Musopedia

 I only just heard from my chum Chris Charlesworth that our mutual and dearest chum Johnny Rogan has died following a suspected heart attack. Johnny had been a significant person in my life for 46 years. We met when we both were contributors to the excellent music magazine Dark Star . Here we could all share our left-field music interests -- a lot of Airplane, a lot of Spirit and a lot of Byrds. A couple of years later when Johnny and I had built a friendship, we shook hands on a book deal. I ran a small publishing company and had previously published a Bob Dylan book. The imprint was Scorpion/Dark Star and we paid Johnny an advance of £200. He wanted cash as he did not have a bank account, and he said that this £200 would financially see him through the entire year he would take to complete the book. During the writing he would come to our office in Stratford, London and use our phone as he could not afford to call the USA. From our office at cheap rate in the evening he would cal...