Category Archives: Books

On Paper – Lazarus: The Second Coming of David Bowie by Alexander Larman

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Lazarus: The Second Coming of David Bowie
by Alexander Larman
New Modern 2026 (hardback 432 pages, ISBN: 9781917923446)

Reviewed by John Earls

On 25 June 2004 David Bowie suffered a near-fatal heart attack whilst on stage in Scheeßl in Germany. Alexander Larman begins his absorbing new book Lazarus: The Second Coming of David Bowie by contemplating what might have happened had Bowie died in 2004 and what this might have meant for his reputation.

Bowie had been in the middle of a comeback following a much-praised Glastonbury headlining performance in 2000 and had released the albums Heathen (2002) and Reality (2003). Whilst something of a bounce back from the embarrassment of his late 1980s output, Reality wasn’t his best work nor would it have been an appropriate memorial to such a great artist who would chiefly be remembered for his outstanding achievements of the 1970s and early 1980s.

Of course, Bowie didn’t die in 2004. He went into a period of retirement and recovery and came back with The Next Day album in 2013 and the exceptional Blackstar album, which was released on 8 January 2016, Bowie’s 69th birthday. Two days later Bowie died of liver cancer.   

In a bid to challenge the common marginalisation of a significant chunk of Bowie’s latter-day career, Larman presents this book as “the pensive B-side to the triumphant A-side of his heyday”. It is an illuminating delve into this particular chapter of Bowie’s life. Comprehensively researched and drawing on many interviews and reviews of the time, it also features some important and revealing original contemporary interviews. Not least of these are those with Reeves Gabrels – “the man who would become [Bowie’s] most consistent, and important, collaborator throughout the 1990s” and the pianist Mike Garson, who first worked with Bowie in 1972 and played on many of his albums and tours, who gives some insightful and moving contributions.

The book is mostly structured in chronological order starting with the much-derided Tin Machine project whereby Bowie was a member of the four-piece band formed in 1988. Larman has already reminded us in his prologue of Jon Wilde’s infamous 1991 review of the second Tin Machine album which concludes, “Hot Tramp! We loved you so. Now sit down, man. You’re a fucking disgrace”.

We are also reminded of Bowie’s rather mocking appearance with Tin Machine on Terry Wogan’s BBC TV show in August 1991 – Wogan is reported to have subsequently said that Bowie was the most difficult interviewee he’d encountered. But if Tin Machine is one of the most scorned parts of Bowie’s career, for Larman it was “important for both introducing him to [Reeves] Gabrels and for, in Bowie’s estimation, whetting his almost blunted purpose and teaching him how to be a rock star again”. From here the book takes us through his next phase including the making of Black Tie White Noise (1993) which saw Bowie reunited (less than happily) with Nile Rodgers who had co-produced the hugely successful Let’s Dance album (1983).

The Bowie on Screen chapter looks at Bowie’s film activity in this period including playing Andy Warhol in Julian Schnabel’s Basquiat (1996) and a small part in Martin Scorcese’s Last Temptation of Christ (1988). I was particularly intrigued to discover that when Scorcese was toying with a biopic of George Gershwin, Fred Astaire suggested before his death in 1987 that Bowie was the sole actor who he would allow to play him (Astaire) on screen. This chapter also contains an example of some of Larman’s teases as, in one of a number of Bowie lyric references, he says of Gunslinger’s Revenge (1998) that “the film, unfortunately, is a saddening bore”.

In the chapter on Bowie’s fine art activities, he has the delicious line “It is the prerequisite of every wealthy middle-aged man to have his own boutique publishing business”. This refers to Bowie founding 21, a small fine art publisher that published the book Nat Tate: An American Artist, 1928-1960 by William Boyd, which had a New York launch in Jeff Koon’s studio on 1 April 1998. However, no such artist exists and the hoax was exposed a week later in a gossip column in the New York Herald Tribune. The chapter also covers Bowie’s own exhibition New Afro / Pagan and Work 1975-1995 (1995) – largely pilloried by the critics – and his time on the board of the Modern Painters publication (which he had also written for).

There are also sections on some of Bowie’s other non-musical ventures including the launch of the internet service provider BowieNet in 1998 and the selling of ‘Bowie Bonds’ in 1997, giving investors a share in Bowie’s future royalties for 10 years.

But it is the music that is foremost and Larman walks us through the albums and tours from Tin Machine until Bowie’s “wilderness years”. I was grateful to be reminded of how good the much neglected The Buddha of Suburbia (1993) is and to revisit the best bits of Toy (posthumously released in 2021 but recorded in 2000). I also enjoyed slightly rubbing up against Larman’s own evaluation of some of the albums – I’m not quite as enthusiastic as he is about Outside (1995) or as scathing of Earthling (1997), but these are mostly marginal differences and his general assessments are sound and well argued.

One of the most touching passages of the book concerns a BBC Radio One interview Bowie did with Mary Ann Hobbs in New York on 7 January 1997 to mark his 50th birthday. Questions and tributes from celebrities are presented and subject to banter and then we get a “sudden, fleeting insight into the real, unvarnished David Bowie”. The cause of Bowie’s unguarded few minutes is a recorded personal message from Scott Walker which leaves Bowie speechless before he admits: “You really got me there, I’m afraid…He’s probably been my idol since I was a kid. That’s very moving.” You can hear it for yourself on the internet.

The closing chapters cover Bowie’s extraordinary return to the limelight that was the January 2013 release Where Are We Now with its remarkable and somewhat unsettling video, the subsequent album The Next Day, the opening of the David Bowie Is exhibition at London’s V&A Museum and the theatre musical show Lazarus (premiered in 2015) written with Enda Walsh and directed by Ivan van Hove. The song Lazarus from the show features on Bowie’s final album Blackstar (2016) and was to be the last Bowie single released during his lifetime. The astonishing video made for the track was released on 7 January 2016, three days before Bowie’s death.

Blackstar is the culmination of opinions about Bowie’s albums converging back into universal acclaim. It is unquestionably a masterpiece and all the more incredible knowing the circumstances in which it was made.

Larman acknowledges in a final Bonus Track postscript that he did not have access to the Bowie archive at the David Bowie Centre at the new V&A Storehouse East in east London which opened in September 2025 whilst writing the book. One can only imagine what difference it might have made. Nonetheless, his book is a welcome and original contribution to a less explored period in Bowie’s career and its significance.

John Earls is Director of Research at Unite the Union and posts at @johnearls.bsky.socialon Bluesky and @john_earls on X. You can subscribe (free) to his Hanging Out a Window Substack column here: https://johnearls.substack.com/

Published post no.2,800 – Monday 16 February 2026

On Paper – People Always Surprise You: Intriguing Tales of Fact and Fiction by Victor S Jones

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People Always Surprise You: Intriguing Tales of Fact & Fiction
by Victor S. Jones
Vanguard Press [80pp, softback, illustrated, ISBN 978-1-83671-183-4, £6.99]

by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Victor Jones here publishes his first book, a collection of short stories whose compactness belie the depth of their observations on and insights into what might reasonably be termed the ‘human condition’, informed by an outlook such as never becomes cynical or negatory.

What are the stories like?

Having worked as advertising copywriter then manager of his own business, Jones is well placed to explore the myriad nooks and crannies of everyday existence that, in reality, are anything but normal – a loaded adjective if ever there was one. The eight stories contained herein underline this tenet to varying degrees, with a common factor being that moment of epiphany which comes about through even the most mundane of circumstances. Several of these stories might well be considered as moralities for what is a decidedly post-moral era.

The shortest if certainly not the lightest of these stories, All that glitters… is an instance of flash fiction at its acutest in that revelation such as emanates from above rather than below. With its scenario of spiritual riches being played off – knowingly – against financial wealth, The Violin equates most directly to those Tales of the Unexpected with which Roald Dahl entertained and provoked earlier generations, notwithstanding the appreciable difference in Jones’s literary manner. Outwardly the most realistic story, A Night at the Opera relates an occasion that almost everyone finds themself in sooner or later. Its snatching hilarity out of the jaws of embarrassment is in pointed contrast with V1 & V2 Nazi Rockets, when Hitler’s weapons of mass destruction facilitated an existential circumstance pertinent to this author.

The longest and most descriptive among these stories, Back From the Dead centres on two children in the ‘Baltic Alps’ whose actions during one severe winter enshrine that fusion of innocence with experience so often envisaged but so rarely encountered. Something rather more humorous is conveyed by Chinese Meals, a situation-comedy where customs culinary and interpersonal are related with tangible authenticity. If hardly the deepest story, Concord is arguably the most subtly realized given its conflating historical overview with that ‘lived through’ immediacy as galvanizes a cautionary tale of technical triumph and human failure. Missing Peaks affords a more ironic perspective, its ‘get rich quick’ message now seeming   as typical of its time as almost any other and hence an ideal way to round off this collection.

Does it all work?

It does, not least for that skill and evident enjoyment with which Jones elides between fact and fiction across the course of what is an expertly crafted while always arresting sequence. Throughout, he evinces an eye for detail and an ear for nuance which are hallmarks of any worthwhile short stories, so making them seem anything but literary exercises. More than that, however, these stories merge into a cohesive and enlightening composite – but whether of the author himself or of an imagined ‘everyman’ needs be left for each reader to decide.

Is it recommended?

It is. Stylishly presented with its scene-setting sketches (by the author?) as frontispiece to each story, this collection is short enough to be read at a single sitting if substantial enough for repeated readings. The follow-up volume is planned and should be worth waiting for.

Buy

Click here to explore purchase options from the author’s website

Published post no.2,790 – Friday 6 February 2026

On paper – John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs by Ian Leslie

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John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs
by Ian Leslie
Faber & Faber 2025 (hardback 432 pages, ISBN: 978-0571376117)

Reviewed by John Earls

To write a book about The Beatles these days must be something of a challenge. What’s left to say? Who are you saying it to? How can you make it original?

With John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs Ian Leslie has pulled it off with considerable aplomb. Looking at the relationship between John Lennon and Paul McCartney, The Beatles’ prolific and exceptional songwriters, and telling it through 43 songs (mostly Beatles but some solo songs too) he has produced a stand-out book that is both erudite and engaging.

There is no question that Leslie is a Beatles fan (he wrote the excellent 64 Reasons To Celebrate Paul McCartney in 2020) and this explains the warmth and affection that comes through. But this is no hagiography.

Leslie challenges the enduring perception of Lennon as the radical rock’n’roller activist wit and McCartney as the cute, charming balladeer and, whilst acknowledging that there is some truth in these personas, “you only have to change the angle of view by an inch or so to see them very differently”.

The main focus is the unique relationship between Lennon and McCartney and its twists and turns. This includes the almost telepathic connection as well as the junctures. There is also the quite literal physical closeness that existed between them at times and its importance in their creative process – I lost count of the number of times the phrase “eyeball to eyeball” appears.

The book charts the story of The Beatles from Lennon and McCartney’s first meeting as teenagers in July 1957, through the graft of the Hamburg residencies and The Cavern in Liverpool, to the stratospheric levels of popularity in the 1960s, the acrimonious split in the 1970s (this had its own ebbs and flows) and the pursuit of solo paths. Leslie is particularly insightful on The Beatles’ visit to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram in India in February 1968, not just in terms of what happened during the visit itself but also in respect of its subsequent repercussions.

But this is not only a great book about The Beatles and the group’s two key protagonists, it’s a great book about modern music and its development. For example, in the chapter on We Can Work It Out Leslie signals how the famous Abbey Road recording studios, like all the major recording studios at the time, “had been run like a factory, the aim being to maximise output, with producers, engineers and arrangers trained to work at speed. Studio time was booked in blocks of three hours, deemed enough time to record a single and its B-side. These strictures were now relaxed for the Beatles, who were allowed to use the studio as an R&D department rather than just a manufacturing facility”.

The 43 song chapters mean that the book is in easily digestible chunks but the chronology means that they flow smoothly and coherently. Some of the chapters go into the specific song in some detail including its construction, whilst in other chapters the song itself only gets a couple of paragraphs but provides a hook to give context to the developing story.

Leslie has a wonderful way with words. Take these descriptions of McCartney’s singing, be it with lyrics – “he rolls around in word-sounds like a cat in a pool of sunshine” or without – “[Paul] floats on a wordless falsetto, hovering like a thing with feathers”. His writing about particular songs can also be perceptive and moving. Two paragraphs on Hey Jude are a case in point. I won’t reproduce them here but you will find them on page 253.

John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs will inevitably send readers back to the music (all 43 songs are available on an excellent Spotify playlist here). This will entail not just going back to old favourites but also trips of rediscovery (almost literally in my case of Revolver’s psychedelic Tomorrow Never Knows).

This is a story about one of the most remarkable bands in modern music and the extraordinary, yet in other ways quite ordinary, people at its centre. And it is indeed also a story of love.

John Earls is Director of Research at Unite the Union. He tweets / updates his ‘X’ content at @john_earls

For more information on the book and to explore purchase options, visit the Faber website

On paper – The Durutti Column – A Life of Reilly by James Nice

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The Durutti Column – A Life of Reilly
by James Nice
Burning Shed 2024 (hardback 272 Pages, ISBN: 978-0993303647)

Reviewed by John Earls

The guitar playing of Vini Reilly has been described as understated (which is not to say that it is not hugely influential and affecting). One could say the same of the man himself. So, the arrival of this authorised biography of the musician and his band The Durutti Column is both timely and welcome.

Written by James Nice, author of Shadowplayers: The Rise and Fall of Factory Records, it is a well-researched and compelling account of the band and one of the most unique guitarists ever. It is particularly gripping if you are interested in the Manchester and Factory music scene in the 1980s.

The book is also beautifully produced and presented in hardback with quarter bound cloth spine reminiscent of much of Factory Records’ own output (however, it’s a shame there wasn’t a bit more diligent proof-reading).

It opens with Reilly’s early years growing up in Manchester, with him cocking an ear to his engineer Dad listening to jazz and classical music, tinkering on the piano and switching to guitar under the tutelage of Miriam ‘Mimi’ Fletcher, a German expatriate who escaped Nazi persecution before the war and was to become Reilly’s first significant creative mentor.

Already exposed to classical composers such as Tchaikovsky through his father’s musical listening, ‘Mimi’ broadened Reilly’s exposure to include others such as Bach and Bohuslav Martinů (who Reilly cites as a favourite). It is after discussing Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony that Reilly goes on to outline his own thoughts in respect of responses to music:

“For me there are three main responses to music: the physical response, which is the most basic, where you dance about to it; an intellectual response, where you listen to the construction, evolution and development of the piece; and third, and most important to me, the emotive response, and this really is the greatest expression of emotion anyone has ever managed to write”.

The music of Vini Reilly and The Durutti Column certainly hits those spots.

We then get taken through Reilly’s playing with punk band Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds, coming into contact with then local TV personality Tony Wilson, the formation of Durutti Column and the release of their first album The Return of the Durutti Column in 1980, also Factory Records’ debut album.

Needless to say the presence of Factory supremo and Durutti Column manager Wilson looms large. The, at times difficult, relationship between him and Reilly is revealingly and sensitively handled, sometimes movingly so with Reilly reporting “I owe him my career…I loved him, really. He was almost like a father figure to me. He was also really generous spirited”.

There are some great reminiscences. I particularly liked the story about former Chelsea and Everton winger Pat Nevin (who had a Durutti tune Shirt No.7 dedicated to him) and Reilly (apparently no mean footballer himself in his youth) visiting one Steven Patrick Morrissey of The Smiths and having a kick about in Morrissey’s back garden. Reilly played guitar (along with Stephen Street) on Morrissey’s first solo album Viva Hate and the book delves into its writing, recording and records the reflections of involved parties (not always harmonious).

As well as Reilly’s guitar playing, we are also reminded of his musical innovation, such as the use of sampling on the album Vini Reilly (1989) which preceded Moby’s Play (1999) of which Reilly is still scornful.

The concentration on the 1980s – nearly each year from 1979-1990 gets a dedicated chapter – is where the book goes deepest. There is a chapter on 1991-1999 (‘A Turbulent Decade’) and 2000+ (‘Requiem’, all of two pages). The final ‘Interlude’ (there are several interspersed between chapters) is 2009: ‘A Paean to Wilson’ featuring a 2010 interview by Wilson Neate.

The omission of the latter years which include the Chronicle album and performance, Chronicle XL and Reilly’s deteriorating health is noticeable and unexplained.  

Finally, the other significant and consistent presence in the book is Bruce Mitchell, stalwart Durutti Column drummer and latterly also Reilly’s manager and organiser.

Reilly has long been self-critical often openly so in the music press to the detriment of the albums he was supposed to be promoting. Mitchell comes across as not only a loyal friend (“the best friend I’ve ever had” says Reilly) and simpatico musical colleague, but one of Reilly’s best advocates:

‘Vini doesn’t really listen to his old stuff,’ jokes Bruce, making light of the maestro’s chronic and enduring lack of insight. I just wanted to say that I’m proud of them for him’.

Amen to that.

John Earls is Director of Research at Unite the Union. He tweets / updates his ‘X’ content at @john_earls

For more information on the book and to explore purchase options, visit the Burning Shed website

On paper – Composing Myself by Sir Andrzej Panufnik (Collected Writings, Volume One)

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Composing Myself
by Sir Andrzej Panufnik
(Collected Writings, Volume One)
Toccata Press [477pp, hardback, illustrated, ISBN 978-0-907689-90-4, £80]

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Press continues its estimable ‘Musicians on Music’ series with this New Edition of Composing Myself – the autobiography of Andrzej Panufnik, first published (by Methuen) in 1987, now reissued with many new annotations, photographs and an end-piece by his widow.

What’s the book like?

Panufnik’s life – taking in the unsettled formative period of his youth, traumatic years with Nazi then Soviet occupation of Warsaw and takeover by communist forces loyal to Moscow, then rigid Stalinization of Polish culture on Socialist Realist lines resulting in his defection to the UK – would make a compelling film, and it typifies this composer’s unwavering integrity he pointedly eschews sensationalism or false emotion in its relating. Moreover, such measured objectivity is enhanced by his tangible evoking of an era cruelly obliterated while resulting in the death of his brother and destruction of all his music. The era of his emergence as Poland’s leading composer and conductor, but also a pawn at the hands of his political ‘masters’, is no less absorbing. Panufnik’s subsequent life – his struggle for recognition in an adopted country where his music fell-foul of officialdom while finding favour with conductors such as Leopold Stokowski and Jascha Horenstein – runs parallel to his evolving a mature idiom and, with the support of his second wife Camilla Jessel, the creative renaissance of his last quarter-century.

Panufnik’s text, left unaltered from 36 years before, is rounded out with explanatory footnotes – by Toccata MD Martin Anderson and the composer’s widow – that fill in a background often unclear or conjectural when Poland was still under communist rule. Almost all his friends or colleagues from the pre-war era are accorded brief but pertinent biographies, but the absence of information about his first wife Marie Elizabeth O’Mahoney (Scarlett Panufnik) after the breakdown of their marriage and divorce in 1959 is surprising (she died in seeming obscurity in 1984). There is an effusive Preface by Simon Callow, contextual Editorial Introduction by Anderson and, most valuably, a Postscriptum by Lady Panufnik. This takes the narrative from 1987 with the composer working on his most ambitious work, the Ninth Symphony, through a further 14 years as saw further high-profile premieres and recordings of almost all his major works before his untimely death in 1991. A late addition details the crucial role of MI6 officer (later MP) Neil Marten in Paunfnik’s escaping Polish ‘minders’ while in Switzerland in 1954.

Is it worth reading?

Absolutely. Panufnik’s being a significant cultural figure as well as a major composer should commend this book to anyone at all interested in the history of post-war Europe. Along with almost all those previously reproduced, this new edition features a host of photos unknown or not available in 1987 and which complement the narrative unerringly. This book is otherwise produced to Toccata’s customary high standards, with an index of works and a general index. Specific information on each piece can be found at Panufnik’s dedicated website (see below).

Is it recommended?

Indeed. The book is Volume One of Panufnik’s collected writings, its successor intended to collate the composer’s articles on music and culture together with his numerous programme notes. Hopefully this can be published in time for the 35th anniversary of his death in 2026.

For more information on the book and to explore purchase options, visit the Toccata Classics website