Lawrence Schulman will publish a new book about Peter Allen in 2025

In 2025, BearManor Media will publish Lawrence Schulman’s third book for BearManor Media. It is called Peter Allen: Somebody’s Angel – The Boy From Oz In The Key of Camp and is a comprehensive overview of the late singer-songwriter’s career. Schulman first published an article about Allen in the ARSC Journal in 2023, which won the 2023 ARSC Best Article Award. Schulman then revised and expanded the article into a chapter in his 2024 Bearmanor book FREE: Words on Music by a Hi-Def Critic in an MP3 World, which included new interviews and information. For the 2025 book, Schulman further revised and expanded the article to include even more interviews, expanded chapters, new photos (many published for the first time), and new appendices: A complete songography and discography, covers, acting credits, and television and radio.

Peter Allen was born in Tenterfield, New South Wales, in 1944 and died of AIDS-related throat cancer in 1992. His career spanned from the 1950s, when he and Chris Bell formed a duo called The Allen Brothers, performing in Australia and Asia, to 1992, during which time he recorded albums and played on such prestigious stages as Carnegie Hall and Radio City Music Hall. His extraordinary performances and brilliant songs are somewhat forgotten today, but Schulman’s new book is written to restore Allen’s importance to 20th-century American popular music, placing him in the ranks of George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen and others.

Lawrence Schulman, a graduate of Stony Brook University, the Sorbonne, and CREAR, a school of film and video studies in Gouvieux, France, is a music producer, critic, and translator who has compiled numerous CD sets on Judy Garland over the past three decades. A collector and audiophile, Schulman has worked with such distinguished mastering engineers as Robert Parker, Jon M. Samuels, Gary Galo, Peter Rynston, John H. Haley, Robin Cherry, Peter Reynolds, Nick Dellow, and Richard Moore. His lecture on Garland, “Moments of Magic,” has been heard in New York, Boston, and various locations in Maine, where he lives. While living in Paris between 1971 and 1997, he taught and translated, and currently translates, for the French website OpusHD.net, which specializes in classical high-definition recordings. During his Paris years, he also worked as a producer and presenter for French public radio. Since 1994 he has written recording and book reviews for the ARSC Journal, as well as three original articles: “The Plagued History of Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli ‘Live’ at the London Palladium, 1965-2009,” “Judy Garland: The Road Gets Rougher, 1960-1969,” and “Somebody’s Angel: Peter Allen, The Boy from Oz in the Key of Camp – A 21st-Century Reevaluation of His Music.” His most recent CDs are Judy Garland – A Celebration by Trapeze Music & Entertainment/Acrobat Music (2024), Judy Garland: The Two-A-Day Is Back in Town, Closing Night at the Palace, February 24, 1952 by JSP Records (2023), Judy Garland – The Lost Vegas Show by High Definition Tape Transfers (2023), Judy Garland – The Final Concert In Copenhagen by High Definition Tape Transfers (2022), Judy Garland – The Greatest Night in Show Business History, Carnegie Hall, April 23, 1961 by High Definition Tape Transfers (2022), Classic Concert Series: Judy At Carnegie Hall – Judy In Person by AVID (2022), and Judy Garland – Live in Paris, 1960 by Frémeaux & Associés (2022). Finally, his translation from the French of Bertrand Tessier’s Judy Garland: Splendor and Downfall of a Legend, to which he also wrote a foreword, was published by BearManor Media in early 2023, and his own acclaimed bestseller Garland – That’s Beyond Entertainment – Reflections on Judy Garland, with a foreword by former ARSC Journal sound recording editor John H. Haley and an afterword by longtime ARSC Journal reviewer James Fisher, was published by the same publisher in late 2023. His most recent book is FREE: Words on Music by a Hi-Def Critic in an MP3 World, also published by BearManor Media in 2024.