Showing titles in Music

What was it like to be Elvis Presley? What did it feel like when impossible fame made him its prisoner? As the world's first rock star there was no one to tell him what to expect, no one with whom he could share the burden of being himself - of being Elvis. On the outside he was all charm, sex...

Through his pioneering work in the legendary country-punk band Uncle Tupelo, to his enduring legacy as the creative force behind the unclassifiable sound of Wilco, Jeff Tweedy has weaved his way between the underground and the mainstream - and back again. Funny, disarming and deeply honest, his memoir casts light on his unique creative process and the stories that shaped his life and career.

A Rolling Stone journalist presents the story of the late singer-songwriter Justin Townes Earle. When Justin Townes Earle died of an overdose alone in his Nashville apartment, his death sent waves of grief through the country-Americana music community. The son of alt-country hellraiser Steve...

A group biography of '90s punk rock told through the prism of Green Day, The Offspring, NOFX, Rancid, Bad Religion, Social Distortion, and more Two decades after the Sex Pistols and the Ramones birthed punk music into the world, their artistic heirs burst onto the scene and changed the genre...

A comedy podcast about hip hop presented by award-winning comedian Romesh Ranganathan and his co-host RuMaj. Edited by James Torrance. Co-produced by RangaBee Productions and Mr Box (mrbox.tv) www.romeshranganathan.co.uk/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How to Make It in the New Music Business, since its first publication in 2016, has become the go-to resource for musicians eager to make a living in a turbulent industry. Widely adopted by ambitious individuals and music schools across the world and considered "the best how-to book of its kind" (Music Connection), this essential work has inspired tens of thousands of aspiring artists to stop waiting around for that "big break" and take matters into their own hands.

Alan McGee's role in shaping British musical culture over the past 30 years is hard to overstate. As the founder of Creation Records, he brought us the bands that defined an era. A charismatic Glaswegian, who partied just as hard as any of the acts on his notoriously hedonistic label, he became an infamous character in the world of music.

Told with acclaimed New Yorker writer Ariel Levy, Brothers is seventy-year-old drummer Alex Van Halen’s love letter to his younger brother, Edward (maybe “Ed,” but never “Eddie”), written while still mourning his untimely death.

The long-awaited memoir from John Fogerty, the legendary singer-songwriter and creative force behind Creedence Clearwater Revival. Creedence Clearwater Revival is one of the most important and beloved bands in the history of rock, and John Fogerty wrote, sang, and produced their instantly...

In this intimate biography of the Prince of Soul, David Ritz provides a candid look at a star and a friend. Ritz had been collaborating with Marvin Gaye on his story for several years before the singer's tragic death and had conducted a series of extraordinary interviews in which Gaye discussed his deepest secrets. What emerges is a full-scale portrait of a charming but tortured artist, a brilliant singer with a divided soul.

As lead singer of Happy Mondays and Black Grape, Shaun Ryder was the Keith Richards and Mick Jagger of his generation - one of the last real rock 'n' roll stars. A true rebel, who formed and led not one but two seminal bands, he's had number-one albums, headlined Glastonbury, toured the world numerous times, taken every drug under the sun, been through rehab - and come out the other side as a national treasure. 

The brand new memoir from the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Road Beneath My Feet. Taking 36 songs from his back catalogue, folk-punk icon Frank Turner explores his songwriting process. Find out the stories behind the songs forged in the hedonistic years of the mid-2000s North London...

Riley “Blues Boy” King (1925-2015) was born into deep poverty in Jim Crow Mississippi. Wrenched away from his sharecropper father, B.B. lost his mother at age 10, leaving him more or less alone. Music became his emancipation from exhausting toil in the fields. Inspired by a local minister’s guitar and by the records of Blind Lemon Jefferson and T-Bone Walker and encouraged by his cousin, the established blues man Bukka White, B.B. taught his guitar to sing in the unique solo style that, along with his relentless work ethic and humanity, became his trademark.

Almost from the moment it was first set to paper, the music of Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) - technically superb, rich in quality, and widely imitated - has exemplified the Classical style, creating not only the Classical-era symphony but setting the standard, through his own 68 string quartets, against which that form has ever after been judged. And yet Haydn, despite the influence left by more than 1000 works, seems to no longer get his due, Now, in a series of eight vivid lectures, you can learn to understand and appreciate the music of one of the most original and influential composers of all time.

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. 

Before she became Smokin Jo - the most famous and visible of the first generation of 'superstar DJs' - Joanne Joseph was a young girl growing up in a children's home with her sister. Until her mother returned and whisked the siblings away just before secondary school to a flat on the Portobello...

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER This “beautiful tribute to a legendary artist” (Quincy Jones) is the first in-depth biography of Nipsey Hussle, the hip-hop mogul, artist, and activist whose transformative legacy inspired a generation with his motivational lyrics and visionary business...

In this intimate account of Amy Winehouse's life, music, and untimely death, her father Mitch Winehouse gives readers full access to his daughter’s private life in the midst of her immensely public triumphs and tragedies. Amy Winehouse needs no introduction. A critically acclaimed recording artist, Amy touched millions with her music during her short but extraordinary life. Following her tragic death in July 2011, Mitch Winehouse wants to tell her incredible story in full. Amy, My Daughter will take the reader through her early years, her rise to stardom and to her addiction.

In Catch a Wave, Peter Ames Carlin pulls back the curtain on Brian Wilson, one of popular music's most revered luminaries, as well as its biggest mystery. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and never-before heard studio recordings, Carlin follows the Beach Boys from their earliest days through Brian's deepening emotional problems to his triumphant re-emergence with the release of Smile, the legendarily unreleased album he had originally shelved.

Duncan Hamilton is already a multiple award-winning sports writer, but it is hard to imagine he will write a better book than this superb, elegiac portrait of the sociable, feted, but ultimately unknowable man who virtually invented modern sports writing.... Neville Cardus described how one majestic stroke-maker 'made music' and 'spread beauty' with his bat. Between two world wars, he became the laureate of cricket by doing the same with words. In The Great Romantic, award-winning author Duncan Hamilton demonstrates how Cardus changed sports journalism for ever.