the book review 

Paperback 

Reviewer: PJ 

The rise of Napster and internet file sharing have all but killed them off but back in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s the Bootleg album was a great source for fans to get hold of material by their favourite artists that had never been officially released.

Every market or record fair would have a stall full of dubious looking album covers featuring everyone from the Beatles to Bowie, some were professional looking others looked like they had been knocked up by a four year old with their first crayon set but all gave off an air of untold riches within their cardboard covers, this new book subtitled A Bootleg History by Clinton Heylin chronicles this fascinating underground recording industry.

Heylin’s account begins with some fascinating copyright history and intriguing tales of early Opera bootleggers before talking about the first rock bootleg in the late 1960’s  The Great White Wonder, a 2 LP set of Bob Dylan home recordings and takes in the rise of the scene through the seventies (probably it’s heyday with hundreds of releases and companies dedicated to top sounding recordings such as Trademark of Quality or Swinging Pig – when if your band didn’t have a bootleg release then you hadn’t really made it) through the 1980’s where Prince’s Black album became the biggest selling bootleg of the decade, onto the age of the CD and finishing with what the digital age will mean for the bootleggers.

Truly fascinating stuff Heylin not only examines the history of the bootleg but also looks in depth at hundreds and hundreds of bootlegs from the numerous Beatles releases to such delights as the sessions the Beach Boys made for the never released album Smile and such curios as Fairport Conventions radio sessions for the BBC back in the 1960’s.

Bootlegging was obviously big business for some but for others remained more of a labour of love producing high quality material by fans for other fans and although it seems everyone is a bootlegger these days thanks to the rise of the CD Burner and peer to peer file sharing of everyones record collection Bootlegging still continues albeit as a market for real collectors who desire the actual artifact of a CD or a record cover rather than a file on a computer.

Heylin’s book is truly fascinating and reads like a thriller at times as he attempts to track down some of the more elusive bootleggers.

Excellent stuff. Very recommended.