For many years British bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Clash, Wham and even The Spice Girls dominated the pop world. In music terms, for over 30 years the UK was boxing well above its weight and those bands made countless millions of pounds for themselves, their record companies, Great Britain PLC and also their managers.

For behind each of those bands was a guiding hand, a Svengali, protecting, promoting, persuading and occasionally punishing on the band’s behalf, and although each of these bands might well have become world beaters without them, most were glad to have their managers by their side on the careering gravy train – riding shotgun – trying to keep the thing on the rails.

Some of those managers became almost as famous as the bands. Brian Epstein was a household name while Malcolm McLaren, Don Arden and Peter Grant became infamous. Others like The Clash’s Bernie Rhodes and Pink Floyd’s Steve O’Rourke were happier out of the limelight but they shared the same strange devotions to their upstart charges.

Guns, Cash and Rock ‘n’ Roll: The Managers celebrates this special breed – often flawed low achievers but true believers, hard-nosed wheeler-dealers and schemers who were as at home talking to drug dealers and the mafia as they were to corporate lawyers. The music business has a hopeless allure for extreme characters and encourages extreme behaviour. Of the twelve managers featured, at least five of them were drug enthusiasts and four of them liked having guns to hand. Five of them have died. Four of them died young – one committed suicide, one may have been murdered. Two others escaped a premature death by the skin of their teeth.

Although times have changed and Simon Fuller gives us a master class in 21st Century band management one thing remains the same, like the bands they ran, they were all world class.

Steve Overbury