Cohn was born in
London,
England and brought up in
Derry in
Northern Ireland. He is the son of historian
Norman Cohn and Russian writer
Vera Broido. An incomer to the tight-knit town, he spent most of his time at the local record shop and the walk there, from his home on campus at
Magee University College, inspired one of his earliest stories, "Delinquent in Derry". He left the city to attend the
Royal Grammar School in
Newcastle upon Tyne in England, then moved to London. Cohn has since published articles, novels and music books regularly. When reviewing a rough mix of
the Who's rock opera
Tommy, he told the group members that the album lacked a hit single. Hearing this,
Pete Townshend decided to take the song "
Pinball Wizard", which he had already written knowing that Cohn was a fan of
pinball, and incorporate it into the rock opera. Cohn also panned
The Beatles and
Abbey Road upon their release in reviews for
The New York Times. It has long been rumoured that Cohn's novel
I Am Still the Greatest Says Johnny Angelo was an inspiration for
David Bowie's album
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. He wrote the 1976
New York article "
Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night", which was the source material for the movie
Saturday Night Fever. and the trafficking charges were subsequently dropped. Instead, he was given five years' probation and fined $5,000 for possession. Cohn was a columnist for
The Guardian in the mid- to late 1990s as he researched his book on the underbelly of England,
Yes We Have No: Adventures in the Other England. He is also a regular contributor to
Granta. In 2016,
Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom was listed by
The Guardians Robert McCrum as one of the "100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time." It and
The Heart of the World were subsequently reissued by Penguin UK's Vintage Classics imprint. == Bibliography ==