Paolo Hewitt grew up in care in Woking Surrey where he dreamt every day of becoming a writer. Which is why he moved to London in the late 1970s and secured work at Melody Maker and, later on, the New Musical Express. He was one of the first writers in this country to cover hip hop music and, later on, the Acid House movement. His novel on the rise of club culture in the late 1980s, Heaven’s Promise, is re-considered in “Retrospect” in this edition of Chapter&Verse.

In 1990, Hewitt quit the press scene and has since written twelve books. Amongst them, he has enormous fondness for his memoir, The Looked After Kid - My Life In A Children's Home, All Too Beautiful - The Steve Marriott Story, Getting High - The Adventures Of Oasis, The Greatest Footballer You Never Saw -The Robin Friday Story, The Soul Stylists, The Sharper Word, An Anthology of 60s Writings and Football and Fashion, From Best To Beckham which is due to be published in November 2004.

C&V  How do you see the relationship between popular music and literature? How do these two different creative practices interact?

PH Both art forms share similar traits. For myself, they enabled me to lose myself from the world which when you grow up in a children's home is no bad thing. Both can capture the zeitgeist and both can capture and articulate  your feelings in ways no other art form can, cinema and The Sopranos excepted!

C&V  Have you encountered successful examples of this interaction? Is there such a thing as a rock'n'roll novel?

PH Catch 22 is a great rock'n'roll novel so is Last Exit To Brooklyn and so are a million others. That said, the great book on 'rock'n'roll is yet to be written. Works such as Great Jones Street by Don DeLillo always ring false.

C&V What prompted you to write Heaven's Promise?

PH Having a child, the feel of London in the late 80s, a time of great promise and energy similar to the mood of the late 50s judging by my reading of Colin MacInnes's Absolute Beginners, and the astounding fact that some six years after its entry into clubland no one had written about the drug Ecstasy. My book was followed by Trainspotting  and then The Acid House and it was a source of great pride when the author of those two books, Irvine Welsh, told me how much of a big influence Heaven's Promise had played on both works.

C&V How hard was it to interweave credible fiction and popular music themes?

PH Not at all if you are a good writer....

C&V How autobiographical was Heaven's Promise?

PH Very, which is why I think it rings true.

C&V Tell us about the derivation of the Capuccino Kid. How did that character come about?

PH He was invented by two chancers from Woking to supply wit and wind ups via the sleevenotes of Style Council records. This job he succeeded admirably in.

C&V How far was Paul Weller shaped by cult fiction?

PH I think fiction's biggest gift was to supply him with song titles – “A Town Called Malice”, “Absolute Beginners”, etc.

C&V  What fiction do you most enjoy reading? What are your favourite books, fact or fiction, musical or non-musical?

PH I haven't read fiction in years, especially the British variety. Every time I get half way through, I find myself putting the book down in mild disgust, thinking these characters do no speak like this and would not act like this. Most British fiction writers are much better journalists, Martin Amis being the prime example. Biographies, I find, are far more valuable. No writer, for example, could create a character as weird, as wonderful, as tragic as the comedian Benny Hill. My favourite fiction book is Last Exit To Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jnr, my fave biog writer, without a doubt, Nick Tosches.

C&V  How far did has fiction shaped either your journalistic or novel writing style? Have you ever tried to emulate the style of a writer you've enjoyed?

PH My first Oasis biog was inspired by Nick Tosches's book on Dean Martin. I love mixing fictional techniques with journalism. Magazines, etc, don't in general allow you this luxury but books do.

C&V  As someone who was part of what might be regarded as a golden age of British rock journalism, through Melody Maker and NME, did the New Journalism have an impact on your fiction or non-fiction writing?

PH Absolutely. Reading Tony Parsons in the NME during the mid to late 70s put me onto Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, Hunter S Thompson, etc. For years I tried to emulate Parsons and later on, Nick Tosches and in doing so started to mould my own style.