(Limelight). In 1965, Ian Whitcomb's novelty rocker "You Turn Me On" was number eight on the national charts, along with entries from the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys. In 1966 he was nowheresville a certified rock 'n' roll flash in the pan. It is, then, with a survivor's humor that he tells both his and rock's story from its beginnings in the late fifties to 1969, the year of Woodstock and psychedelic dreams of universal peace and love. Here is the saga of the British Invasion, the genesis of folk rock, the blooming of Flower Power, the Summer of Love and the inner workings of the pop music biz, brought to life by a true insider who is also an uninhibitedly acute observer.

(Limelight). An irreverent and engaging chronicle of popular music dating from the 1880s, when Tin Pan Alley was founded, to the present by a British-born songwriter and onetime pop star. "Brash, learned, funny, and perspicacious." The New Yorker

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.