Linus Crane

Linus Crane began at the NME in 1986 — the year of John Peel sessions, This Is the Sea, and a contract that paid in pints — and spent the next thirty years writing British rock for British music magazines that no longer exist.

His biographies treat their subjects without the American hagiographic tendency: the long-form work on Joe Strummer, the underread book on Vivian Stanshall, the recent volume on Richard Thompson, What Could Be Seen, on Freddie Mercury, and In Front of Witnesses, on John Lennon. He is interested in the second album, the divorce, the difficult late period.

He lives in Hebden Bridge with the records.