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Even before they released their first single The Lovin’ Spoonful had given Steve Boone, hitherto destined for the life of a military brat, a vertiginous entree to the 60s rock‘n’roll roller-coaster.

Fêted and wooed by Phil Spector, joining Bob Dylan for an electric session, losing his virginity aged 21. Come summer ‘65 he and his fellow Spoonfuls are on the roof of the fabled Brill Building in Manhattan, watching their record label bosses toast the band’s sure and certain West Coast success with rounds of machine-gun fire.

Persuaded to snitch following a pot bust, Boone’s drug-fuelled adventures become even weirder after the short-lived Lovin’ Spoonful’s demise. Cue high-seas misadventures with several tons of Columbian Gold, incarceration, a climactic heroin meltdown, still-festering enmities over the Spoonful legacy and much more. Terrific stuff./o:p

Late NME, Daily Mirror and Classic Rock writer Gavin Martin started writing about music in 1977 when he published his hand-written fanzine Alternative Ulster in Belfast. He moved to London in 1980 to become the NME’s Media Editor and features writer, where he interviewed the Sex Pistols, Joe Strummer, Pete Townshend, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Ian Dury, Killing Joke, Neil Young, REM, Sting, Marvin Gaye, Leonard Cohen, Nina Simone, James Brown, Willie Nelson, Willie Dixon, Madonna and a host of others. He was also published in The Times, Guardian, Independent, Loaded, GQ and Uncut, he had pieces on Michael Jackson, Van Morrison and Frank Sinatra featured in The Faber Book Of Pop and Rock ’N’ Roll Is Here To Stay, and was the Daily Mirror’s regular music critic from 2001. He died in 2022.