William Saunders was born in London in 1958 and began his writing career in the underground magazines that sprang up around the punk movement at the end of the 1970s. One of his songs was played on the legendary John Peel show, and an early poem awarded a prize by Pete Brown, the lyricist for Cream. After an apprenticeship at the rough end of rock and roll, where he worked as a roadie, fly-poster, and t-shirt printer, he graduated into mainstream journalism and spent the 1980s working in magazine publishing. He became a freelance writer in the 1990s and has contributed to publications as diverse as Just Seventeen and the Church Times. He wrote a column for the Guardian for over a decade and contributes to several other newspapers, including the Independent and the Express. He has also published poetry and short stories.
He became interested in Jimi Hendrix and psychedelic London through talking to the people who were there.