Wrong.

The mid-seventies were dense with extraordinarily sophisticated, mature rock music made by singers, songwriters and musicians who had no problem calling themselves artists. And the records they made aspired to artistic status: everyone was trying to make their own masterpiece, and the sense of competitiveness was like something not seen since the mid-sixties. Three-minute pop singles had given way to concept albums and pop-package tours had been supplanted by rock festivals, and rock in general had a renewed sense of ambition.
1975 was the apotheosis of the adult pop, the most important year in the narrative arc of post-war music, and a year that was rich with masterpieces: Blood on the Tracks by Bob Dylan, The Who by Numbers by the Who, Young Americans by David Bowie, Another Green World by Brian Eno, The Hissing of Summer Lawns by Joni Mitchell and A Night at the Opera by Queen, amongst countless other legendary albums.

These records were magisterial; records that couldn’t be bettered. Who could realistically make a more sophisticated album than The Hissing of Summer Lawns? Or a more complex hard-rock album than Physical Graffiti? Or indeed a record as unimpeachable and as prescient as Horses?

1975, as Dylan Jones expertly illustrates, was the greatest year of them all.

These Foolish Things captivatingly charts Dylan’s life: from his peripatetic childhood and late adolescence in 1970s London – a city then alive with possibility – to his award-winning tenure at what would become one of the most dynamic magazines of its era, GQ. It details how he came to be in that hot seat: a journey through the Swinging London slipstreams of punk and new romanticism, and through i-D, The Face and Arena, which created the platform on which GQ was based, with Dylan as a common denominator.

Littered with a gold-star cast of characters – including a who’s who of celebrity from David Bowie and Bryan Ferry to Alastair Campbell and Prince Charles, via Samuel L. Jackson, Piers Morgan and Rihanna – this memoir reflects on how GQ became an established style and how Dylan sought to stir up music, politics and fashion.

Witty, perceptive and deliciously entertaining, but by turns bravely vulnerable, These Foolish Things is a memoir like no other: a dazzling retelling of the start of the twenty-first century from one of the world’s most fascinating media giants.

These Foolish Things captivatingly charts Dylan’s life: from his peripatetic childhood and late adolescence in 1970s London – a city then alive with possibility – to his award-winning tenure at what would become one of the most dynamic magazines of its era, GQ. It details how he came to be in that hot seat: a journey through the Swinging London slipstreams of punk and new romanticism, and through i-D, The Face and Arena, which created the platform on which GQ was based, with Dylan as a common denominator.

Littered with a gold-star cast of characters – including a who’s who of celebrity from David Bowie and Bryan Ferry to Alastair Campbell and Prince Charles, via Samuel L. Jackson, Piers Morgan and Rihanna – this memoir reflects on how GQ became an established style and how Dylan sought to stir up music, politics and fashion.

Witty, perceptive and deliciously entertaining, but by turns bravely vulnerable, These Foolish Things is a memoir like no other: a dazzling retelling of the start of the twenty-first century from one of the world’s most fascinating media giants.

Faster Than a Cannonball is a cultural swipe of the decade from loungecore to the rise of New Labour, teasing all the relevant artistic strands through interviews with all the major protagonists and exhaustive re-evaluations of the important records of the year, by artists including Radiohead, Teenage Fanclub, Tricky, Pulp, Blur, the Chemical Brothers, Supergrass, Elastica, Spiritualized, Aphex Twin and, of course, Oasis.

Dylan Jones’ definitive oral history of The Velvet Underground draws on contributions from remaining members, contemporaneous musicians, critics, film-makers, and the generation of artists who emerged in their wake, to celebrate not only their impact but their legacy, which burns brighter than ever into the 21st century.

Dylan Jones’ definitive oral history of The Velvet Underground draws on contributions from remaining members, contemporaneous musicians, critics, film-makers, and the generation of artists who emerged in their wake, to celebrate not only their impact but their legacy, which burns brighter than ever into the 21st century.

Not only was the mid-Nineties perhaps the last time that rock stars, music journalists and pop consumers held onto a belief in rock’s mystical power, it was a period of huge cultural upheaval – in art, literature, publishing and drugs. And it was a period of almost unparalleled hedonism, a time when many people thought they deserved to live the rock and roll lifestyle, when a generation of narcotic omnivores thought they could all be rock stars just by buying a magazine and a copy of (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?

Faster Than a Cannonball is a cultural swipe of the decade from loungecore to the rise of New Labour, teasing all the relevant artistic strands through interviews with all the major protagonists and exhaustive re-evaluations of the important records of the year – The Bends by Radiohead, Grand Prix by Teenage Fanclub, Maxinquaye by Tricky, Different Class by Pulp, The Great Escape by Blur, It’s Great When You’re Straight… Yeah! by Black Grape, Exit Planet Dust by the Chemical Brothers, I Should Coco by Supergrass, Elastica by Elastica, Pure Phase by Spiritualized, …I Care Because You Do by Aphex Twin and of course (What’s the Story) Morning Glory by Oasis, the most iconic album of the decade.

An NME and BBC Culture Book of the Year 2020

For a while, Sweet Dreams were made of this.

From the testimony of the people who lived it, comes Dylan Jones’ masterful history of the Blitz kids, synth-pop and the style press, from 1975 to 1985.

‘Few music scenes have received more opprobrium than the New Romantics. A bunch of fame-grabbing clothes-horses? Certainly. But also, a progressive force that opened new routes for music while embracing most genders, ethnicities and sexual preferences.’ MOJO

‘Compelling reading for those who lived and breathed the indulgence of the era without realising its significance or contemplating its legacy.’ Simon Armitage

‘Dylan Jones explains how a bunch of penniless nightclub show-offs morphed into pop royalty in the 1980s . . . An excitable patchwork of interviews, punctuated with gossip and pertinent theory.’ UNCUT

‘It’s all here: the swishing, the androgynous preening, the sweetly-dreamt synth-pop splendour of early ’80s Britain. Something was happening, and Mr. Jones knew what it was.’ Barney Hoskyns

Subjective and idiosyncratic, SHINY AND NEW takes us from downtown New York to post-industrial Manchester, in the first widescreen attempt to weave together the stories, the songs and events that re-shaped music and society.