Blackwell (working with journalist Paul Morley) has written a highly entertaining, rapid-fire, hard-to-put-down memoir. The record producer/label founder/hotelier/film producer takes us on a rip-roaring ride through the 60s, 70s, and 80s, the most exciting years in popular music.

It is Marley—with whom Mr. Blackwell felt a great personal affinity—who is at the emotional center of The Islander. Due to the book’s occasionally unchronological structure, the singer’s death from cancer in 1981 keeps coming up, as though it haunts Mr. Blackwell daily.

Readers will know they’re in for a rollicking, fun, and vertigo-inducing wild ride of a memoir when by page seven, the author at age eighteen is getting punched out by Errol Flynn for attempting to steal one of his girlfriends.

Blackwell is a natural storyteller.

Fascinating.

Living well is the best revenge, and the author has lived very well indeed. Highly recommended..