The Band's Music from Big Pink - Paperback

by John Niven (Author)

"Music From Big Pink is a moving book that succeeds not just in vividly evoking its time and place but in distilling one young man's cliched and minor destiny into something approaching tragedy....This well-written first novel captures not just some of the dreams of that bygone era, but the way those dreams died."
-Greg Kamiya, The New York Times Book Review

Music From Big Pink is faction: real people like Richard Manuel, Rick Danko, Bob Dylan and Albert Grossman rub shoulders with fictional characters and actual, documented events thread their way through text alongside imagined scenarios. Through the eyes of 23-year-old Greg Keltner, drug-dealer and wannabe musician, we witness the gestation and birth of a record that will go on to cast its spell across five decades - bewitching and inspiring artists as disparate as The Beatles, Eric Clapton, Travis, Wilco and Mercury Rev.

Author Biography

John Niven graduated from Glasgow University in 1991 with a First Class Honours MA in English Literature. He toured and recorded as guitarist in The Wishing Stones - their sole LP Wildwood (Heavenly Records 1992) owes more a passing debt to the music of The Band - before becoming an A&R man and working with acts like Travis, Mogwai, and Sigur Ros. Over the years he has written about music, film and sport for publications like Word, FHM, Socialism, The Herb Garden and Mixmag. In 2003 he sold his first screenplay and co-wrote and directed the award winning short film 'Tethered' (British Film Council/Frozen Tundra Films.)