Alan Clayson is a singer-songwriter, who was popular in the late 1970s as leader of Clayson and the Argonauts (who reformed in 2005). He is also a noted music biographer, journalist and solo entertainer.

Career

Clayson has written for a wide range of publications, including The Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

, Record Collector

Record Collector

Record Collector is the United Kingdom's longest-running monthly music magazine. It distributes both within the UK and worldwide. It started in 1979.-The early years:...

, Ink, Mojo

Mojo (magazine)

MOJO is a popular music magazine published initially by Emap, and since January 2008 by Bauer, monthly in the United Kingdom. Following the success of the magazine Q, publishers Emap were looking for a title which would cater for the burgeoning interest in classic rock music...

, Mediaeval World, Folk Roots, Guitar, Hello!

Hello!

Hello is a weekly magazine specializing in celebrity news and human-interest stories, published in the United Kingdom since 1988. Hello is sister magazine to ¡Hola!, the Spanish weekly magazine launched in Spain in 1944...

, Drummer, Rock 'N' Reel, The Sunday Times

The Sunday Times

The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...

, Rhythm, The Independent

The Independent

The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...

, Daily Telegraph, Ugly Things

Ugly Things

Ugly Things is a music magazine established in 1983, based in La Mesa, CA. Editor is Mike Stax, born 1962, England. It covers mainly 1960s Beat, Garage rock, and Psychedelic music...

and, as a teenager

Adolescence

Adolescence is a transitional stage of physical and mental human development generally occurring between puberty and legal adulthood , but largely characterized as beginning and ending with the teenage stage...

, the Schoolkids 0z. He has also scripted and appeared as a commentator on various radio and television broadcast

Broadcast

Broadcast or Broadcasting may refer to:* Broadcasting, the transmission of audio and video signals* Broadcast, an individual television program or radio program* Broadcast , an English electronic music band...

s.

Clayson's compositions have been recorded by many musicians, including Dave Berry

Dave Berry (musician)

Not to be confused with English 1960s singer Mike Berry.Dave Berry is a British pop singer and former teen idol of the 1960s...

 (in whose backing group Clayson played keyboards

Keyboard instrument

A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...

 in the mid 1980s), Stairway

Stairway (band)

Stairway was an English New Age band in the late 1980s.-History:In 1986, after the Yardbirds' reunion project, Box of Frogs, drummer-composer Jim McCarty and guitarist-bassist Louis Cennamo decided to regroup to create music of a healing nature...

, Jane Relf, The Electronic Males and Joy Tobing, winner of Indonesian Idol

Indonesian Idol

Indonesian Idol is a reality television singing competition created by Simon Fuller and produced by FremantleMedia Asia, which began airing on RCTI on March 2004. Part of the Idol franchise, it was as a spin-off from the UK show Pop Idol...

. He has also worked with the Portsmouth Sinfonia

Portsmouth Sinfonia

The Portsmouth Sinfonia was an orchestra founded by a group of students at the Portsmouth School of Art in Portsmouth, England, in 1970. The Sinfonia had an unusual entrance requirement, in that players had to either be non-musicians, or if a musician, play an instrument that was entirely new to...

, Wreckless Eric

Wreckless Eric

Wreckless Eric is an English rock and roll/new wave singer-songwriter, best known for his 1977 single " Whole Wide World" on Stiff Records. More than two decades after its release, the song was included in Mojo magazine’s list of the best punk rock singles of all time...

, Twinkle

Twinkle (singer)

Twinkle is an English singer-songwriter, primarily in the 1960s. Twinkle's most famous songs were "Terry" and "Golden Lights".-Career:...

, The Yardbirds

The Yardbirds

- Current :* Chris Dreja - rhythm guitar, backing vocals * Jim McCarty - drums, backing vocals * Ben King - lead guitar * David Smale - bass, backing vocals...

, The Pretty Things

The Pretty Things

The Pretty Things are an English rock and roll band from London, who originally formed in 1963. They took their name from Bo Diddley's 1955 song "Pretty Thing" and, in their early days, were dubbed by the British press the "uglier cousins of the Rolling Stones". Their most commercially successful...

, Mungo Jerry and Screaming Lord Sutch

Screaming Lord Sutch

David Edward Sutch , also known as "Screaming Lord Sutch, 3rd Earl of Harrow", or simply "Screaming Lord Sutch", was a musician from the United Kingdom...

 among others.

Now best known as a pop

Pop music

Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...

 historian

Historian

A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

, Clayson has written around thirty books. Best sellers include Backbeat (Number 13 in Sunday Times list {18 April 1994}, Number six in Sunday Telegraph paperback list {8 May 1994}), subsequently made into a major film; Beat Merchants (Number nine in Mojo chart, December 1996), and an authorised biography of The Yardbirds (Number One in Mojo chart, December 2002). Among other subjects of Clayson's work are Edgard Varèse

Edgard Varèse

Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse, , whose name was also spelled Edgar Varèse , was an innovative French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States....

, Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin were an English rock band, active in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Formed in 1968, they consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham...

, Jacques Brel

Jacques Brel

Jacques Brel was a Belgian singer-songwriter who composed and performed literate, thoughtful, and theatrical songs that generated a large, devoted following in France initially, and later throughout the world. He was widely considered a master of the modern chanson...

, Serge Gainsbourg, individual members of The Beatles

The Beatles

The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...

 (later published as a four-book box-set), Mick Jagger

Mick Jagger

Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....

, Brian Jones

Brian Jones

Lewis Brian Hopkins Jones , known as Brian Jones, was an English musician and a founding member of the Rolling Stones....

, Charlie Watts

Charlie Watts

Charles Robert "Charlie" Watts is an English drummer, best known as a member of The Rolling Stones. He is also the leader of a jazz band, a record producer, commercial artist, and horse breeder.-Early life:...

, Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono

is a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...

, Keith Richards

Keith Richards

Keith Richards is an English musician, songwriter, and founding member of the Rolling Stones. Rolling Stone magazine said Richards had created "rock's greatest single body of riffs", and placed him as the "10th greatest guitarist of all time." Fourteen songs written by Richards and songwriting...

and death discs (focus of a BBC Radio Two programme, scripted and presented by the author, 19 November 1996).

External links

• Official website