To be published this month is Have a Cigar!, the memoir of music impresario Bryan Morrison, a fascinating insight into the highs and lows of his life in music and sport.

When Morrison died aged 66 in 2008, after two years in a coma following a polo accident at The Royal Berkshire Polo Club of which he was a founder, he left behind his unpublished memoir. As a music publisher, manager and agent, Morrison had represented the Pretty Things, Pink Floyd, Elton John, the Bee Gees, T. Rex, The Jam, Wham! and many others. He was also the founder and owner of the Royal County of Berkshire Polo Club.

In the sixties, he formed the Bryan Morrison Agency, a management and booking agency, who looked after Floyd (amongst others) in their early days, taking over the management of the band from Blackhill Enterprises in 1968. The late Steve O'Rourke and Tony Howard were also part of the team.

In this candid and outspoken book, titled Have a Cigar!, which he was looking to publish before his untimely death, Morrison reveals the true stories behind why Syd Barrett once bit his finger to the bone, the Pretty Things were banned for life from New Zealand, and he became involved with the Kray Twins. He also tells how Elvis Presley had heard - and seen - the Floyd in action, and how Roger Waters sacked Morrison in the corridors of the Royal Albert Hall after a very successful show at the London venue. Spanning the golden age of British rock ’n’ roll from the 60s to the 80s, this is the extraordinary story of a cigar-chomping, East End entrepreneur, with a passion for art and design, fashion, music and polo.

The book proves a truly absorbing read, with Morrison exhibiting a flowing, conversational style that almost feels like he is regaling you with tales from his past over a glass of Scotch. For me, the stories of the rise of his music publishing business, via various money making schemes, fascinate, with great - and poor - decisions taking him in different directions. His later love of polo, and the detail within the book of this, is less interesting, although of course this book will inevitably have different audiences who will thrive on the candid nature of his narrative.

Irrespective of his early involvement with Pink Floyd, then separately Syd Barrett, the book is a must read, "warts and all" look at how someone like Morrison becomes such a key person in the music industry, via photography and fashion. Credit must also go to Bryan's son, Jamie, who arranged with Quiller Publishing to tidy up his father's manuscript that had been kept in a drawer, following the death of Greta, Bryan's wife.

Ordering links: To add this book to your Floydian bookshelves, please use these direct links to help support the running of Brain Damage: Amazon UK, Amazon.com, Amazon Canada, Amazon France, Amazon Germany, Amazon Spain and Amazon Italy. Amazon ships books worldwide so if you are not in one of the locations listing Have a Cigar for order, please try another 'branch' of Amazon.