Friday 22 July 2011

Don Partridge and Company... the book is about to be published!

At last! We made it! Welcome to the 'Don Partridge and Company' blog. Launched to publicise the forthcoming book written by Don Partridge, Pat Keane and Rod Warner: three interlocking narratives that start in 1960's Paris, move to London and Don's elevation to pop stardom culminating with the triumphant Busker's Concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London in 1969 that Don put on with the help of his manager Don Paul and Max Clifford. With some aftermath/further escapades ranging from the UK to Europe to Canada and back... 

Unfortunately Don died last year – but the material I recorded during our interviews was just enough to go ahead with the project...

… which started many years ago, when I repeatedly asked Don if he was interested in writing his biography. To which he always replied: no. Until 2008, when he was in Loughborough to do a gig and we discussed it again. This time, he agreed – if we did it together and I added my story to his. Given that he was the more famous, I was not that keen at first until he convinced me that it could work. So we planned on writing this book – then Pat Keene came on board, after a conversation with Don in which it emerged that Pat still had all the negatives to photos he had taken in London in the late sixties, of buskers, young and old, on the streets plus a series of shots taken at the Albert Hall Concert. Don's wife Pam unfortunately died in 2009 which understandably delayed the project. I persevered with recording Don's reminiscences and editing them until we were hit by the shock of his death last year. A while later I went over the last recordings I had made a few weeks before his death and realised that we probably had enough to go with. I had also been trying to find a publisher – to no avail. Some interest was expressed but the economic climate was against anyone taking a risk on the far-out reminiscences of ageing bohemians or the unique photographs that went with the stories. So we decided to publish via my internet outlet Rawmusics on Lulu.Com – good quality paperbacks on demand plus the option of digital downloads. The project is about to be launched – with the first week in September 2011 as the planned date. Watch this space, as they say... When the book is published I will upload the link...

No comments:

Post a Comment