Contains poignantly rendered family tragedies, told with warm humour and without self-pity... As well as showing a life saved and made by rock'n'roll, it illustrates someone almost effortlessly negotiating the rapids of success and stardom, armed only with street smarts and laconic Manc wit... A must for Joy Division and New Order fans'

A fascinating memoir...The book is filled with memories of every kind

A tremendous account

If you’ve been enjoying David Bowie’s comeback, you’ll relish Simon Goddard’s offbeat paean of man-love to his earlier incarnation. Goddard offers a thrillingly unusual slant on how Ziggy Stardust…came into being

A great deal of research has gone into Ziggyology… Ziggy becomes a forcefield of fabulation, an imaginative cartography through and to whom all manner of ley lines pass…ingeniously and entertainingly (rendered)

I heartily recommend Ziggyology, not just to those fans of Bowie and Ziggy, but to anyone with an interest in the popular culture of the last hundred years or so, to anyone with a passing interest in the world around us, and all beautifully written by a fine writer who displays a great gift of passing on his enthusiasm to the reader.

Something close to rock’s Joan Didion

Self-aware, deferential and modest

Scholars of rock and roll still revere him for Awopbopaloobop, a passionate argument for the primacy of the three-minute pop song...A book ostensibly about popular music, but really about youth, innocence and rebellion

The Hollywood Brats are the greatest band I’ve ever seen

Britain’s great lost punk band

So colourful, so comical, so damn bitchy... hilarious

Matheson writes with the jagged verve he once sought from his band.

Biographical subject and author have found their perfect match.

One Man Band rumbles along… Welles in his middle years is a more engaging prospect than most artists at a similar point. He has been lucky to have Callow as a biographer, balancing warmth with skepticism, fondness with reproof.

This richly detailed and revelatory biography presents the most frank and intimate portrait yet of Ray Davies

Rogan does an excellent job of trying to work out what makes The Kinks’ enigmatic frontman tick whilst charting the tumultuous career of a band whose idiosyncratic but brilliant hits are currently enjoying a renaissance

This book is a good, solid, factually based read throughout… I imagine nearing six decades of recording history to be squeezed into one book is a task beyond the scope of a lot of authors, but this has been done rather well by Johnny Rogan… Excellent and complex.

An engaging and very accessible history book about our modern artistic achievements that, provocatively, also debunks some of the very icons it praises.