Showing results by publisher "Faber & Faber" in History & Criticism

Suzi Ronson was working in a Beckenham hair salon in the early seventies when Mrs Jones came in for her weekly shampoo and set. After being introduced to her son David and his wife Angie, Suzi finds herself at the Bowies' bohemian apartment and is soon embroiled in their raucous world. Having crafted his iconic Ziggy Stardust hairstyle, Suzi becomes the only working woman in David's touring party and joins the Spiders from Mars as they perform around the globe.

When it comes to how societies commemorate their own distant dreams and catastrophes, we often think of books, archives, or memorials carved from stone. But in Time's Echo, Jeremy Eichler makes a revelatory case for the power of music as culture's memory, an art form uniquely capable of carrying forward meaning from the past. Eichler shows how four towering composers - Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Benjamin Britten and Dmitri Shostakovich - lived through the era of the Second World War and the Holocaust and later transformed their experiences into deeply moving works of music.

In America, in London, in Amsterdam, in Paris, revolutionary ideas fomenting since the late 1950s reached boiling point, culminating in a year in which the transient pop moment burst forth. Exploring the canonical figures, from The Beatles and Boty to Warhol and Reagan, 1966 delves deep into the social and cultural heart of the decade through masterfully compiled archival primary sources.

Over a prolific 40-year career, The Fall created a world that was influential, idiosyncratic and fiercely original - and defied simple categorisation. Their front man and lyricist, Mark E Smith, spun opaque tales that resisted conventional understanding; The Fall's worldview was an education in its own right. Who wouldn't want to be armed with a working knowledge of M R James, shipping-dock procedures, contemporary dance, Manchester City and Can? The group inspired and shaped the lives of those who listened to and tried to make sense of their work.

Leaving school and starting his career at Decca Records in 1958 at the age of sixteen, Tony King would soon find himself becoming close friends with Elton John, rekindling John Lennon and Yoko Ono's relationship, mediating a quarrelsome Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and spending time with Freddie Mercury in his final days - a far cry from his childhood days in Eastbourne. Living in an era of seismic social, technological and cultural transformation, King experienced these defining moments as a stalwart in London and New York's gay scenes.

Schumann: The Faces and the Masks is a groundbreaking account of a major composer whose life and works have been the subject of intense controversy ever since his attempted suicide and early death in an insane asylum. Schumann was a key figure in the Romanticism which swept Europe and America in the 19th century, inspiring writers, musicians and painters, delighting their enthralled audiences and reaching to the furthest corners of the world.

And the Roots of the Rhythm Remain is like no other. It shows how personalities, events and politics in Havana, Lagos, Buenos Aires, Soweto, Rio and Seville are as colourful and fascinating as anything that took place in Storyville, Harlem, Laurel Canyon or Liverpool. And, moreover, how jazz, r&b and rock 'n' roll would never have happened if it wasn't for sounds emanating from over the horizon and below the equator.

Drawing on eighty-six interviews with key architects of this jazz renaissance and those who came before them—from Shabaka Hutchings, Nubya Garcia and Moses Boyd to Gilles Peterson, Courtney Pine and Cleveland Watkiss— Unapologetic Expression captures the radical spirit of a vital British musical movement.

Journalist Aniefiok Ekpoudom travels the country to paint a compelling portrait of the dawn, boom and subsequent blossoming of UK rap and grime. Taking us from the heart of south London to the West Midlands and South Wales, he explores how a history of migration and an enduring spirit of resistance have shaped the current realities of these linked communities and the music they produce. These sounds have become vessels for the marginalised, carrying Black and working-class stories into the light.