Bob Solly

UK guitarist, singer, songwriter, journalistic writer, radio host. Born 4. April 1945 Died 7. January 2020 Following his years with Maidstone based band The Manish Boys (which famously included around a year with David Robert Jones a/k/a David Bowie fronting the band), Bob continued working as a songwriter with writing partner Paul Rodriguez (2), mainly working for producer Shel Talmy. After moving away from the music business he became a very successful designer and architect and spent many years criss-crossing the world while overseeing numerous prestigious commercial property developments. After settling back in the UK he focussed firmly on his real passion in life, collecting; mainly many thousands of records, though his spare rooms quickly filled with, among other things, a huge first-editions library, items on crime and other rare British social memorabilia and collections of photographs. After many years of serious International record collecting and record dealing it was thought that Bob’s vinyl collection alone was second only in size to that of the BBC’s. Following his death contents of his collection and estate have been available at auction houses like Bonhams (October 2020, musical instruments) and Omega Auctions (from March 2023 onwards, vinyl records) and others. His knowledge of post war British and American popular music was renown and in the late 90’s he became a regular, highly regarded contributor to Record Collector Magazine, also writing Record Collector’s incisive 2005 book, ‘100 Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Records’. In 2009 he began regular radio broadcasts with Channel Radio in Kent, his eclectic weekly show relying solely on vinyl singles chosen from his vast collection. Over the many hundreds of hours broadcasting he never played any single track more than once.