Music Industry Legend to Speak at Ealing Book Festival

Joe Boyd has worked with artists ranging from Pink Floyd to Muddy Walters

Joe Boyd. Picture: Andrea Goertler

March 27, 2025

Among the many big names appearing at this year’s Ealing Book Festival will be Joe Boyd a man whose career in music saw him present at some of its most pivotal moments.

The legendary music producer, writer and record label boss Joe Boyd was there when Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival, when Pink Floyd was born and when Paul Simon’s Graceland was released.

He has worked with bands from Toots and the Maytals to R.E.M., Pink Floyd to Taj Mahal, and witnessed first-hand the growing popularity of music from Africa, India, Latin America, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe since the 1960s. He was one of the protagonists of the ‘world music’ movement of the 1980s.

He helped set up the highly influential UFO club in London that kickstarted the careers of Pink Floyd and Soft Machine.

As producer at the Newport Folk Festival of 1965 when Bob Dylan went electric, he bridged the divide between the committee members ordering a cut in the volume levels against those relishing the sound.

In late 1960, his earliest forays into the music industry began in Princeton when he was inspired to search for Lonnie Johnson thanks to listening to Danish DJ broadcasting on a local US radio station.

Joe Boyd later went on to ‘cut his teeth’ organising European tours with the likes of Muddy Waters, Sister Rosetta, Big Bill Broonzy and Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. Eventually decided to make his home in London partly inspired by a youth culture that was awakening to American Blues Music.

He will be coming to Pitzhanger Manor to speak about his new book ‘And The Roots of Rhythm Remain’ which offers an insight into the influence of global music and music’s vital role in fighting oppression, while uncovering extraordinary backstories, including how Afrobeat began with a subscription to an American jazz magazine and why Frank Sinatra owed his career to a French tango singer from Buenos Aires.

Joe Boyd will be in conversation with Mark Cooper, co-creator and founding producer of Later . . . With Jools Holland, and executive producer of over 250 BBC music documentaries.

The event takes place on Saturday 26 April from 6pm to 7pm. Tickets can be purchased here.

Ealing Book Festival also includes a diverse range of renowned authors including Hanif Kureishi, Elif Shafak, Andrew O’Hagan, Tracy Chevalier, Roger McGough, Natasha Brown, Abi Daré and Laura Cumming, alongside a wide range of other events including walking tours, workshops and a children’s poetry competition. Tickets are now on sale for the event.