Johnny Rogan

Johnny Rogan is an author of Irish descent best known for his books about music and popular culture. He has written influential biographies of the Byrds, Neil Young, the Smiths, Van Morrison and Ray Davies. His writing is characterised by "an almost neurotic attention to detail", epic length (the first volume of Requiem for the Timeless is more than 1,200 pages long) and a curiously ambivalent, sometimes positive/sometimes hostile response from the subjects of his biographies.

Rogan's first publications were in the late 70s with writings on West Coast American music. Rogan spent his early childhood in the Pimlico area of London. His parents emigrated to London from Waterford (Ireland) in the 1930s. He is a cousin of the actor John Rogan. Rogan's adolescence during the 'Swinging 60s' was vividly captured in the chapter 'The Ghost of Electricity' from his book 'Timeless Flight Revisited'. There was no mention at all of his tragic family history which included his father (fatal heart attack, late 50s), brother (drowned), sister (fatal brain haemorrhage) and mother (emaciation), among other fatalities.

Rogan attended St Vincents, RC, and Pimlico School and spent the entire 70s as a student, obtaining his first degree in English Language & Literature at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, after which he completed an MA at Acadia University in Canada, specialising in Spenser's The Faerie Queene. This was followed by postgraduate study at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

His first book Timeless Flight, an acclaimed biography of The Byrds was published when he was still a student at Oxford's Lady Margaret Hall. This work was subsequently rewritten as the 700-page plus volume, 'Timeless Flight Revisited'. The work won considerable acclaim, including biography of the year in 'Record Collector', in which it was described as "One of the best biographies ever written...Expansive enough to rival War And Peace, Johnny Rogan's definitive Byrds biography comes close to matching the emotional, if not geographical, range of Tolstoy's epic novel. One of the achievements of Timeless Flight Revisited is the way in which it matches its narrative flair with the incisiveness of its critical comment... But it's the narrative drive that makes the book so extraordinary. With its detailed research and fascinating interview material, Timeless Flight Revisited is a compelling portrait of collective turmoil, peopled by characters who win our sympathy at the same time as they earn our disbelief." Similar accolades were forthcoming from Billboard, Time Out and Q Magazine ("This is, at least, the best biography of a group ever written"). Unusually, the book has been revised extensively in every decade since its original appearance.

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