Exit Stage Left

For fans of music books from David Hepworth, Pete Paphides, Bob Stanley and Craig Brown, as well as thought-provoking human interest stories like Moondust by Andrew Smith, and books by Jon Ronson, Louis Theroux and Stuart Maconie. Nick Duerden has spent many years interviewing the most famous musicians on the planet. Without exception, they are at their most interesting when they've peaked, and when they are on their way down.

In many ways, this is when these former idols are at their most heroic, too, because they reveal themselves not only to be humane and sensitive, but also still driven to create, to fulfill their lingering dreams, to refuse to live quietly. Some sustain themselves on the nostalgia circuit. Others continue to beaver away in the studio, no longer Abbey Road so much as the garden shed.

The desire for adulation is a light that never goes out. We live in a culture obsessed by the notion of fame - the heedless pursuit of it, the almost obligatory subsequent fallout. But what's it like to actually achieve it, and what's it like when fame abruptly passes, and shifts, as it does, onto someone else?