BACK in August 1963, the manager of Dunfermline’s Kinema Ballroom received a letter from a local music fan. The letter writer said that, because he was under age, he was asking him for permission to attend a concert by Gerry & The Pacemakers.

The manager lived opposite the 12-year-old’s aunt, who put in a good word for him. The manager gave his assent, and come the night of the show, the youngster, Ken Beveridge, and his friend waited in line to see the band. Older fans offered them substantial sums for their tickets, but they declined.

Ken was not to know it, but that gig was the start of a remarkable lifelong devotion to concerts. Over the decades he has seen more than 600 acts, from Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin to the Rolling Stones, Jackson Browne, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young and Joe Strummer. He saw Dr John in New Orleans. He has attended countless festivals (though he’s only been twice to Glastonbury, the most famous of them). He has been to concerts in LA, Nashville, Byron Bay in New South Wales, Dusseldorf and Melbourne. At one Jackson Browne gig, he found himself a few seats behind Billy Connolly.

On one memorable occasion, Ken paid for an artist to play in his living-room. Rab Noakes, accompanied by the harmonica player Fraser Speirs, played a blinding set in Ken's then-home in Bicester in September 2008. That gig makes Ken's list of all-time favourite shows (see separate panel).

He has seen Dolly Parton ("under much coercion, it must be said," he concedes), the Waterboys, Tom Paxton, Peter Green, David Gray, James Brown, Mavis Staples, and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. He has also seen numerous Scottish acts: Stealers Wheel, Lonnie Donegan, Donovan, Deacon Blue, Del Amitri, Teenage Fanclub and Simple Minds. He has seen gigs by bands whose name is known, perhaps, to relatively small handfuls of fans. He never saw the Beatles, or Elvis, or Sinatra, but wishes he had. He saw, but wishes he hadn’t, Sting, and Thunderclap Newman, and the Gaslight Anthem.

And now, at the age of 67, Ken, a retired civil servant, has put it all down in a book. A Life in Live Music, it’s called. “I dread to think how much money I have spent following my hobby,” he writes. “I do know that on the whole it has been worth every penny.”

He had already caught a couple of local bands at the Kinema, but Gerry & The Pacemakers were the first famous group he saw. Music had been in his blood, he says in an interview, “from when I was five, six or seven, when I would listen to Radio Luxembourg and watch TV shows like the Six-Five Special.

“I was listening to the likes of Elvis Presley and a lot of American bands in the late fifties, and got into the Beatles when I was a bit older, and I was introduced to the music of Dylan when I was about 12.”

Indeed, Ken saw Dylan at Edinburgh’s ABC Theatre in May 1966, just three nights after Dylan’s infamous concert in Manchester when a fan shouted ‘Judas!’, furious at the singer abandoning his folk roots in favour of electric guitars and rock ‘n’ roll. Ken also saw Dylan at the 1969 Isle of Wight festival, when the singer played his first public show since suffering a motorbike accident three years earlier).

He owns everything Dylan has ever done but in the book he is candid enough however, to declare that although he has seen Dylan between 15 and 20 times, “he has been worth the entrance fee on about three of these occasions."

He counts himself as “extremely fortunate” to have seen Led Zeppelin at two long-ago summer festivals – the Bath Festival of Blues in 1969 and the Bath Festival of Progressive Music the following year. Inbetween he caught them at Newcastle in January 1970. The powerhouse performances at each, he can never forget. He and his friends had no option but to buy tickets and hire a mini-bus for the Newcastle gig as the band was not playing any Scottish dates on that tour. A week before it took place, however, Zeppelin announced an Edinburgh show, after all. Nevertheless, the Newcastle gig was “one of the loudest and best concerts I was lucky to be at.”

Of the two Rolling Stones gigs he has seen, the first, at Wembley Stadium, in 1991, was outstanding “they were fantastic, absolutely superb”, he says - but the second, at Twickenham in 2003, was marred by what he describes as an “atrocious” sound system.

In the sixties and early seventies Ken attended lots of festivals, including Shepton Mallet (venue of the Bath Festival of Progressive Music) and the Isle of Wight in 1969.

“I got married in 1974, when I was still going to the occasional concert to see the likes of Harry Chapin, Dylan or Van Morrison, or Jackson Browne,” he says, “but when I got divorced in ’96 I started going to concerts again, but with serious intentions.

“That’s when I started going to Glastonbury [1998 and 1999] and Trowbridge [Pump Festival]. I’ve been to the Cambridge Folk Festival and I still go there every year.”

The book lists all of the festivals, one by one. Ken attended every Cambridge Folk Festival from 1996 to 2009, and returned after a six-year absence to go to the 2014 and 2915 events. That second one was a somewhat emotional affair; a friend of his, whose son had taken his life, invited Ken and others to the festival as a way of celebrating the young man’s life.

At the Bryon Bay festival in NSW, which he has been to on three occasions, Ken saw everyone from James Brown to Solomon Burke and Mick Fleetwood’s Fleetwood Mac. He has been a regular at Fairport Convention’s Cropredy Festival, too, and attended many annual editions of the London Fleah (later London Feis), which again allowed him to enjoy dozens of acts.

Like many dedicated music fans, Ken has attended his share of big stadium gigs - the Stones' show at Twickenham in 2003 comes to mind - but, again like many, he is sceptical of them. "I don't find them all that great, really," he says - though he does concede that Springsteen "is always good" in such big outdoor settings.

He is likewise "hacked off with the booking fees and other sorts of fees" levied by the dominant ticket companies. "I don't know why they charge then sometimes." He cites two concerts, one of them by Paul Simon, that suffered a last-minute cancellations. In both cases, the cost of the tickets was refunded, but the booking fee was not returned.

He also regrets that for many concerts today, fans are required to print off their tickets at home, rather than receiving them in the post. Many fans treasure their concert tickets (the front and back covers of Ken's book is littered with them), but it's harder to treasure a sheet of A4 that you had to print.

That said, Ken has had a remarkable, and hugely enjoyable, lifetime of attending concerts. It won't come as a surprise that he is still hooked on the live-music experience.

In recent weeks he's seen a new band, Bennett Wilson Poole; a Swedish folk singer called Benjamin Folke Thomas; John Hiatt at Under The Bridge in Chelsea; and Lukas Nelson and The Promise Of The Real (Neil Young's new backing band) at The Garage near Highbury, in London. "I went," says Ken, "to the Static Roots Festival in Germany earlier this month. I'm going to the Cambridge Folk Festival in August, and the annual Americana Music Awards in Nashville, in September.

"I have also bitten the bullet and am booked to attend The Outlaw Country Cruise in January/February next year, which sails from Tampa, in Florida, to the Bahamas."

Old gig-going habits do, indeed, die very hard.

* A Life in Live Music is available from the publishing company Blurb in paperback (£14.99) and hardback (£19.99). P&P extra. blurb.co.uk

Ken's Top 10

Bob Dylan, Edinburgh, 1966; Led Zeppelin, Newcastle, January 1971; Paul Simon, Bournemouth, 2016; Neil Young, London, 2001; Van Morrison, Swindon, 1992; Paul McCartney & Wings, Edinburgh, July 1975; Jackson Browne, London, July 1996; Willie Nile, Kilkenny, May 2007; Rab Noakes, front room of Ken's house, 2008; The Who, Dunfermline, 1969.