Books by Ian Whitcomb

Ian Whitcomb, One Hit Wonder British Invader of the 1960s and teen heart-throb, never went home. Instead he tried to settle down in Los Angeles County where, over the years, he produced a Grammy-winning CD, wrote songs for movies, auditioned for butler roles in TV commercials, had and lost dogs, married successfully, and continued to play his ukulele as the ship went down. Now the entire soap opera (1996--2008), roped together in hard copy with appropriate photos, can be relished as a roller coaster of self-pity, vaunting and failed ambition, jealousy, bathos and pathos, culminating in a Big Dream. In other words, this is a comedy book. Mainline Show Biz may have passed Whitcomb by but here in these precious pages he creates his own world of heroes and villains with himself as King in order to get sweet revenge through the twisted lingo of his India rubber sword.

First published in 1972, Ian Whitcomb's After the Ball is an exuberant account of the origins and explosion of popular music, informed by the author's store of experience in the field as a pop sensation of The Sixties.'Brash, learned, funny and perspicacious.... The author of this free-wheeling, diverting history was a student at Trinity College, Dublin, when he created a rock hit 'You Turn Me On,' and experienced a brief, bewildering season as a touring rock celebrity. This book... is his effort to explain that experience to himself, and, well-educated man that he is, he goes all the way back to the first pop bestseller (in sheet music, of course), 'After The Ball,' and all the way forward to the 1960s.' New Yorker 'One of the best books on popular music to come along in the last few years.... Whitcomb's own involvement with music constantly surfaces to make the book both revealing and highly enjoyable.' Seattle Times