Happy Trails: Andrew Lauder's Charmed Life and High Times in the Record Business by Andrew Lauder and Mick Houghton (author signed book plates)

from Heavenly Recordings

Book/Magazine

Happy Trails: Andrew Lauder's Charmed Life and High Times in the Record Business by Andrew Lauder and Mick Houghton (author signed book plates) main photo

*BOOKS CANNOT BE SHIPPED WITH RECORDS. ORDERS MUST BE MADE SEPARATELY.*

COMES WITH MICK & ANDREW SIGNED BOOK PLATES

The demented story of one of the most influential British A&R men from the Bonzo Dog Dooh Dah Band (1968) to the Stone Roses (1989)

Andrew Lauder is one of British record business's most significant and highly influential figures but outside the music industry few people will probably know his name. He's always retained a fan's perspective which, combined with an exceptional knowledge of music, meant he was at ease around musicians and never happier than spending time with them. During the later '60s and throughout the '70s in particular (working at the legendary United Artists), he had a knack of being one step ahead of the next trend. In hindsight it's easy to identify the changing eras in music but underground music, pub rock and punk in Britain, for example, evolved quite seamlessly and it was visionaries like Andrew who, instinctively, saw what was coming and helped bring about those transitions. He was ahead of the game in other ways too; pioneering a more creative way of marketing and promoting records and revolutionising the way catalogue was organised and presented. This is his story.

Mick Houghton first met Andrew in 1970 and has worked with him on and off down the years. He holds Andrew responsible for inspiring him to get a job in music which began as a journalist in 1974. He became known for setting up Brassneck Publicity in 1980, one of the most successful independent PR companies over the next 30 years. Since 2010 he has written three books, all highly acclaimed: Becoming Elektra: The True Story of Jac Holzman's Visionary Record Label, I've Always Kept A Unicorn: The Biography of Sandy Denny, and Fried & Justified, focussing on his own career in the music business.

From the foreword, by Richard Williams:

Mostly it was only people within the industry who knew of the part he played in bringing a succession of important artists to public attention. The British bands in his debt included the Groundhogs, Brinsley Schwarz, Hawkwind, Dr Feelgood, the Stranglers, the Buzzcocks and the Stone Roses. His love of the blues and American roots music lay behind his enthusiasm for Canned Heat, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Captain Beefheart in their early days, at a time when he was reaching a position to get their music heard more widely, and later enabled him to give new life to the careers of John Lee Hooker, J. J. Cale and John Hiatt.

He was also responsible for bringing the music of the first generation of important German rock bands to the attention of British audiences, at a time when the idea of an important German rock band would have seemed to most people like a contradiction in terms and to promote them invited ridicule: the enormously influential Can, in particular, along with their contemporaries Amon Duul II and Nektar.