CLASSIC TEXT REVISITED: Waiting for the man Harry Shapiro, 1988

Having spent 25 years working in the drugs field, Harry Shapiro, director of publications at DrugScope, is a well-known name to many Young People Now readers. But this book has given him a deserved high reputation with a wider audience than the drug worker fraternity. It tells a fascinating story of the tangled links between drugs and popular music - from the medicine shows of turn-of-the-century US to, in this original edition, the questionable attempts to Just Say No in the late 80s.

For this reader, the early sections dealing with the racial politics of the US - yellow peril opium-eaters, Mexican marijuana fiends and coke-fuelled Negroes - are the most illuminating. Shapiro's subject here is the complex way drug use fuelled the music, but also the way that drugs laws fingered musicians as the "plague-carriers".

There are fascinating snippets such as how plantation owners gave Black workers cocaine to keep them going longer, as well as meticulous analysis of the dubious, if not corrupt, fashion in which anti-drug legislation came to be framed and implemented in ways that have resonated ever since.

There are also moving portraits of early jazz pioneers and the grimmer heroin-addled lives of those such as Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday, before the second half of the book moves the focus to areas such as amphetamines and the Mods and ganja and reggae.

Shapiro has also produced an updated edition of the book, covering developments ranging from singer Kurt Cobain to ecstasy and the rave generation. Furthermore, he is shortly to publish a book that that does a similar job on the film industry, entitled Shooting Stars (geddit?).

So, not only a fascinating read, but also an important one.

Reviewed by Tim Burke, consultant editor, Young People Now.