbery, the seven wives of Gregg Allman & the greatest solo on a pop record
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The “amniotic throb” of modern pop, the eternal life of the Top Gear theme and the Blue Nile’s lucky break
Hollywood Babylon, the inspired gimmickry of Catch A Fire and the luck of Ron Wood
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Richard Thompson – “you know it’s time to go when the audience starts throwing chairs”
Neil Tennant remembers the pop press and “the last great era of forward-looking songs"
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