I’d kept in touch with Neat Records off-and-on, and had submitted a suggestion to issue all the label’s singles on three CDs, complete with track listings and booklet notes. My idea didn’t get very far, but when the Neat back catalogue was bought up by Sanctuary Records the Special Markets team came across this proposal and got in touch. As a result, I began at first just writing CD re-issue booklet notes and then got more involved in compiling the CDs themselves. At this point I realised how much I’d missed writing about metal.
I started writing my first book ‘Suzie Smiled… The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal’ in August 2003; this was published by Independent Music Press in June 2006. During downtime waiting for comments on the manuscript, I contacted Bruce Mee at Fireworks (the UK’s foremost melodic rock magazine) and began contributing occasional articles, just to keep my hand in. Work on my second book, a collaboration with Saxon’s Biff Byford entitled ‘Never Surrender (Or Nearly Good Looking) –An Autobiography by Biff Byford And John Tucker’ commenced in January 2006.
In the middle of all of this, sometime in 2005 I joined up with the ProgPower UK team to help out with some press and public relations support, in particular interviewing all the bands and writing the event programme. “Even the programme is superior to the shoddy ‘press release and big pix’ approach taken by some festivals, being a glossy 48-page magazine for which Bristol-based music journalist John Tucker has interviewed all the bands,” noted ‘Venue’ magazine in March 2006 (or as one enthusiastic punter put it, “a proper old-school programme like you used to get in the Eighties!”).
I started writing my first book ‘Suzie Smiled… The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal’ in August 2003; this was published by Independent Music Press in June 2006. During downtime waiting for comments on the manuscript, I contacted Bruce Mee at Fireworks (the UK’s foremost melodic rock magazine) and began contributing occasional articles, just to keep my hand in. Work on my second book, a collaboration with Saxon’s Biff Byford entitled ‘Never Surrender (Or Nearly Good Looking) –An Autobiography by Biff Byford And John Tucker’ commenced in January 2006.
In the middle of all of this, sometime in 2005 I joined up with the ProgPower UK team to help out with some press and public relations support, in particular interviewing all the bands and writing the event programme. “Even the programme is superior to the shoddy ‘press release and big pix’ approach taken by some festivals, being a glossy 48-page magazine for which Bristol-based music journalist John Tucker has interviewed all the bands,” noted ‘Venue’ magazine in March 2006 (or as one enthusiastic punter put it, “a proper old-school programme like you used to get in the Eighties!”).