Putman Publishing

A TOP 5 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERShortlisted for the Penderyn Music Book Prize 2026The Herald Music Book of the YearA Guardian Top 5 Music Book of the YearA Classic Pop Music Book of the YearA Mojo Top 5 Book of the Year 2025An Uncut Top 3 Book of the Year 2025‘A Latter-day Lear. A truly remarkable book’ John Niven, The Spectator‘Might just be the finest music memoir of recent years’ Independent‘A minor masterpiece’ Classic Pop‘Full of life and joy and copious swearing’The HeraldDel Amitri frontman Justin Currie reflects on life as a touring musician in the shadow of his life changing Parkinson’s diagnosis. It’s 2022 and we join Justin at the doctor’s office, looking down the barrel of a Parkinson’s diagnosis. After concerned fans noticed a tremor in his hand, Currie sought the medical advice which led him to the discovery that would throw his future into uncertainty. The immediate fallout of his diagnosis is laid bare in Currie’s candid, stream of consciousness voice. A voice that is also by turns poetic, self-deprecating and darkly humorous across a series of diary entries that capture Justin’s innermost feelings — part travelogue, part confessional. Following a coming to terms with the situation whilst on tour in the U.S, the second half of the story joins Currie in 2024, supporting Simple Minds on tour with Del Amitri. Anger, heartbreak and a looming sense of finality concoct a terse relationship between what once was and what may never be. Yet, page after page, what prevails is the achingly perfect timing of his acerbic wit. The Tremolo Diaries is a beautiful and unique meditation on illness and aging. It is a twilight years reflection on band life in the 21st Century. It’s a travelogue around the world’s art galleries, parks, bars and sites of natural beauty. And most importantly, it is about love and friendship, adversity and courage, life and loss. In a first-of-its-kind exploration of Parkinson’s by a multi-platinum selling musician, The Tremolo Diaries looks the dramatic irony of Currie’s affliction in the eye, puts down the guitar, and returns the needle to the start of the song.

The definitive biography of one of the most critically acclaimed and enigmatic groups of all time. When Mark Hollis died suddenly in 2019 aged 64, he left behind a slim but perfectly formed collection of Talk Talk albums, one solo album in twenty-three years and an ever-burgeoning mystique which only continues to grow with each passing year. The band’s reputation is formed on the imperious run of three albums released between 1986 and 1991, yet Hollis and the band remain a carefully shrouded mystery. For the first time, Graeme Thomson seeks to unpick this knottiest of musical locks and understand the other world of Talk Talk.

“Pretty marvellous. A fabulous autobiography” Irvine Welsh“Full of beautiful, mad stories” Huw Stephens, BBC Radio 6The long awaited autobiography from the musical maverick, polymath and Beta Band front man. “Self-destructive pop saboteurs who did it all wrong in all the right ways. Utterly brilliant” —NMESteve Mason is a Scottish singer songwriter and founding member of the Beta Band. Formed in 1996 the band were quickly embraced in the media as The Next Big Thing and hailed by famous fans from Radiohead to Noel Gallagher. They were an idiosyncratic, self-contained, Dadaist counterpoint to the bloated Britpop corpse as it metastasized in the late ‘90s. The band split in 2004, owing their record label L1.2m. Since 2004, front man and songwriter Steve Mason has forged a singular, highly lauded solo career, releasing 5 albums under his own name and in April this year the Beta Band reformed to announce their first shows and the UK and U.S in over twenty years. “I see this book as a picture of someone who was lost, with zero confidence and had no idea what he was supposed to do to with his life. But through music, he found something approaching belief in himself which carried him over the next 30 years into all manner of success, failure and adventure. All the while battling the demons on constant patrol in his mind until, after they nearly finished him off, he focused his full attention on purging them from of aspect of his life. It’s a story of youth culture, failure, success, sadness and redemption” Steve Mason, Brighton, August 2025

A TOP 5 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER“Perceptive analysis (and) also a fundamentally human story... this superb book rues Adamson's absence while celebrating his music’s still audibly beating heart.” 5/5 MOJOThe official biography of former Big Country frontman chronicling his career highs and tragic death. This is the story of Stuart Adamson, co-founder of not one but two seminal Scottish post-punk groups, The Skids and Big Country. But this is a book that is about much more than music. Stay Alive is about alcoholism, abuse, family, fame, addiction, depression and working-class pride. And along the way there are stories of drug busts, debauchery, flag burning, fist-fights, prison escapes and riots, with a revolving cast of characters from The Clash to the Rolling Stones. For the first time, both of Stuart Adamson’s wives, children and bandmates tell their side of the story: unflinching, funny and brutally honest.

An Independent Book of the Month“A superb biography” William Boyd“(A) bold and enlightening exploration of Bowie's later career. Sensitive, witty and often very affecting” The Times“A genuine must buy, as rich in critical appraisal as it is in personal history *****” Classic Pop“An engrossing, entertaining and informative read” Classic RockA major new biography of David Bowie on the 10th anniversary of his death, exploring the second half of his career from commercial failures to critical rebirth in the 21st century. When David Bowie died on 10 January 2016, aged 69, his death was greeted with the greatest display of public mourning since Princess Diana three decades before. Twenty-five years before, Bowie appeared to be washed up. His Eighties career had been a slow descent into self-parody, his attempts to diversify into hard rock with the had been disastrous, and the art-rock music with which he had made his name was badly out of fashion. The Thin White Duke needed a miracle if he was not only going to be able to assume his rightful place at the top of the rock music firmament, but even to continue his career. And a miracle – a resurrection from the dead – is precisely what happened. Lazarus: The Second Coming of David Bowie is the first biography of Bowie that tells the full and candid story of what happened in between those two apparently unbridgeable points. With new and exclusive interviews with the musicians, filmmakers and cultural figures who worked with and befriended Bowie throughout this period, Lazarus is the definitive account of the previously overlooked and fascinating latter half of a great and distinguished career. A career that climaxed with his final masterpiece, Blackstar, and the unprecedented theatrical flourish of his departure from the stage as he passed into legend.