The Whispering Years

by Bob Harris

Bob Harris is best known as the face of the premier live music show in the 1970s, The Old Grey Whistle Test, but his trademark 'whisper' has always given him a distinctive presence on radio. Now after 30 years in the music business Bob tells the story of his roller coaster journey. From the young passionate music fan who moved to London in the late 60s determined to make music his life, he carved a niche for himself in music journalism by cofounding Time Out and launched his radio career with Sounds Of The Seventies on Radio 1. The Old Grey Whistle Test soon followed and during the years he fronted the programme, he interviewed, and toured and hung out with some of the biggest names in Marc Bolan, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Queen, the Bee Gees, John Lennon...However it hasn't all been good. His career has had as many downs as ups (he has rebuilt it four times); he's been married three times and near bankrupted and hounded for his record collection by a fellow DJ. Yet 30 years on from his first broadcast, with strong and loyal audiences for his two shows on Radio 2, Bob is still driven by his passion for music.

Genres: Music, Biography

224 pages, Hardcover

First published September 17, 2001

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Alec Downie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Written a few years ago and not enough about Whistle Test and in some ways I wish I had not read this as Bob came over as a not very self aware person, trying to be self aware and hippie and failing. Not everything in life is the fault of other people and most people last a couple of years in music so to have survived he is blessed.

Not sure it added much to my understanding of the OGWT or radio but an ok read.

[David Lai · Rating 3 out of 5]

It turns out that Bob Harris was much more of a star than one would have thought. I knew him principally as the fondly-regarded if somewhat derided presenter of the Old Grey Whistle Test, but he was mates with Marc Bolan, David Bowie and Elton John from early in their respective careers, and drops a huge number of famous names in the course of this book, showing him to be something of a name himself.

This memoir is well-written and apparently candid, detailing career difficulties, fallings-out and financial woes (the main villain being Bruno Brookes). Bob's long-term relationships (from each of which he has children) are described in some detail, although for some reason there is no photo of Valentina Harris, who, by the sounds of it, preferred her career to him.

The cataloguing of his many jobs could be confusing and tedious -- it's a wonder that he could remember and keep track of them -- but generally the story moves along easily enough.

[Laurence Green · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inevitably, this is an extended exercise in name-dropping and to that extent it works ok. Ultimately, though, what is lacking is a real understanding of who Bob Harris is - or rather, the author doesn't present you with much and you have to intuit and in doing that it's hard not to wonder why Bob has reflected so little on his own life. Perhaps that might have made the story and journey a bit more exciting. In everything, it seems, Bob whispers

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fairly dull account of Bob's life as a DJ. For fans of Bob Harris only.