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White Rabbit signs memoir from British music industry ‘visionary’ Lauder
A memoir by Andrew Lauder, a British music industry “visionary” has gone to White Rabbit.
Lee Brackstone, publisher, acquired world English-language rights to Happy Trails: Andrew Lauder’s Charmed Life and High Times in the Record Business, co-written by Mick Houghton, directly from the authors, for publication on 27th April 2023 in hardback, trade paperback, e-book and audio, with a foreword by Richard Williams.
Brackstone said: “This is a story for the true believers, those who are interested in the stories behind the stories, how the underground music scene became such a powerful counter-cultural force in the late ’60s and ’70s.
“From working with CAN, Hawkwind, Nick Lowe and Dr Feelgood to the late ’80s, which ended with the classic début album by The Stone Roses, Andrew Lauder’s story is an unlikely and inspirational picaresque and a portrait of a once essential but now neglected role in the music business, the mysterious A&R Man.”
The publisher continues that “Andrew Lauder is one of the British record business’s most significant and highly influential figures but outside the music industry few people will probably know his name. He has always retained a fan’s perspective which, combined with an exceptional knowledge of music, meant he was at ease around musicians and never happier than spending time with them.
“During the later ’60s and throughout the ’70s in particular (working at the legendary United Artists), he had a knack of being one step ahead of the next trend. In hindsight it’s easy to identify the changing eras in music but underground music, pub rock and punk in Britain, for example, evolved quite seamlessly and it was visionaries like Andrew who, instinctively, saw what was coming and helped bring about those transitions.
“He was ahead of the game in other ways, too; pioneering a more creative way of marketing and promoting records and revolutionising the way catalogue was organised and presented. This is his story.”
Lauder said: “I was always being told I should write a book about my life so I was delighted when Lee Brackstone at White Rabbit made that possible. I was hooked on rock ’n’ roll by the age of 10 and it was at the third of the schools I was sent to that it began defining my life. I had my own school band but I really made my mark as the boy with all the 45s and EPs who knew more about pop music than anybody else. All I wanted was a job in music and that could only happen in London.
“On the day I arrived I found myself in Denmark Street, where I was picked up like a chess piece and placed in the offices of a leading music publisher. For the next 40 years I usually – and instinctively – made the right moves. I was lucky. My passion for music became my job for life. I’ve known Mick Houghton throughout much of that time. He grew up with the same obsession about pop music that also deepened with the onset of Merseybeat and the R&B boom. He didn’t need to look up Buddy Knox or Johnny Kidd and the Pirates or the Artwoods on Wikipedia. ‘Happy Trails’ by Quicksilver Messenger Service is my all-time favourite record so it’s an apt title for my story, just as White Rabbit is the perfect publisher, since it was hearing ‘Jefferson Airplane Takes Off’ that turned me on to the San Francisco scene that was always such a cause célèbre for me.”
Co-writer Houghton said: “Happy Trails tells an insightful, passionate and funny story which simultaneously documents how a sense of adventure and chance in the record business has given way to a more remote and scientific approach. To steal another classic line, this time from the Lovin’ Spoonful, Happy Trails might even explain ‘the magic of rock ‘n’ roll’ to a stranger.’”
Houghton first met Lauder in 1970 and has worked with him on and off over the years. He became known for setting up Brassneck Publicity in 1980. Since 2010 he has written three books: Becoming Elektra: The True Story of Jac Holzman’s Visionary Record Label (Jawbone), I’ve Always Kept a Unicorn: The Biography of Sandy Denny (Faber & Faber), and Fried & Justified (Faber & Faber), focusing on his own career in the music business.
