Johnny Rogan

  Writer

Johnny Rogan was born on February 16, 1953, and died on February 7, 2021; he was a British author of Irish descent best known for his books about music and popular culture.

Rogan has written influential biographies of the Byrds, Neil Young, the Smiths, Van Morrison and Ray Davies.

His writing is characterised by “an almost neurotic attention to detail”, epic-length (the first volume of Requiem for the Timeless is more than 1,200 pages long) and a curiously ambivalent, sometimes positive/sometimes hostile response from the subjects of his biographies.

His first publications were in the late 1970s with writings on West Coast American music. He spent his early childhood in the Pimlico area of London.

His parents emigrated to London from Waterford (Ireland) in 1943; he is a cousin of actor John Rogan.

Rogan adolescence during the ‘Swinging 60s’ was vividly captured in the chapter “The Ghost of Electricity” from his book Timeless Flight Revisited.

There was no mention at all of his tragic family histories which included his father (fatal heart attack, the late 50s), brother (drowned), sister (fatal brain haemorrhage) and mother (emaciation), among other fatalities.

Johnny Rogan passed away at the age of 67; he was found dead on February 7, 2021, at his London flat.

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