It turned out that John Kealey, who wrote a highly critical review (apologies to John - I originally described it as a 'bad' review, which gives the wrong impression) of my book about Faust, is also on the Faust mailing list, so I mailed him this defence:

1) "The problem with this book is that it is written as a fan's view on the band and not as a "proper" book on the band"

I don't believe that 'proper' books about music exist in any meaningful way. A partial, lopsided, idiosyncratic view is the only one that matters - as long as the author is honest about it being so and doesn't posture as having achieved neutral objectivity. Books that have that kind of approach tend to end up being not much more than scrap books of press statements.

2) "Another irritation ... is that despite it being a book on Faust, Wilson spends an inordinate amount of time discussing Frank Zappa."

I use Zappa as a lens through which to talk about music, in relation to Faust. the amount of zappa-talk in the book is not supposed to be an index of how much he 'influenced' Faust.

If I paint a landscape from my window, I wouldn't expect to be criticised for overemphasising the importance of windows (so to say.)

3) Historically / objectively, I think I provide something more interesting than an account of the comings and goings, movements and thoughts of the individuals in Faust. I try to paint a picture of the world of popular/rock music in a way that lights up Faust's place within it. I don't try to psychoanalyse the members of the group or provide biographies, but I provide a (rough) psycho-political analysis of the world that, I think, makes their significance and achievement more apparent.

4) "If Faust made music in a relative vacuum it is counter-intuitive spend so much time discussing influences"

But did i actually do that? I'm not sure that I was at all interested in 'influences' in any traditional sense. I was more interested in historical symmetries and convergences, quite apart from any line of direct 'influence', which tends to be interesting only in inverse proportion to the thing being 'influenced'. No one has ever talked about the influences on God, for example, whereas the influences on Oasis and obvious and manifold ;-)

5) "It is a shame that Wilson did not try to ... carry out new interviews with engineer Kurt Graupner and producer Uwe Nettelbeck"

That was largely because someone else was doing that at the same time, preparing a - ahem - 'proper' book. this has not (yet?) appeared. Even then, i probably wouldn't have tried. I would consider that a job for someone engaged in, let's say, a less interesting view of things :-)

In short, the reason I published the book myself was purely because if I had taken it to a traditional music book publisher they would have insisted that I take out all of the idiosyncratic bits in order to focus it more neatly on a traditional (bourgeois, literalist, ahistorical, pseudo-objective) history that would surely have been useful as a crib on what happened when (as if that really mattered), but, imho, would not be nearly so illuminating (again, you can light up a room from only one corner of it).

What we need isn't a 'proper book' on Faust, but five hundred personal, idiosyncratic, lopsided, hugely over-opinionated books about them.

Imagine that, after the very first Faust rehearsal, one of the group had said; "that's all very well, and quite interesting in it's own way, but what we need to do is start making proper music, with a proper beginning, middle and end, and a normal structure that anyone who has read - sorry, heard - other songs can easily understand"..?

would you have put that guy in charge of musical direction, or packed him off to get a job shuffling papers ;-)