Shindig Happy Trails gives the reader a window into a charmed life that most of us can only dream of. He has co-written autobiographies by Eddie and Brian Holland, New York Doll Sylvain Sylvain and Walter Lure of Johnny Thunder’s Heartbreakers.

Death, drugs, disease, demons, deportation, dashed romance, and, for this man of the eastern US, unlikely sanctuary in the north of England: “My story is pretty warty,” he warns MARTIN ASTON.JASON ISBELL'S new album combines fears for America with lessons learned from sobriety and Scorsese.

All of which is here… but again, it’s the Liberty/UA years that are at the heart of the book because that, you get the impression, is when Lauder was at his most unfettered. That’s rather a sad end to the book, which detracts somewhat from the splendid ground breaking earlier days . Lauder’s far-sighted recruitment of Amon Düül II and Can lit the fuse for the “Krautrock” explosion of the early 1970s (a term, incidentally, that he loathed); and Lauder who effectively god-parented the pub rock boom a couple of years later. I’d always thought we’d recorded too early and didn’t trust my instincts that the band was under- cooked. In hindsight it's easy to identify the changing eras in music but underground music, pub rock and punk in Britain, for example, evolved quite seamlessly and it was visionaries like Andrew who, instinctively, saw what was coming and helped bring about those transitions.During the later ’60s and throughout the ’70s in particular (working at the legendary United Artists), he had a knack of being one step ahead of the next trend. It was too soon for what he had in mind but I was excited about starting something new with him just as at the point when I was losing Hawkwind. It's remarkable how, in a book which documents his many successes and accomplishments, that lovely voice and manner is still unmistakable. The gatekeepers’ willingness to allow him entry, to say nothing of the cost of renting a flat, underlines that such youthful opportunism is an impossible dream in the straitened industry of 2023.

I was in the middle trying to make it work for the bands and, if it sold lots of records, then the company were very happy. During Lauder's tenure at Liberty Records (based in Mortimer Street, London) he organised the Liberty Records Football team made up of various young industry luminaries and occasional guests who played regular friendly matches at Colliers Wood, South London.I’ve really come to appreciate my time in the music business by stepping outside of it and moving to the South of France. And the fact that so many of his releases remain uber-collectible legends today only amplifies his impact. He was ahead of the game in other ways too; pioneering a more creative way of marketing and promoting records and revolutionising the way catalogue was organised and presented.

My first job with Liberty was radio promotion, getting records played on the radio and it coincided with the beginning of Radio 1 in September 1967. Lauder was born in Hartlepool, County Durham, England in 1948, the son of a timber yard owner, he attended Wellingborough School, Northamptonshire.

Lauder who allowed Groundhogs to transition from a middling blues band to the loudest progressive rock band on earth; and Lauder who picked up Man when even their fans weren’t that impressed, and set them free to soar. Lauder was briefly with Island Records, signing U2 in March 1980 and offering Buzzcocks frontman Pete Shelley a solo record deal. g. signing Motorhead, Michael Moorcock and Robert Calvert from Hawkwind, and Deke Leonard, Clive John and The Neutrons when they left Man. I’d been at home in Hartlepool sitting there watching ‘Ready Steady Go’ and thinking ‘this is what I want’.