I Could Have Been a Contender

It’s 1971 and rock and roll was at its height. Small-time Australian agent Wayne Zemmerman scored an unimaginable coup when he signs British supergroup Andromeda for a nationwide tour. Showbiz reporter Scottie McPherson smells a rat and starts his investigation. The Sound Mixers is a dramatic expose of the rock industry: fiction that reads like fact. A gripping story that moves at breathtaking pace to a devastating climax, Performers, promoters, manipulators, illusion creators - the characters which inhabit the world of rock’n’roll are ruthlessly dissected in an intricate plot full of shocks and suspense. Big business is the name of the game; a game in which the tough survive… but even then not always.

He clears up some old mysteries too - like what really happened on the night when American TV star Michael Cole swore on live TV at the Australian Logie Awards and how the Beatles came by their trademark haircut.

But it is not all showbiz; the memoirs take us through the childhood fun and games of World War II in the UK, the miseries of teen hood and the horrors and fun of National Service, not to mention the personal traumas of five marriages and break-ups.

The stories from a great raconteur run through eight decades, from 1939 through to 1970 in the UK and from then on in Australia. The book gives a shrewd insight to the changing lifestyles through those decades and through the eyes of a professional observer.