Showing titles in Music

This is the never-before-told story of the musical revolution that happened right under the nose of the Reagan '80s - when a small but sprawling network of bands, labels, fanzines, radio stations, and other subversives reenergized American rock with punk rock's do-it-yourself credo and created music that was deeply personal, often brilliant, always challenging, and immensely influential. This sweeping chronicle of music, politics, drugs, fear, loathing, and faith has been recognized as an indie rock classic in its own right.

Bon: The Last Highway is the original, forensic, unflinching and masterful biography Bon Scott has so richly deserved and music fans around the world have been waiting for. The legend of the man known around the world simply as 'Bon' only grows with each passing year - in death the AC/DC icon has become a god to millions of people - but how much of his story is myth or pure fabrication, and how much of the real man do we know?

Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers is the first book to celebrate the classic-era Motörhead lineup of Lemmy Kilmister, "Fast" Eddie Clarke, and Phil "Philthy Animal" Taylor. Through interviews with all of the principal troublemakers, Martin Popoff celebrates the formation of the band and the records that made them legends.

In his song "You Can't Stop Rock and Roll" Ozzy Osbourne sings, "Rock and roll is my religion and my law". And that's why Raising Hell is a must-have for anyone who wants to hear about the iconoclastic culture of headbangers and the wild lives they lead. The book contains the crazy, funny, and sometimes horrifying anecdotes musicians have told about a lifestyle both invigorating and at times self-destructive.

Malcolm Evans, the Beatles’ long-time roadie, personal assistant, and devoted friend, was an invaluable member of the band’s inner circle. A towering figure in horn-rimmed glasses, Evans loomed large in the Beatles’ story, contributing at times as a performer and sometime lyricist, while struggling mightily to protect his beloved “boys.” For Beatles devotes, Mal’s life and untimely death have always been shrouded in mystery. For decades, his diaries, manuscripts, and vast collection of memorabilia was missing, seemingly lost forever…until now.

On a sunny Saturday morning in May 1956, a fifteen-year-old, then called Harry Webb, was mooching down Waltham Cross High Street, with two mates. They heard some music blaring out of a parked car. It stopped them in their tracks. The song was 'Heartbreak Hotel' by Elvis Presley. It sounded like nothing they had ever heard before. In that instant, the schoolboy who was destined to take the hit parade by storm as Cliff Richard fell in love with rock and roll. It gave him the thrill, the purpose and the mission that has shaped his life ever since.

It was that voice, those eyes, that hair, the cars, the girls. Elvis Presley revolutionized American pop culture when, at age 21, he became a modern superstar. A Memphis Beau Brummel even before he found fame, Elvis had a personal style that, like his music, had an immediate impact on his audience that continues to influence us today.

Disgraceland is the award-winning music podcast hosted by Jake Brennan that explores the alleged true crime antics and criminal connections of musicians we love like Jerry Lee Lewis, the Rolling Stones, Taylor Swift, David Bowie, Cardi B, the Grateful Dead, Amy Winehouse, Bob Marley, and more. Disgraceland is a scripted, single voice narrative storytelling podcast that melds true crime, music history, mystery, and misadventure. Disgraceland is not a journalistic podcast. It is an entertainment podcast inspired by true events. Certain dialogue and scenes are sometimes fictionalized for dramatic...

Simon Reynolds's first book in eight years is a celebration of music that feels like a taste of tomorrow. Sounds that prefigure pop music's future - the vanguard genres and heroic innovators whose discoveries eventually get accepted by the wider mass audience. But it's also about the way music can stir anticipation for a thrillingly transformed world just around the corner: a future that might be utopian or dystopian, but at least will be radically changed and exhilaratingly other.

A sweeping and evocative memoir from the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, Grammy Award-winning, platinum selling singer-songwriter Michael McDonald, written with his friend, Emmy Award-nominated actor, comedian, and #1 New York Times bestselling author Paul Reiser.

In Music as a Mirror of History, Great Courses favorite Professor Greenberg of San Francisco Performances returns with a fascinating and provocative premise: Despite the abstractness and the universality of music - and our habit of listening to it divorced from any historical context - music is a mirror of the historical setting in which it was created. Music carries a rich spectrum of social, cultural, historical, and philosophical information, all grounded in the life and experience of the composer.

Guy Pratt came of age just as bass playing became sexy. Having dallied with punk legend Sylvain Sylvain, Pratt suddenly found himself on Top of the Pops and supporting David Bowie with smooth Australian outfit Icehouse. He became bass player to the stars, crawling from studio to bar and hotel to stadium Portakabin with the likes of Pink Floyd, Robert Palmer, Womack &Womack and Bryan Ferry. Guy has recorded with everyone from Madonna and Michael Jackson to McFly.

Geddy Lee is one of rock and roll's most respected bassists. For nearly five decades, his playing and work as co-writer, vocalist and keyboardist has been an essential part of the success story of Canadian progressive rock trio Rush. Here for the first time is his account of life inside and outside the band.

Kid Congo Powers has been described as a “legendary guitarist and paragon of cool” with “the greatest resume ever of anyone in rock music." That unique imprint on rock history stems from being a member of not one but three beloved, groundbreaking, and influential groups—Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, the Cramps, and last but not least, The Gun Club, the wildly inventive punk-blues band he co-founded. Some New Kind of Kick begins as an intimate coming-of-age tale.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink, written and read by Elvis Costello. In a career spanning four decades, Elvis Costello (born Declan MacManus) has made himself a huge reputation through his tunes, lyrics and occasional bad behaviour. Now, for the first time, he is telling his story.

On Thursday, 1st July, 1999, Dr Nina Simone gave a rare performance as part of Nick Cave's Meltdown Festival. After the show, in a state of awe, Warren Ellis crept onto the stage, took Dr Simone's piece of chewed gum from the piano, wrapped it in her stage towel and put it in a Tower Records bag. The gum remained with him for 20 years—a sacred totem, his creative muse, a conduit that would eventually take Ellis back to his childhood and his relationship with found objects, growing in significance with every passing year.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Book of Longing by Leonard Cohen. Book of Longing is Leonard Cohen's first book of new poetry since Book of Mercy was published two decades ago. It collects Cohen's poetry written between the 1980s and the present. Book of Longing demonstrates the range and depth of Cohen's work, revealing an extraordinary gift of language that speaks with rare clarity, passion and timelessness.

Reissued for the 40th anniversary of the Oscar-winning, Sissy Spacek-starring film of the same name, Coal Miner's Daughter recounts Loretta Lynn's astonishing journey to become one of the original queens of country music. Loretta grew up dirt poor in the mountains of Kentucky, she was married at 13 years old, and became a mother soon after. At the age of 24, her husband, Doo, gave her a guitar as an anniversary present. Soon, she began penning songs and singing in front of honky-tonk audiences and eventually made her way to Nashville, securing her place in country music history.

18 and Life on Skid Row tells the story of a boy who spent his childhood moving from Freeport, Bahamas, to California and finally to Canada and who, at the age of eight, discovered the gift that would change his life. Throughout his career, Sebastian Bach has sold over 20 million records both as the lead singer of Skid Row and as a solo artist.

In 1999, a former dishwasher from Detroit became the most influential music artist in the world. Eminem's dexterity, wit and honesty turned him into one of the biggest-selling artists of all time and changed the landscape of music and pop culture as we know it. Then, in 2006, at the height of his fame, he all but disappeared. Beset by nonstop controversies, bewildering fame, a debilitating drug problem and personal tragedies, he withdrew from the world.