The literary entry of John Lias into the soul world was his Spinning Around: A History of the Soul LP. Volume 1: A-K. At that time he gave us some background to how soul became his passion and what drove him to become a self-publishing writer:
"I first became interested in soul music round about 1972 or 1973 (thanks to radio and youth club discos) when I was about seventeen years old. At that point I bought singles and albums fairly equally. By 1978 I was buying more and more albums. I also read a great deal; Black Music, Blues And Soul, Echoes from a soul perspective, but also NME as a more general musical overview. It started to become clear to me all those years ago that soul LPs were considered less important and interesting than soul singles and deemed less worthy of respect than rock albums. To address this was my main motivation to write. I continued avidly buying LPs and books and magazines about soul throughout the eighties and nineties. Around 2000 or so I had the idea to write a book. As I was incredibly busy at work it was taken on as a retirement project, starting in October 2012."
The first volume saw its release in 2016. John's project received very positive reviews in Echoes, Record Collector, Shindig! and Soul Express.
Well, May 2018 will see the follow up Spinning Around: The History of the Soul LP. Volume 2: L-Z hit the shelves. As with Volume 1 the new book addresses album releases by hundreds of artists from the famous – The Temptations, The Supremes, Wilson Pickett, Curtis Mayfield, Bobby Womack, Ohio Players - to the more obscure – The Masqueraders, New Birth, Baby Washington, David Porter and Phillip Mitchell - and to the little known such Joy Dan Prince, Nat Riggins, Richard Paradise and The Minority Band. Beautifully produced in hardback, with 430 pages and including 108 colour photographs of LP covers, Spinning Around : The History Of The Soul LP, Volume 2 : L - Z, completes a most comprehensive study of this topic.
This book retails at £19.99 is available to pre-order in the new book section.