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“... Miles: The Autobiography, first published in 1989 and officially attributed to ‘Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe’ (see also Lady Sings the Blues by ‘Billie Holiday with William Duffy’). Depending on mood, ethnicity, ideology, drug of choice, an oral biography can strike the reader as an authentic reproduction of voice, in all its self-contradictory ...”

“... The idea that a falling object was about to defy gravity before it hit the ground is a familiar one in the mythology of the pop idol. It is the gist of Charles Shaar Murray’s book about Jimi Hendrix, who enjoyed a great career as a virtuoso guitar player between 1966 and 1970, when he died in a London hospital after an overdose of sleeping pills. In a sparkling homage, far more readable than most books about pop music, Murray argues that the extravagant left-hander who introduced a new vocabulary to rock guitar-playing was the unsung progenitor of a jazz we will never know ...”

“... off on a grand tour of India, collecting instruments and costumes along the way, and recruiting a troupe of musicians and dancers he could take back to Europe. But the funding didn’t materialise and Uday ended up drawing on the talents of his family instead. Brothers, in-laws and uncles were co-opted into the troupe, and ...”

“... singers, and talks about the offer you can’t refuse in relation to the pleasures of singing with Quincy Jones’s band. We can scarcely miss the slightly sinister joke, though; and for good measure Sinatra did famously become Puzo’s enemy because he thought he had been portrayed in the novel and the movie as the wimpish Johnny Fontane, who owes his success ...”