Description
Many of us become music obsessives at a young age. For one young hyperactive kid growing up in the gloom of 1970s County Durham music meant just that little bit more than the norm.
At the age of 14, Ian Lowery decided his life would be music and little else and so it proved. Through bands like the John Peel favourites Ski Patrol and the Folk Devils as well as under his own steam Ian would secure major label record deals, do countless John Peel sessions, tour Europe and the US, work with great producers and, in his own mind, attain an artistic level that sat alongside Nick Cave and Mark E Smith. However, at each turn, the single minded and sometimes irascible Lowery would sabotage every good piece of fortune that came his way. A penchant for the dark side of rock and roll didn’t help his cause. And it was the darker elements that led to his untimely and tragic end, aged 45, in 2001.
But below the maelstrom of his life, Ian Lowery possessed a voice that could move you to tears, wrote words that gave Dylan a run for his money and sang songs that could make you dance and sing. For Ian only the music mattered. He truly was the greatest rock singer you have never heard. And it is this wrong that writer Ian Fawdon set out to right when he began writing his book – Ian Lowery – Born to Swing: the greatest rock singer you have never heard. Whether readers ultimately agree with this bold claim remains to be seen but it was a tale that needed to be told and book that needed to be written and now it has.
Ian Fawdon, March 2026
Available in paperback.
Published by PC-Press
Official publication date: 30th August 2026.