 | This article has multiple issues. Please helpimprove it or discuss these issues on thetalk page.(Learn how and when to remove these messages) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
|
Howard Sounes | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1965 (age 60–61) Welling, South East London, England, United Kingdom |
| Occupations |
|
Howard Sounes (born 1965) is a British author, journalist and biographer.
Born inWelling,South East London, Sounes began his journalistic career as a staff reporter for theSunday Mirror. He broke major stories, including one of the most notorious murder cases in British criminal history: that ofFred andRosemary West. Sounes reported that the house at 25 Cromwell Street inGloucester was thegrave site of nine young women, with more victims buried nearby. He went on to report the case for the Sunday andDaily Mirror, and upon conclusion of the trial he published his bookFred & Rose.
Sounes wrote a biography of American poet, novelist and short-story writerCharles Bukowski, becoming so engrossed in the subject that he resigned from his newspaper job to devote himself to the project.Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life was published in 1998 by Grove Press in the US and Canongate in the UK. Sounes also wrote a companion book in 2000 calledBukowski in Pictures. He was able to publish the first known photo of Bukowski's lover and muse, Jane Cooney Baker.[citation needed]
Since his teenage years Sounes had been a fan of singer/songwriterBob Dylan, and in early 1990 he began research for a major biography of the musician. Sounes interviewed over 250 people including members of the Dylan, Zimmerman, Lownds and Rutman families, as well as ex-girlfriends includingSuze Rotolo, her elder sisterCarla, their motherMary Pezzati Rotolo, friends and other musicians. His extensive and painstaking research of unseen evidence concerning Dylan's life included birth, death and marriage certificates, court papers, property and tax records which enabled him to pin down precise details of Dylan's life where in the past only erroneous speculation had existed.Members of the Dylan family, with the exception ofJakob Dylan, were interviewed by Sounes on the understanding that they would not be named and merely identified as "a member of the Dylan family."[citation needed] The biography, entitledDown the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan, was published in 2001 (the year Dylan turned 60). It contained the revelation that unknown to fans and media alike, Dylan had married one of his backing singers,Carolyn Dennis.
Sounes has worked as a full-time author since publishing his Dylan biography. His later works have included a scathing investigation ofprofessional golf,The Wicked Game, and a cultural history of the 1970s, entitledSeventies. In the mid-2000s it was reported that he was working on a book calledHeist, an account of the world's biggest cash robbery. His biography of SirPaul McCartney,FAB: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney, was published in August 2010. Sounes subsequently admitted that his work represented too many of his personal opinions about McCartney's music.[1]
Sounes' latest book,Amy, 27: Amy Winehouse and the 27 Club, was published in July 2013 byHodder & Stoughton. The book is a study of British singerAmy Winehouse's life in the context of the27 Club, the group of iconic music stars who died at the same young age, includingBrian Jones of theRolling Stones whose death in 1969 was followed byJimi Hendrix andJanis Joplin in 1970,Jim Morrison in 1971, andKurt Cobain in 1994.
