Music writer Alan Clayson talks to Rowan Clarke about the art of researching biographies.

Your book Back In The Highlife: A Biography Of Steve Winwood was published in 1988. How did you research and write it and get it published?
"Because my first book Call Up The Groups!: The Golden Age Of British Beat, 1962-1967 (Blandford 1985) was a critical success, a prestigious publisher asked me to pen a biography of Steve Winwood. After weighing every word, I wrote to the man himself requesting assistance. He did not deign to reply. Into the bargain, his record company’s press office stonewalled me too. However, others who had known and worked with Winwood were willing to talk. At times, however, I was riven with self-disgust when wheedling an interview from someone who only wanted to crawl away and hide – and my nerve failed completely when I noticed Winwood’s former wife two seats to the left of me in a London theatre.

There were also rich sources of secondary research such as the archives of Melody Maker – to which I gained access via the editor (who when a cub reporter in 1977 had interviewed me in my capacity as chief show-off with Clayson and the Argonauts).

After accumulating a filing cabinet’s worth of tapes to transcribe and exercise books full of scribble to decipher, I began to write the book itself. Because I was doing a ‘proper’ job at the time, I would return home, and, after two or three hours' convalescent sloth, hunch over the typewriter well into the graveyard hours."

Is research for a posthumous biography or an unwilling subject like Winwood easier or harder than somebody with whom you can communicate directly?
"If a subject is either dead or refuses to co-operate it is regrettable but by no means disastrous. After all, a recent biographer of Alfred the Great hadn’t interviewed his subject either. With regard to what is easier, it depends on how much information is available. Even if there isn’t much, there are still avenues for arriving at intriguing divergent conclusions."

How long does the research/ writing process usually take?
"How long is a piece of string? There are so many variables, particularly the completion date on the contract and how much I care about the subject in question."

Can one earn a living from writing biographies?
"It depends on the subject. My income from an Edgard Varese book barely covered the advance; but Backbeat, a film tie-in, was in a profit before it had even reached the shops."

Who is the most interesting person you have ever met?
"In the context of writing biographies, Screaming Lord Sutch and Reg Presley were prime candidates, but the most interesting person I have ever met was the late Vivian Stanshall, one of Steve Winwood’s lyricists.

Vivian wasn’t very well, having not slept or eaten for three days when he conducted me into his Muswell Hill flat one rainy September evening in 1987. Neither drunk nor sober, he sprawled like a sultan on his double bed while a girlfriend of timorous beauty filled our glasses at regular intervals as we talked of many things – surrealist poetry, Crazy Horse, the Afghan war, animal rights and, every now and then, of Steve Winwood.

Vivian was one of the few I’ve ever encountered who could be described as a mystic – even if, in a voiceover for an ITV commercial a few weeks later, he was extolling the virtues of Cadbury’s Crème Eggs!"