80@80 (Spencer Leigh autobiography)

 

 

I have just finished reading Spencer Leigh's autobiography 80@80: A Liverpool Life in 80 Chapters, which was published in February last year, and can warmly recommend it. As the title suggests it has eighty chapters to tie in with its venerable author reaching the milestone of his eightieth year, despite the still-boyish features displayed on the cover. (How does he do it?)

A thoroughly enjoyable read from start to finish for the musically inclined, it covers a wide range of genres, as you'd expect from his show On the Beat, a former fixture on Radio Merseyside, but there is much else besides. I didn't realise, for instance, that broadcasting and writing about music had been, in effect, merely a hobby for him until the mid-1990s and that for over thirty years he had a day job as an actuary - and appears to have been efficient and well-respected in that entirely different field too.

 Personal chapters entitled "A Day in the Life" alternate in the book with those more focussed on music, though the distinction isn't a hard and fast one, as music is bound up with so much of his life anyway. The memoir draws on material in his many existing books, taking to heart the advice of his friend, Beatles press officer Tony Barrow, "Rework your catalogue", but the chapters about his day job and his schooldays also have considerable interest because of his knack for selecting the telling detail.

No Off Switch: of Andy Kershaw and others

 I was sorry to hear of Andy Kershaw's death.  As he presented programmes on BBC Radios 1, 3 and 4 there will almost certainly be a tribute to him on one station or another in the coming days but in the meantime I can recommend his very entertaining, full-throttle autobiography, aptly entitled No Off Switch. 

 It's mentioned in the piece below, reposted from 2012, about Music in the Air, a radio documentary series about the history of music radio, presented by Paul Gambaccini: 

 

 Turn on, tune in, tape dropout ...  

 

There have been various programmes on the radio to commemorate the fact that it's now ninety years since the BBC started broadcasting. This post isn't going to be a digest of them all but one series, Music in the Air, might be of particular interest to readers of this blog. It's a comprehensive history of radio in the US and UK, presented by the Beeb's American import Paul Gambaccini (above); you can find available episodes here and listen to them via BBC iPlayer. [see note at end]

Episode Two, The Moondog Years, presumably concentrates on Alan Freed. It won't be available on iPlayer until after its transmission next Tuesday night, but I have heard Episode One, which takes us from the medium's very beginnings, with lots of archive audio, though the very first radio broadcast didn't survive and it seems we have to take the broadcaster's word that it actually happened. (Only a friend was listening, apparently.)

There's a bit of personal Gambaccini reminiscence thrown in at the beginning of the first programme - the shock of hearing his father swear and rush to turn the set off as rock'n'roll began blasting out, which had the unintended effect of causing the young Gambo to cleave unto the music ever after - but after that it's a more general account which could have been presented equally well by any number of people, so Episode Two, whose title promises a greater emphasis on rock'n'roll and the beginnings of modern disc jockeying, will probably be more interesting. And perhaps in a later episode there will be some insights into the Radio 1 environment which Gambaccini entered.