Dick Witts

Richard "Dick" Witts (born in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, England) is an English musicologist, music historian, and ex leader of 1980s band The Passage, whose recordings were at times made by Witts alone. Today Witts is an academic, having published a history of the Arts Council in 1998, and lectures on modern music in London and Edinburgh. His first book, Nico – the Lives and Lies of an Icon, was a biographical study of the German singer and songwriter (Virgin Books, 1993). Witts now lives in Liverpool and is a writer who has lectured at the University of Edinburgh, Goldsmiths College, London, the University of Surrey in Guildford and the University of Sussex. He was appointed Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh where he made a simple catalogue of the archive of Sir Donald Francis Tovey (1875–1940). In 2010, he was invited by Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, to design an Honours course in music. His third book, a study of the music and history of The Velvet Underground, was published by Equinox (UK) and the Indiana University Press (USA) in September 2006. He has also written chapters for the following academic books: Kraftwerk: Music Non-Stop (Continuum, 2011), Mark E. Smith and the Fall: Art, Music and Politics (Ashgate, 2010), and the Cambridge Companion To Recorded Music (Cambridge University Press, 2009). Witts is mentioned in the book Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music. He is credited with sending a package containing some of Aphex Twin's music to Karlheinz Stockhausen. He is currently researching a book on the history of British music from 1941 to 2000.