When I was working up to buying the Patrick Heron biography I came across a book of articles that Iain Macdonald had written. The final article in the collection is the long piece that he wrote for Mojo about Nick Drake which I thinks is on Robin Frederick's site. The other articles were mostly about key figures from the music scene around that time.

I had been thinking a bit about Iain because the previous Saturday's Guardian Review contained a piece about Paul Morley's new book on popular music. The reviewer started out by saying that he had thought that Iain's book on the Beatles - Revolution in the Head - was the best book ever written on popular music.

When I logged on just now there was an e-mail from Paul Wheeler about Iain's death last Thursday. I replied and went straight to Robin's diary.

I han't bought the collection of his articles because I thought I might come across something I really disagreed with - there's a bit towards the end of the thing I wrote stimulated by Andrew's work on Crimson King that deliberately goes against some of the views in Revolution in the Head. I've always tried to avoid a head on clash with Iain.

I suppose I can write what I like now.

I first heard Iain playing harmonica with Fred Frith playing Jansch style guitar. He seemed to forget about this incident but it stuck in my mind