Ovais Naqvi grew up in London and has had a long career in venture capital, publishing and finance, including at two leading VC firms in emerging markets.

He left corporate life in the mid-2000s to become the co-editor of Taschen’s “GOAT: A Tribute to Muhammad Ali”, a landmark 30-kg, limited-edition signed by Muhammad Ali. He founded Gloria, publishing the limited-edition units “Pelé”, the definitive “New York” and “Scarfe on the Wall”, celebrating Pink Floyd’s album, each unit signed by Roger Waters and illustrator Gerald Scarfe.

Of Before We Forget, he says, “I grew up in North West London (the home of Charlie Watts, Keith Moon and Nicky Hopkins) and have been a lifelong heavy rock fan going back to the Hammersmith Odeon days in the 1980s and being transfixed, even in Row 35, by the sight of Jon Lord on stage. The idea of this biography was to pay it back and celebrate his genius, but to approach Lord from the direction of his sound, instrumentation and musical DNA. I was less interested in his ‘life’, wanting to protect his privacy (as was his hallmark). I wanted to know how such eclectic musicality emerged from a semi-detached home in Averil Road, Leicester in the 1940s.

“He could play jazz, blues, R&B, soul and pop and compose orchestral music, alongside co-inventing decibel-breaking heavy rock, all with equal facility. That’s incredible in itself and led me to ask ‘how’, with what kind of a musical brain – and with which tools – did he manage to achieve all that? That is, in essence, what drove this unusual biographical approach about a quite beloved man”.