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I Was There: Dispatches from a Life in Rock and Roll By Alan Edwards (Paperback)

*Out now in paperback*

Alan Edwards is the godfather of modern music PR, whose stellar list of clients has ranged over the years from David Bowie to Amy Winehouse via the Rolling Stones, Blondie, Prince and the Spice Girls and, outside of music, David Beckham and Naomi Campbell – now he tells his story.

‘A jaw-dropping memoir.’ – The Times

 'An absorbing read . . . Raw, warm and packed with incident' – The Observer

 ‘[a] hugely entertaining memoir’ – The Independent

 ‘Gossipy, insightful and a whole lot of fun.’ – The Telegraph

 ‘Deliciously candid…[an] extraordinary new memoir’ – The Express

 ‘If Edwards played at Glastonbury, he’d be in the Sunday afternoon ‘legends slot’’ - Number 1 Entertainment PR in the ‘UK Power Book 2024’, PR Week

I Was There:

Dispatches from a Life in Rock and Roll

By Alan Edwards

Simon & Schuster / PB / 15 February 2025 / £9.99

I Was There traces Edwards’ career from the thriving punk scene of ’70s London, which inspired him to set up his own PR company, through his work with acts such as Blondie and the Rolling Stones, his collaboration with David Bowie over nearly four decades, his move into the pop world with the Spice Girls, and beyond.

Along the way, we’re treated to all the entertaining tales of debauchery and rock-star antics you might expect, but more uniquely we’re privy to Edwards’ fascinating observations about the brilliant artists he has worked with, and what makes them tick. We also get a front-row seat to the rise of PR as a major force in British society, from the seven-figure media deal Edwards brokered for the Beckhams’ wedding, to the role of spin in the New Labour government.

Even as Edwards grows into the consummate PR, playing a crucial background role in the lives and careers of some of the world’s biggest stars, he retains a powerful sense of being an outsider – never forgetting how lucky he is to look back on decades of music and culture and say, ‘I was there’.

Feature ideas and talking points:

  • Entertainment PR in the beginning - a cottage industry that used Hollywood publicists as a blueprint

  • The British media then, now and the future

  • On the road with celebrities – being mentored by Mick Jagger; touring the Sistine Chapel with David Bowie; playing football with Beckham; dealing with the Mob in the US; playing Russian roulette with a Hells Angel in Amsterdam; introducing Shakira to Tony Blair and chatting about Bowie with Bill Clinton

  • Working with some of the biggest black music legends of all time - Teddy Pendergrass, Luther Vandross, Janet and Michael Jackson and Prince - and racism in the media  

  • Involvement with reggae, and playing football with Bob Marley

  • The influence of Punk

  • Pioneering the worldwide stadium tour - how The Rolling Stones, and then Bowie, created a whole new industry

  • Finding a ‘family’ with the Spice Girls, and brokering the famous £1million OK deal for Posh and Becks’ wedding

Alan Edwards is the founder and CEO of public relations firm The Outside Organisation which has represented an eclectic range of clients including the biggest music stars on the planet, corporations and brands, government, royalty, celebrities, charities, events, sports legends and clubs.

Edwards’ 45 year career has seen him work with David Bowie (for nearly four decades), the Who, Victoria and David Beckham, Bon Jovi, Led Zeppelin, Amy Winehouse, Shakira, P Diddy, Britney Spears, Naomi Campbell, the Rolling Stones, Prince, Michael Jackson, Lin Manuel Miranda, Sir Paul McCartney and the Spice Girls, among many others.

Edwards was the third ever inductee to PR Week’s Hall of Fame in 2017, and as of March 2023 has been named the magazine’s number one entertainment PR for ten years running. He is a regular contributor to TV and radio, and has fronted programmes in the Music Moguls and Hits, Hype and Hustle series for the BBC.  In 2015 he staged his own show at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, called “Always Print the Myth: PR and the Modern Age”. Among the contributors were Bob Geldof and Alastair Campbell.

“At times in my career I’ve felt like a foreign correspondent, bag packed and always ready to fly off to the next conflict zone. I realised early on that I was a witness to rock and roll history – I was always writing notes on scraps of paper, airline tickets or the backs of my hands. But it was only years later, when I finally sat down to make sense of it all, that I realised I had wandered through some of the most incredible moments in the last half-century of culture.”
— Alan Edwards

‘A brilliant book by a brilliant man.’ - Dylan Jones

 ‘A beautiful, warm, jaw-dropping, once-in-a-lifetime, lifting-the-stone guide to a secret world…I loved it.’- Tony Parsons

 ‘Alan is a master of intrigue and suspense . . . An absorbing read’ - Hugh Cornwell

‘Frank, fascinating and funny.’ - John Niven

‘For anyone interested in the workings of the media and celebrity, from the 70s the present day, this book is a must read.’  -  Roger Daltrey

‘Far more than just another music book. It gives a real insight into media and PR, what really happens as opposed to what we may think happened!’ - Alastair Campbell

‘Alan Edwards [is] a wonderful storyteller!’ - Debbie Harry

‘An exhilarating account from the man who shaped modern music PR as we know it. Entertaining and educational in equal measure.’ - Yomi Adegoke

‘Alan Edwards is a class act: observant, attentive, always in the right place at the right time: I Was There tells you how.’ - Jon Savage

‘Thank you for the smiles, the laughs, the flood of memories… and the soul you put into I Was There.  I felt such warmth in your book.  The rush and challenges of working with your heroes is such a wonderful and sometimes heartbreaking roller-coaster.  You brought it all back to me in technicolour.’  – Cameron Crowe

‘A fascinating book… such interesting stories…If you love music you should definitely read this book…’ - Nihal, BBC Radio 5

‘a master of page-turning readability ... an insider's view of operating inside the world of David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, Paul McCartney and a gaggle of A+ listers' **** - Mojo

 ‘A giddy, gleeful ride through five decades of working with some of the biggest names on the planet.’ - The Sunday Post

 ‘PR guru Alan Edwards has myriad fascinating tales of an eventful life…[He] is a consummate storyteller with some insights into what makes rock stars tick.’ – The Ham & High 

‘fascinating… loaded with showbiz…strongly recommended… Fans of Bowie, Blondie, Prince and The Stones in particular won’t want to miss this for insight into what made those acts tick and how they relate to the media.’ – Louder Than War

For further information or to request an interview or event, please contact:

EMMA FINNIGAN PR

07870 210468 | emma@emmafinniganpr.co.uk | www.emmafinniganpr.co.uk

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I Was There: Dispatches from a Life in Rock and Roll By Alan Edwards

Alan Edwards is the godfather of modern music PR, whose stellar list of clients has ranged over the years from David Bowie to Amy Winehouse via the Rolling Stones, Blondie, Prince and the Spice Girls and, outside of music, David Beckham and Naomi Campbell – now he tells his story.

“Alan wasn’t just there, he was everywhere, as immersed in the world of rock as any of the bold-face names he represented. From glam to punk, from Bowie to Jagger, from small clubs and sweaty pubs to stadiums and enormodomes, Alan saw it all… and wrote it all down. A brilliant book by a brilliant man.”
— Dylan Jones
“A beautiful, warm, jaw-dropping, once-in-a-lifetime, lifting-the-stone guide to a secret world . . . Edwards is an endlessly charming and gently amused companion as he reveals the truth about that lost time when the music was an embarrassment of riches. I loved it. And if the music ever mattered a damn to you, then you will love it too”
— Tony Parsons

I Was There:

Dispatches from a Life in Rock and Roll

By Alan Edwards

Simon & Schuster / HB / 6 June 2024 / £25

I Was There traces Edwards’ career from the thriving punk scene of ’70s London, which inspired him to set up his own PR company, through his work with acts such as Blondie and the Rolling Stones, his collaboration with David Bowie over nearly four decades, his move into the pop world with the Spice Girls, and beyond.

Along the way, we’re treated to all the entertaining tales of debauchery and rock-star antics you might expect, but more uniquely we’re privy to Edwards’ fascinating observations about the brilliant artists he has worked with, and what makes them tick. We also get a front-row seat to the rise of PR as a major force in British society, from the seven-figure media deal Edwards brokered for the Beckhams’ wedding, to the role of spin in the New Labour government.

Even as Edwards grows into the consummate PR, playing a crucial background role in the lives and careers of some of the world’s biggest stars, he retains a powerful sense of being an outsider – never forgetting how lucky he is to look back on decades of music and culture and say, ‘I was there’.

Feature ideas and talking points:

  • The hippy trail - escaping from the suburbs and travelling the hippy trail age 16 years with no contacts, no mobile phone and barely any money and ending up with typhoid, dysentery and weighing under 7 stone

  • Entertainment PR in the beginning - a cottage industry that used Hollywood publicists as a blueprint

  • The British media then, now and the future

  • On the road with celebrities – being mentored by Mick Jagger; touring the Sistine Chapel with David Bowie; playing football with Beckham; dealing with the Mob in the US; playing Russian roulette with a hells angel in Amsterdam; introducing Shakira to Tony Blair and chatting about Bowie with Bill Clinton

  • Working with some of the biggest black music legends of all time - Teddy Pendergrass, Luther Vandross, Janet and Michael Jackson and Prince - and racism in the media  

  • Involvement with reggae, and playing football with Bob Marley

  • The influence of Punk

  • US coast to coast road trip adventures with punk star Hazel O’Connor, generating ideas to follow the hit movie Breaking Glass

  • Pioneering the worldwide stadium tour - how The Rolling Stones, and then Bowie, created a whole new industry

  • Finding a ‘family’ with the Spice Girls, and brokering the famous £1million OK deal for Posh and Becks’ wedding

Alan Edwards is the founder and CEO of public relations firm The Outside Organisation which has represented an eclectic range of clients including the biggest music stars on the planet, corporations and brands, government, royalty, celebrities, charities, events, sports legends and clubs.

Edwards’ 45 year career has seen him work with David Bowie (for nearly four decades), the Who, Victoria and David Beckham, Bon Jovi, Led Zeppelin, Amy Winehouse, Shakira, P Diddy, Britney Spears, Naomi Campbell, the Rolling Stones, Prince, Michael Jackson, Lin Manuel Miranda, Sir Paul McCartney and the Spice Girls, among many others.

Edwards was the third ever inductee to PR Week’s Hall of Fame in 2017, and as of March 2023 has been named the magazine’s number one entertainment PR for nine years running. He is a regular contributor to TV and radio, and has fronted programmes in the Music Moguls and Hits, Hype and Hustle series for the BBC.  In 2015 he staged his own show at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, called “Always Print the Myth: PR and the Modern Age”. Among the contributors were Bob Geldof and Alastair Campbell.

“At times in my career I’ve felt like a foreign correspondent, bag packed and always ready to fly off to the next conflict zone. I realised early on that I was a witness to rock and roll history – I was always writing notes on scraps of paper, airline tickets or the backs of my hands. But it was only years later, when I finally sat down to make sense of it all, that I realised I had wandered through some of the most incredible moments in the last half-century of culture.”
— Alan Edwards

For further information or to request an interview or event, please contact:

EMMA FINNIGAN PR

07870 210468 | emma@emmafinniganpr.co.uk | @emmafinnigan | www.emmafinniganpr.co.uk

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HIP-HOP IS HISTORY BY QUESTLOVE WITH BEN GREENMAN

WHITE RABBIT TO PUBLISH

HIP-HOP IS HISTORY, BY QUESTLOVE WITH BEN GREENMAN

Hip-HOP is History

By QuestLove WITH BEN GREENMAN

White Rabbit / HB / Audio / E-Book / 11 June 2024

Questlove’s Hip-Hop is History has been acquired by Lee Brackstone, Publisher at White Rabbit. Brackstone has acquired UK & Commonwealth rights from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

This is a book only Questlove could have written: a perceptive and personal reflection on the first half-century of hip-hop.

When hip-hop first emerged in the 1970s, it wasn’t expected to become the cultural force it is today. But for a young Black kid growing up in a musical family in Philadelphia, it was everything. He stayed up late to hear the newest songs on the radio. He saved his money to buy vinyl as soon as it landed. He even started to try to make his own songs. That kid was Questlove, and decades later, he is a six-time Grammy Award–winning musician, an Academy Award–winning filmmaker, a New York Times bestselling author, a producer, an entrepreneur, a cofounder of one of hip-hop’s defining acts (the Roots), and the genre’s unofficial in-house historian.

In this landmark book, Hip-Hop Is History, Questlove skilfully traces the creative and cultural forces that made and shaped hip-hop, highlighting both the forgotten but influential gems and the undeniable chart-topping hits—and weaves it all together with the stories no one else knows. It is at once an intimate, sharply observed story of a cultural revolution and a sweeping, grand theory of the evolution of the great artistic movement of our time. And Questlove, of course, approaches it with not only the encyclopaedic fluency and passion of an obsessive fan but also the expertise and originality of an innovative participant.

Hip-hop is history, and also his history.

Academy Award-winning filmmaker, drummer, DJ, producer, director, culinary entrepreneur, New York Times best-selling author, and member of The Roots – Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, is the unmistakable heartbeat of Philadelphia’s most influential hip-hop group. He is the Musical Director for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where his beloved Roots crew serves as house band. Beyond that, this 6-time GRAMMY Award winning musician's indisputable reputation has landed him musical directing positions for everyone from D'Angelo to Jay-Z. Questlove made his directorial debut with the Academy Award winning feature documentary Summer of Soul. The movie broke the record for the highest-selling documentary to come out of Sundance, and it has since gone on to win “Best Feature Documentary” at the 2022 Academy Awards, “Best Documentary” at the 2022 British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA) and “Best Music Film” at the 2022 Grammy Awards, as well as a Peabody Award. In addition, Summer of Soul was crowned the “Best Movie of 2021” by The New York Times and included among the “best of the year” by The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, TIME Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone and more. Outside of Summer of Soul, Questlove partnered together with Black Thought of The Roots to launch a production company, Two One Five Entertainment. Together, the pair announced a first-look deal with Universal Television to develop scripted and non-scripted programming. In 2022, the company executive produced the acclaimed feature documentary Descendant about the historic discovery of The Clotilda—the last known slave ship to arrive in America illegally transporting enslaved Africans. The documentary, which made its world premiere at Sundance in 2022, was acquired by Netflix and Higher Ground—President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s production company. The film earned an impressive three nominations for “Best Documentary Feature,” “Best Director,” and “Best Historical Documentary” and took home the award for “Best Historical Documentary” at the 2022 Critics Choice Documentary Awards. It also received a nomination for “Outstanding Documentary” for the 2023 NAACP Image Awards and was also named one of the “Top 5 Documentaries” of 2022 by the National Board of Review. Questlove’s web series, Quest for Craft, produced by Two One Five and launched in partnership with the single malt whiskey brand, The Balvenie, took home a Webby Award in 2023. Up next, Questlove will make his feature film directing debut with a live-action hybrid reimagining of The Aristocats for Walt Disney Studios. Two One Five is set to produce the film alongside Olive Bridge. Questlove has written multiple books, including the New York Times bestsellers Mo’ Meta Blues, Creative Quest, Music is History, and The Rhythm of Time, as well as the GRAMMY nominated audio books Music Is History and Creative Quest. Expanding his literary endeavors, in 2023 he launched his own book imprint, AUWA Books, within MCD Books, a publishing division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The imprint will publish both nonfiction and fiction on a wide range of topics.

Ben Greenman is a New York Times bestselling author and New Yorker contributor who has written both fiction and nonfiction. His novels and short-story collections include The Slippage and Superbad. He has been Questlove's collaborator on a series of books, including Mo’ Meta Blues, Creative Quest, and Music Is History, and he has written memoirs with Sly Stone, George Clinton, and Brian Wilson. His writing has appeared in numerous publications.

Publisher Lee Brackstone said: ‘If you had to choose any practitioner and writer in the world to write a personal history of hip hop, arguably the greatest art form of the late twentieth century, it would be Questlove of The Roots. Written to recognise the 50th anniversary of hip hop’s birth in the Bronx, Hip Hop is History is a landmark publication for White Rabbit, a book that will surely become the canonical work on the genre, its origins, many mutations and superstars. This book will be in print for decades, enrich your musical lexicon, remind you of artists you loved but have forgotten, and introduce you to pioneers you’d heard of but perhaps neglected. A masterpiece.’

All press enquiries should be directed to:

Emma Finnigan emma@emmafinniganpr.co.uk , Sarah Bennie sarah@sarahbennie.com or Francesca Pearce francesca.pearce@orionbooks.co.uk

The contact for Questlove’s team is Carleen Donovan carleen@theoriel.co

White Rabbit is dedicated to publishing the most innovative books and voices in music and literature and creating magic from the alchemical reaction where these two things meet. Led by Publisher, Lee Brackstone, White Rabbit publishes titles encompassing memoir, history, fiction, translation, traditional pop culture, lyrics, illustrated books and high-spec limited editions. Since launching in spring 2020, White Rabbit has published several Sunday Times Bestsellers (including the likes of Mark Lanegan’s Sing Backwards and Weep, Carl Cox’s Oh Yes! Oh Yes!, Chris Frantz’s Remain in Love, and Ten Thousand Apologies by Lias Saoudi and Adelle Stripe), and established itself as the go-to destination for books emerging from and celebrating the counter-culture. Feed Your Head!

 The Orion Publishing Group
Where every story matters.

The Orion Publishing Group is one of the UK’s leading publishers. Our mission is to bring the best publishing to the greatest variety of people. Open, agile, passionate and innovative – we believe that everyone will find something they love at Orion.

Founded in 1991, the Orion Publishing Group today publishes under nine main imprints: Gollancz, the UK’s No.1 science fiction and fantasy imprint; Laurence King Publishing, one of the world’s leading publishers of books and gifts on the creative arts; Orion Fiction, a heartland for brilliant commercial fiction; Orion Spring, home of wellbeing and health titles written by passionate celebrities and world-renowned experts; Seven Dials, for the very best commercial non-fiction, beautifully designed and produced; Trapeze for commercial fiction and non-fiction books that start conversations; Phoenix, a bespoke imprint publishing fiction and memoir that combine literary merit and commercial potential; Weidenfeld & Nicolson, one of the most prestigious and dynamic literary imprints in British and international publishing; and White Rabbit, dedicated to publishing the most innovative books and voices in music and literature.

The Orion Publishing Group is part of Hachette UK which is a leading UK trade publishing group.

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