Had I realized what I was missing - the work is an invaluable source when you're looking at the strands that wove together to make the hybrid beast we came to know as rock & roll, and subsequently simply as rock - I wouldn't have missed buying the copy of his second book, the long out of print Making Tracks: The History of Atlantic Records. I saw a copy on the shelves of a convenience store in Townsville's North Ward in 1974, and while money was tight at the time, in hindsight I should've bought it then, as I haven't seen a copy since.
By the 1970s he was presenting a show called Honky Tonk on Radio London, and was part of the writers' collective that founded the monthly Let It Rock, which may have lacked some of the fan fervour of ZigZag, but made up for it in authoritative attention to detail. Wish I still had my copies...
Without those old copies of Let It Rock or a subscription to Rock’s Back Pages I can't verify that Charlie conducted the interview with Dr John that was my introduction to some of the names credited on Dr John's Gumbo.
A Gillett-compiled album Another Saturday Night produced a minor hit in the shape of Johnnie Allen's Cajun version of Chuck Berry's Promised Land but also included the first version I'd heard of the Bobby Charles classic Before I Grow Too Old.
British fans had their first exposure to Dire Straits, Graham Parker and Elvis Costello through demos played on Gillett's Sunday morning Honky Tonk.
While much of the later Dire Straits material wasn't quite my cup of tea, those first few times I heard Sultans of Swing are indelibly etched on my consciousness, and while my interest in Parker's work tapered after he parted company with The Rumour, I remain a huge fan of Elvis Costello to this day.