Showing titles in Music

Brought to you by Penguin. “I’m not sure anyone knows who I really am. So here it is.” The real highs. The real lows. The Real Girl. Mutya Buena was only thirteen when she became one third of the original line-up of the iconic girl band Sugababes. As she launched into fame, her life became...

Lawrence is the greatest pop star who never made it, his dreams of glory thwarted over the past five decades by bad luck and self-sabotage. At sixty-one, he set off on a new mission: to escape poverty, obscurity and the humiliation of kids at the bus stop laughing at him by writing a smash hit. But what is the cost of a dream? In Street-Level Superstar, bestselling author and journalist Will Hodgkinson follows Lawrence as he rebuilds his life.

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.

The New York Times bestseller Nikki Sixx is one of the most respected, recognizable, and entrepreneurial icons in the music industry. As the founder of Mötley Crüe who is now in his twenty-first year of sobriety, Sixx is incredibly passionate about his craft and wonderfully open about his life...

For the first time, rock music icon Gregg Allman, one of the founding members of The Allman Brothers Band, tells the full story of his life and career in My Cross to Bear. No subject is taboo, as one of the true giants of rock ’n’ roll opens up about his Georgia youth, his long struggle with...

For 5 years after they'd swapped sought-after apprenticeships for life on the dole, brothers William and Jim Reid sat up till the early hours in the front room of their parents' East Kilbride council house, plotting their path to world domination. They knew they couldn't play in the same band because they'd argue too much, so they'd describe their dream ensembles to each other until finally they realised that these two perfect bands were actually the same band, and the name of that band was The Jesus and Mary Chain. 

The story begins in 1970. The day after Jimi Hendrix's death...dairy farmer Michael Eavis invites revellers to his field in Somerset to attend a 'Pop, Folk & Blues' festival. Tickets are £1 each, enticing more than a thousand customers with the promise of music, dance, poetry, theatre, lights and spontaneous entertainment - as well as free milk from his own Worthy Farm cows. Fast forward through five tumultuous decades, and the Eavises' vision now encompasses a gigantic 'city in the fields', with a total annual population nearing a quarter of a million. 

Well over a century after Wagner's death, the man and his music are as controversial as ever. Praised for his profound insights into the workings of the human heart, he has also been condemned as a dangerous libertine, a proto-fascist and an arrogant bore. His vast four-part operatic Ring cycle has been elevated as one of the greatest achievements of western culture and dismissed as an unparalleled example of creative megalomania.

The musician and Hip Hop legend—hailed as “the greatest MC of all time” and compared to Thelonious Monk—reimagines the writing handbook in this memoir and guide that incorporates the soulful genius, confidence, and creativity of a master artist. When he exploded on the music scene...

The brand new memoir from James Acaster: cult comedian, bestselling author of Classic Scrapes, undercover cop, receiver of cabbages. PERFECT SOUND WHATEVER is a love letter to the healing power of music, and how one man's obsessive quest saw him defeat the bullshit of one year with the beauty of...

The Inner Game of music is that which takes place in the mind, played against such elusive opponents as nervousness, self doubt, and fear of failure. Using the same principles of "natural learning" W. Timothy Gallwey developed so successfully for tennis, golf, and skiing and applying them to his own field, noted musician Barry Green shows how to acknowledge and overcome these internal obstacles in order to bring a new quality to the experience and learning of music. 

From the author of the million-copy selling Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation and the bestselling John Lennon: The Life comes a revealing portrait of George Harrison, the most undervalued and mysterious Beatle. Despite being hailed as one of the best guitarists of his era, George Harrison...

A Recorded Books Audio Original production of songs and stories performed by Dolly herself, Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics goes beyond the glitz, glamour, and rhinestones to the warmth, heart, and soul of a treasured pop-culture icon.   

In 1990, Sinéad O’Connor’s video for “Nothing Compares 2 U” turned her into a superstar. Two years later, an appearance on Saturday Night Live turned her into a scandal. For many people—including, for years, the author—what they knew of O’Connor stopped there. Allyson McCabe believes it’s time to reassess our old judgments about Sinéad O’Connor and to expose the machinery that built her up and knocked her down.

**THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** HOLLYWOOD PARK is a remarkable memoir of a tumultuous life. Mikel Jollett was born into one of the country's most infamous cults, and subjected to a childhood filled with poverty, addiction, and emotional abuse. Yet, ultimately, his is a story of fierce...

In this updated edition of Graeme Thomson’s critically acclaimed biography, a near-exhaustive survey of Kate Bush’s life surveys everything from her upbringing in South London to her stunning return to live performance in August 2014. The original edition of Under the Ivy was called one of the best music biographies ever, and this updated edition adds a wealth of new research to include the complete scope of Bush’s oeuvre. With new interviews and in-depth analysis of her triumphant return to the stage, this is the most complete Kate Bush biography and a must for any fan.

Brought to you by Penguin. A dazzlingly original reassessment of the power and plurality of women's singing voices by the critically acclaimed author of Art Monsters and Scaffolding For millennia, women’s raised voices have been heard as unruly, uncivilized, dangerous. Women singing were cast...

With Duran Duran, John Taylor has created some of the greatest songs of our time. From the disco dazzle of debut single 'Planet Earth' right up to their latest number one album All You Need is Now, Duran Duran has always had the power to sweep the world onto its feet. It's been a ride - and for...

When this bestselling autobiography was originally released, readers were shocked: The Long Hard Road Out of Hell was the darkest, funniest, most controversial, and best-selling rock book of its time—and it became the template, both visually and narratively, for almost every rock book since...

In this breathtaking cultural history filled with exclusive, never-before-revealed details, celebrated rock journalist Joel Selvin tells the definitive story of the Rolling Stones’ infamous Altamont concert in San Francisco, the disastrous historic event that marked the end of the idealistic...