Colin Larkin (writer)

Background and education

Colin Larkin was born in Dagenham in 1949 in an area of Essex that was largely populated by workers in the car industry. Although the post-war years proved lucrative for the Ford motor company, Larkin was raised in relative poverty in the largest area of council housing in the United Kingdom, in the suburbs that surrounded the Ford plant. The Becontree estate in Dagenham began as a conglomeration of 27,000 "homes for heroes", and had no recognisable town centre.

Larkin spent much of his early childhood attending the travelling fair where his father, who worked by day as a plumber for the council, moonlighted on the waltzers to make ends meet. It was in the fairground, against a background of Little Richard on the wind-up 78 rpm turntables, that Larkin acquired his passion for the world of popular music, and a taste for exotic pattern and vivid colour, which would re-surface in later years in books on Islamic art and architecture, and oriental rugs.

In the 1960s Larkin attended the South East Essex County Technical High School following which, under his own initiative he obtained an apprenticeship as a commercial artist, enabling him to take a sandwich course at the London College of Printing (now the London College of Communication). There he studied typography and book design. and was influenced by the typeface designer Eric Gill, who is associated with the arts and crafts movement.

Art and publishing

Larkin began his working life in commercial art, advertising studios and design groups and for the book publisher Pearson Longmans. In 1967 he began writing for music journals and magazines. At Longmans he became senior book designer, but he soon tired of working for the publishing house and by 1976 had co-founded his own book publishing company, Scorpion Publishing.

From the outset Larkin was intent upon reaching areas of the book reading public that other publishers felt it unnecessary or unprofitable to reach. Scorpion Publishing published art books on Oriental carpets and Islamic Art. They also designed and published John Gorman's trilogy of Labour history, Banner Bright, To Build Jerusalem and Images of Labour. Notable music titles at this time included Timeless Flight: The Definitive Story of The Byrds and Bob Dylan's Unreleased Recordings.

In the 1980s Larkin, who read music magazines avidly and was acquiring a considerable personal library of singles and albums, began to consider the idea of "an encyclopedia of popular music". His passion for an encyclopaedia that would do for Bob Dylan and the Beatles what the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians had done for more classical subjects, and moreover do it better, finally took over when in 1989 he sold his half of Scorpion Books to fund the project and founded Square One Books.

The Encyclopedia of Popular Music

In 1989 Larkin formed Square One Books to create a multi-volume Encyclopedia of Popular Music, and to publish music related books. He published additional music biographies including those on Graham Bond, R.E.M., Eric Clapton, The Byrds and Frank Zappa, and a further book on Bob Dylan, Oh No, Not Another Bob Dylan Book.

In a pre-internet age, the work required to create an encyclopaedia of popular music was considerable. Aided by a team of contributors, a fast-growing library of music magazines, books and the music itself, an eventual 3000 vinyl singles, 3500 vinyl albums, 4500 music biographies and 38,000 CDs, Larkin began compiling the Encyclopedia.

In 1992 the first edition of the Encyclopedia of Popular Music went into print. It was quickly recognised as monumental: Rolling Stone described the work as "musical history in the making", in The Times they called it "a work of almost frightening completeness". Musician Jools Holland called it "without question the most useful reference work on popular music".

Square One developed their own in-house software using 4th Dimension.

Over 50 separate titles followed the creation of the Encyclopedia's database, and in 1997 Larkin sold Square One Books to American data company Muze. Larkin became full-time editor-in-chief and ran the encyclopaedia as a cottage industry, with a team of fewer than ten contributors, who in terms of wordcount were "producing an Agatha Christie novel a month".

From September 2008 Larkin ceased all involvement with Muze Inc. or any of its related companies following the closure of the Encyclopedia of Popular Music as a stand-alone product and his subsequent redundancy. On 15 April 2009, it was announced that most of the assets of Muze Inc. were purchased by Macrovision.

In May 2011 Omnibus Press released the Amazon Kindle edition of the Encyclopedia of Popular Music, using the text of the 2007 edition.

Best Things on Earth

By 2008, Larkin had launched a new website whose original inspiration had come from the All Time Top 1000 Albums, initially called 1000Greatest.com. This would later change its name to become the multi-media rating site and iPhone app, btoe.com Best Things On Earth.

In 2012, on the 50th anniversary of The Beatles chart hit Love Me Do, Larkin was interviewed by BBC Entertainment Reporter Mark Savage about the Beatles' rivals in 1962.