Born in Henley-on-Thames in 1961, Chris Tiller learnt his journalistic chops at local paper, the Wargrave Advertiser, having convinced the editor to take him on as ‘rock and pop co-respondent’. Largely as a way to promote his own band, Tiller set about writing features on the local acts around the area in the hope of discovering an emerging scene. This, however, proved difficult and with only three local bands (including his own) the emerging scene failed to emerge. Both parties acknowledged their mistakes and he left the paper after three weeks by more or less mutual consent.

Relocating to nearby Reading, he soon realised he didn’t have what it took to follow his own musical ambitions and focused instead on documenting those that did. It was at the newly launched Chiltern Sounds, the Thames Valley’s premier music publication, that Tiller, in the words of a colleague, “honed his skills to the point of near invisibility”.

His breakthrough came with his now classic account of life on the road with stoner-fantasy-metal merchants, Goblin’s Ring, with whom he briefly shared a squatted tithe barn in Binfield Heath. With no definitive style to speak of, Tiller’s work is notable largely for its sheer volume and variety, contributing features to Q and Mojo, reviews and word-puzzles to heavy-rock glossy Powerkord as well as editing and self-publishing home-spun folk fanzine, Fields of Wicker.

A growing preoccupation (referred to as ‘obsession’ in his divorce hearings) with overlooked folk legend Vic Briggs led to further investigations into the stories of Britain’s forgotten musical heroes and for the last eight years he has been working on ‘All the Suns of Albion’, an exhaustive and exhausting thirty-two-volume compendium of neglected British music, with fellow writer Andy Blackwell.

A keen amateur walker with a passion for Dutch cuisine, Chris Tiller is now single and lives with his grown-up son, Pat, just outside Sonning Common.

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