An affectionate detailing of British rock guitar should be a hit with music fans, reckons DAVID WHETSTONE

MO FOSTER is best known as a session musician – an accomplished bass player who has performed alongside greats such as Jeff Beck, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, Hank Marvin, Sting, Cliff Richard and Dusty Springfield.

But he has another string to his bow. Launched in London the other day – at a do attended by music industry legends – was Mo’s book British Rock Guitar.

Subtitled “The first 50 years, the musicians and their stories”, it is part autobiography, part rock music history and (in very large part) an anthology of anecdotes collected by the author over the years.

Here – for which we can be thankful – is a musician who lived and worked through the 1960s, 70s and 80s and can remember what happened.

The foreword is by Geordie Hank Marvin. Writing from his home in Australia, The Shadows’ guitar man recalls being told by “an enthusiastic cub reporter” about his idea for a book about the first 20 years of British rock guitar.

Twenty years have become 50, but the book is out – published in the North East by Andrew Peden-Smith and Northumbria Press.

Mo, it seems, had been talking to Graham Forbes, whose book Rock and Roll Tourist came from the same source.

Mo never was a cub reporter. He actually studied physics at the University of Sussex. But as he writes in his introduction: “I have been a studio/touring bass player for most of my life.”