I once found myself in Dolly Parton’s dressing-room. It was in 1976, at Mervyn Conn’s annual Country Music Festival and during our interview one of her entourage brought in a man whose entire back was covered by a tattoo of her head. He wanted her to autograph the tiny unoccupied space above his buttocks so that he could have that autographed too.

He introduced himself only as ‘Butch.’

‘OK, Bootch,’ said the Queen of Country with her unfailing good humour. ‘Show me your body.’

He took off his shirt, pulled his trouser-waistband down to builder-level and the autograph was duly executed.

‘What an amazing tattoo,’ I said to him. ‘How long did it take?’

‘Seventy-two hours,’ he said proudly.

‘And was it very expensive?’

‘Yeah – almost thirty quid.’

My favourite Dolly quote was a reference to her impoverished Tennessee childhood and how it stayed with her, for all her wealth and celebrity:

‘Sometimes you just wanna pee off a porch.’

Share

Today, a member exclusive: an extract from Mr Moonlight, as serialised in Rolling Stone Magazine.

If you missed it, you can also listen to me speaking live to Tim Haigh at the Mr Moonlight launch event here.

And, if you’re inclined, buy the book here.

Read more

In an addendum to my last post, I will be launching Mr Moonlight this Wednesday evening (i.e. tomorrow!) from 6.30pm at the Owl Bookshop in Kentish Town, London.

There are a few tickets left, which you can book via this link (or by clicking on the image above).

For anyone based locally, it would be lovely to see you there!

All the best,

Philip

Read more

I hope you’ll forgive my recent neglect of Read Me Do: I’ve been seeing my new biography of Brian Epstein, Mr Moonlight, through to publication. It’s published in the US by De Capo Press (16 June) in the UK by Simon & Schuster (18 June) and you can pre-order it here.

In the meantime, here’s a sneak preview…

Read more

My first step to getting onto the Northern Echo was getting into the Northern Echo. Since I had no idea whether Harry Evans had noticed any of the stuff I was turning out in such quantity for its sister paper, the Northern Despatch, I’d have to write something on spec’ for the Echo, aimed at catching his eye.

This meant …

Read more

After the well-appointed Cambridge News, the Northern Despatch’s reporters’ room came as a severe shock with its undersized desks, ramshackle typewriters and huge grubby white plastic tub full of used carbon-paper. So much so that on my very first morning - much to my new colleagues’ amusement – I bought the latest World’s Press News and started looking…

Read more

Early one evening in 1963 as I lay in the bath, my transistor radio played an odd new pop single whose bleating harmonica, stop-start beat and rather droney vocal duet seemed to hover on the edge of comedy.

Back then, the BBC didn’t yet have anything so vulgar as deejays, only the same middle-aged announcers who read th…

Read more

Early in 1963, my father finally managed to get off the end of Ryde Pier, selling the remainder of his lease with British Railways’ Southern Region to a businessman from the mainland. I met the Pier Pavilion’s new showman only once and didn’t catch his name; my impression was of lank black hair, a loud checked jacket …

Read more

Gerald Davison, now beyond any doubt my mother’s boyfriend, differed greatly from the usual concept of a farmer, being tall and distinguished-looking with an aquiline profile and an upper-class accent. When they’d first met, she was 43 to his 33, but in the late 50s such age-differences were much less n…

Read more

I served my journalistic apprenticeship in the ancient county town of Huntingdon – best known for its connections with Oliver Cromwell – mostly in a state of yearning hopelessness, totally believing what that nice young Methodist minister had told me about never getting to Fleet Street without a university degree.

Paralysing boredom, too,…

Read more

5 Castle Street had been my escape from boarding at Ryde School, which I’d been doing since my parents’ break-up with the hopelessness of a convict on Devil’s Island. At the time, all that had mattered was no longer being cold and hungry, beaten on any and every pretext and und…

Read more

It describes my unpromising start as a trainee journalist which, against all the odds, would lead to a dream job on The Sunday Times Magazine — then at the peak of its glamour and affluence in the Swinging Sixties — and interviewi…

Read more

What was it about male pop acts containing two brothers like Oasis that made them so peculiarly toxic while those with more – like the Beach Boys’ three or the Osmonds’ five – managed to function quite peaceably?

Such conflicts usually dated back to the nursery, where one brother felt he’d received fewer toys or sweets th…

Read more

I hope you kind subscribers won’t mind acting as a sounding-board for my next book — a survey of the misbehaviour and monstrous egotism of old-school rock stars, epitomised by the ludicrous demands, or ‘riders’ in their performance contracts. And even some of the newer ones in the school are carrying on the tradition.…

Read more

With Brian Wilson’s death we have lost the only musical genius ever to match – sometimes even surpass – Lennon and McCartney’s. Though Brian’s genius was all about sculpting in sound and the sweet permutations of his voice with those of his younger brothers, Carl and Dennis.

No superstar was ever more troubled yet, again…

Read more

If Elvis Presley was the King of rock ‘n’ roll, Buddy Holly was its greatest ambassador. One made a generation of British boys fall in love with rock, the other showed them how to play it for themselves.

Holly’s songs, like ‘That’ll Be The Day’, ‘Oh Boy’ and ‘Peggy Sue’, are timeless classics, as fre…

Read more

Having to write a book is bad enough but, for me, finishing one is far worse.

My new biography of Brian Epstein, the man who discovered the Beatles – the reason I’ve neglected all you kind people who subscribe to Read Me Do – went off to its various publishers this week.

It took only just over a year to write compared wi…

Read more

As doctors have to listen to gruesome descriptions of ailments, so I’m likely to be cornered by some Beatlemaniac (invariably male)* eager to discuss whether Paul’s Blackbird really was a protest against racism or recall exactly where he was and what he was doing when he heard about John’s assassination.

*in contrast to readers of Read Me Do, who all are sensible, logical Beatles connoisseurs.

Being the biographer not only of the Beatles as a band but John, Paul and George individually, I’ve had to get used to my often revelatory material being ‘borrowed’ – to put it no stronger – by film - and documentary-makers. One can’t copyright non-fiction in the same way as fiction, so there’s nothing I can do.

It was therefore with resignation that I learned of Sam Mendes’s four Beatle biopics, one devoted to each of them, to be released simultaneously in 2028.

Knight of the realm Mendes is an Oscar-winning director, rightly praised for two Bond films and 1917. Unfortunately, there’s something that happens to even the greatest directors when they choose the Beatles as a subject.

Read more

The life of a musical superstar has never been a passport to longevity. But for Eric Clapton to have made it to 80 seems little short of miraculous.

In Clapton’s 60-year career as undisputedly the greatest British rock guitarist ever to wield a plectrum, he’s survived the double whammy of heroin-addiction and alcoholis…

Read more

In 40-plus years of writing about music megastars, from the godfather of soul James Brown to the grandfather of pop Rod Stewart, I’ve snorted cocaine only once. It was in a Chelsea flat one rainy evening in 1981, at the insistence of Marianne Faithfull.

Subscribe now

Her days in the pop charts far behind her, Marianne was living with a punk m…

Read more