In My Life

From the moment a young Alan Johnson first twanged the strings of his plastic ‘Tommy Steele’ guitar, he was determined to become a rock star.

Alan’s life has always been lived to a musical soundtrack. His earliest memories of the bleak, post-war, pre-rock ’n’ roll west London landscape into which he was born are suffused with the melodies that wafted from the rented Bakelite wireless in the slum where he lived with his frail mother and dauntless sister. His love affair with pop music blossomed alongside the music itself, which exploded into being in the mid-1950s and came to embody the iconoclastic spirit of a new era.

In this memoir, Alan looks back at his pursuit of rock stardom, and his parallel life as a supermarket worker, postman, union official and father of three, through the music that accompanied it – on vinyl, cassette tape or blasting from the stages of the Marquee club in Soho or the Wimbledon Palais; the sounds of Chuck Berry and Lonnie Donegan, of the Yardbirds and Dylan, of Bowie, Elvis Costello and Springsteen . . . not forgetting the Beatles, the band he has worshipped since 1963.

In My Life recalls with affection a vanished world of Dansettes, dancehalls and smoky pubs, Flower Power and platform shoes. Honest, poignant and very funny, it is more than just a nostalgic celebration of music: it offers a new perspective on the singular life of Alan Johnson the man.