Keith Altham, who has died aged 84 after suffering from Parkinson’s disease, was a music journalist and broadcaster who in the 1970s pioneered a brand-new career: rock music PR. After founding KA Publicity in 1971 he became the most celebrated music publicist in Britain, with a remarkable list of clients, many of whom he had interviewed as a writer. They included the Rolling Stones, the Who, Marc Bolan, the Beach Boys, Slade, Status Quo and Van Morrison.
Keith was a natural PR, because he understood the needs of both artists and music journalists, and because he had a flair for publicity, even while still a journalist. In 1966, when working at the New Musical Express, he was approached by the music entrepreneur Larry Page and asked if he could suggest a stage name for Reg Ball, a bricklayer who was lead singer for a struggling band, the Troggs. Altham suggested Reg Presley – and the name stuck. It appeared in the next issue of the NME (without Ball having been informed) and band’s next single, Wild Thing, was a hit.
The following year he was backstage at Finsbury Park Astoria for a Jimi Hendrix concert, where he chatted to Hendrix’s manager Chas Chandler, who asked how Hendrix could make a bigger impact. “Why don’t you set fire to your guitar?” suggested Keith – and so Hendrix did just that, using lighter fuel. He famously repeated the stunt later in 1967 at the Monterey pop festival, causing Ravi Shankar to run out of the festival in horror.
Keith started out working for the magazine Fabulous in the early 60s, interviewing Cilla Black and Brenda Lee, and in 1965 he moved to the New Musical Express, where he became features editor. He wrote about many of the major stars of the late 60s, including the Who, the Beatles and Hendrix – whom he interviewed eight times, including Hendrix’s final interview in September 1970.
He was present at the Beatles’ final performance, in 1969, on a cold rooftop over their Apple Corps headquarters in London. Addressing him as “FabsKeith” (because he liked to remind him he had started on Fabulous), John Lennon asked “do you want to borrow my coat?… Tough!” “And those,” Keith said, “were the last words he spoke to me.”
He became friends with many of the stars he met, but was certainly never sycophantic. He described Slade’s Dave Hill as “coming on stage like an over-decorated, perambulating Christmas tree”, and wrote that an interview with Keith Moon of the Who involved “imminent danger to your own person. I have always felt that Moon should be made to wear a placard reading ‘those riding on this machine do so at their own risk’.”
Later, as a client, Moon came into Keith’s office when he wasn’t there, and turned his desk over. Walking in later to observe the chaos, Keith shrugged and remarked: “Moon’s been in, has he?”
The incident was observed by Alan Edwards, who had been a music writer struggling to pay the rent until he was hired as Keith’s assistant “and within three days was off with the Who and Marc Bolan”. Now a successful music PR, Edwards then found himself “in an office of just one room, by Victoria station. There was me, three phones and Keith. That was the entire operation, representing the biggest names in rock’n’roll around the world.” Keith, he remembers, was a “voracious reader, and at the end of the day he would put his feet up and talk about Hemingway or Kerouac”.
He was successful, said Edwards “because he had been a journalist and knew what a story was. He had a soft, light touch … and he really cared about the people he represented”. The music writer Chris Welch said Keith did so well “because he knew which journalist would suit which artist – and he had a great sense of humour”.
From my experience he was efficient, thoughtful and enormous fun. He was a great raconteur and travelling companion, whether we were off to see Sting in Paris, the Who in Los Angeles, Eddy Grant in Barbados or the Rolling Stones in Florida (this last trip was filmed for an early edition of Newsnight).
He clearly enjoyed the company of both musicians and journalists, and after deciding to quit PR in the early 90s he founded the Scribblers, Pluckers, Thumpers and Squawkers lunches, bringing together many of those he had worked with. Held in Barnes, south-west London, not far from where he lived, these still-continuing fixtures were an opportunity for Keith to meet friends, and (of course) tell wry stories about life in the music industry.
In the 60s and early 70s he was a regular contributor to the BBC Radio 1 Scene and Heard programme, and he later appeared in several music TV documentaries, including the Channel 4 series My Generation (1995-96). He never wrote an autobiography, choosing instead to tell many of his stories through a series of open letters to former clients in No More Mr Nice Guy! (1999), republished as The PR Strikes Back (2001). It was an awkward format, but included some decidedly unflattering stories – Van Morrison being mistaken for a minicab driver being one of the kinder ones.
His appearances at the Scribblers lunches diminished over the past decade, as Parkinson’s progressed, and he was cared for by his family and helped by some of his former clients, including Sting and the Who.
Altham was Sting’s publicist for what the musician described as “many of the most successful, turbulent and difficult years of my career and life. In all of those years he was a true friend, a mentor, and often an annoyingly candid purveyor of home truths, pricking your inflated pretensions with an arch and pithy turn of phrase that would always leave you smiling.”
Born in Battersea, south-west London, Keith was the son of Stanley Altham, a print compositor, and his wife Eileen (nee Watts), a barmaid. He attended Hinchley Wood school, Esher, and had ambitions of becoming a sports journalist – his early hero was Ken Jones, the Daily Mirror’s “Voice of Sport”. But after being offered a job by Fabulous he switched interests to become a legend in the British music business.
Keith’s second wife, Adelaide (nee Sadler), died in 2020. He is survived by two children, Nancy and Bryan, from his marriage to Maggi Bridger, which ended in divorce, three grandchildren, Sam, Finn and Tate, and his sister, Janice.
• Keith Altham, publicist and writer, born 8 May 1941; died 29 March 2026
