Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Music

Since the age of 20, Paul McCartney has lived one of the ultimate rock 'n' roll lives played out on the most public of stages. Now Paul's story is told by rock music's foremost biographer, with McCartney's consent and access to family members and close friends who have never spoken on the record before. Paul McCartney reveals the complex character behind the façade and sheds new light on his childhood - blighted by his mother's death but redeemed by the father who introduced him to music.

Jonas Merrick—a legendary intelligence analyst for MI5—has been banished to the Post Room of Thames House. There, he is expected to pass his remaining days before inevitable retirement. In a Russian gulag, an MI6 agent has developed an unlikely passion for a prisoner and has come up with an ingenious plan to free her. The key: a ruthless Albanian gang laundering the dirty money of the Russian elite. Merrick, the only agent with the experience to help, is brought back once again to intercept the Albanian courier until an exchange is organised by the Russians.

From bass player to lead guitarist, singer and last remaining founding member, Steve Diggle has been the driving force keeping Buzzcocks alive since he first met Pete Shelley in 1976. Together they would ignite the Manchester music scene, kickstart indie and become one of the best loved and most influential punk groups of all time. Following Shelley's untimely death in 2018, Autonomy is Diggle's definitive inside account of their shared musical legacy and complex friendship through the band's rise, fall, and rise again.

From lullabies to songs for the dying, this is a fascinating exploration of singing in all its varied forms, from the personal perspective of a music therapist, teacher and performer. In interrogating her own life experience and using the latest scientific research and experiences of other singers and specialists, the author investigates the way singing works and why it is re-establishing itself as an essential aspect of contemporary life, inspiring listeners to participate in the ongoing revolution, doing for singing what The Well-Gardened Mind and Why We Eat did for our diets.

Music is like no other business. It's about being at the right place at the right time, following your nose and diving in feet first. It's about being plugged into the mystical electricity and about surfing on the wild energy. And no one captures this wild feral spirit better than Alan McGee whose helter-skelter career through music has made him a major force. His ability to start a raw power ruckus brought the visceral danger back to a moribund mid-eighties music scene.

Beware the Beast: hard rock pioneers Iron Maiden boast numerous awards, countless No.1 albums and singles worldwide and over 130 million sales. And with 2025 marking fifty years since their founding–on Christmas day, no less–there is simply nobody like them. This book celebrates the epic, all-conquering albums and gets under the skin of a group of characters unlike any other. Using new stories from over 80 original interviews, renowned music writer Joe Shooman has painted a truly kaleidoscopic, 360-degree portrait of Iron Maiden and their immortal music.

Fleetwood Mac have had a chart-topping career that spans over fifty years and includes some of the biggest-selling albums and greatest hits of the 20th and 21st centuries. But the band's story is one of enormous triumph and also unimaginable tragedy. There has never been a band in the history of music riven with as much romantic drama, sexual tension and incredible highs and lows as Fleetwood Mac.

Get those cameras rolling—Pedro and co are off to Hollybush! There will be glitz, glam, and an out-of-control otter...All in service of ADVENTUREMICE: The Movie!

1960: The world is dancing on the edge of revolution and nowhere more so than on the Greek island of Hydra, where a circle of poets, painters and musicians live tangled lives, ruled by the writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston, troubled king and queen of Bohemia.

In 1967, 21-year-old Pauline Butcher was working for a London secretarial agency when a call came through from a Mr Frank Zappa asking for a typist. The assignment would change her life forever. For three years, Pauline served as Zappa's PA, moving with him, his family and the Mothers of Invention to a log cabin in the Hollywood Hills, where the straight young English girl mixed with Oscar winners and rock royalty. 

Adele touches the hearts of millions of people who love her for her music and share the real and honest emotion she brings to each and every song. In Adele, best-selling biographer Sean Smith talks to those close to her as he follows her astonishing journey to fame that began on the gritty streets of Tottenham. Through compelling new research and interviews, he reveals that there is far more to Adele than the superstar we all think we know.

An intensely beautiful, profound and poetic biography of the formative years of the dark prince of rock 'n' roll, Boy on Fire is Nick Cave's creation story, a portrait of the artist first as a boy, then as a young man. A deeply insightful work which charts his family, friends, influences, milieu and, most of all, his music, it reveals how Nick Cave shaped himself into the extraordinary artist he would become.

Vic Tandy was a level-headed scientist, but there was no denying it: at this late hour in his lonely lab at Coventry University, he kept seeing a grey apparition out of the corner of his eye. Bathed in a cold sweat, his heart pounding in his chest, he questioned his own rational mind—could this really be a supernatural encounter? What on Earth could be sending such an eerie shudder through his body? Strange frequencies are all around us—in fact, there may be no limit to the marvellous power of vibration. 

Meet shy mermaid Atalanta Scrimshaw. She lives in the quiet backwater of Sleepy Cove, collects messages in bottles, rides seahorses and enjoys the hobby of ‘walking’ on the beach and visiting friends. Life is perfect until Atalanta learns of plans by developers Bristle & Splinter to transform Sleepy Cove into a luxury seaside golf resort. Realizing that this plan will destroy her home, she enlists the help of her friends, old and new, to try to stop it . . .

Banker-turned-writer Nels Abbey offers an alternative and entertaining look at business and economics through the rise and triumph of Hip-Hop. This is the story of how rap industrialists—like Jay-Z, Suge Knight, Sylvia Robinson, Puff Daddy, 50 Cent and Bryan 'Birdman' Williams—took chronic economic pain and turned it into champagne. With a business acumen often acquired in the streets, these moguls created and sustained a multi-billion-dollar industry—leaving Greek mythology-worthy stories of success and failure, betrayal and revenge in their wakes.

This audiobook takes the listener on a grand musical tour from its origins in prehistory to the 21st century. It describes its roles in culture and religion in ancient China and the Middle East and how it developed in the Mediterranean world of classical Greece and Rome. Andrew Gant considers the evolution of music in medieval Europe and looks at what led to the astonishing revolution of musical forms and genres that took place in the Renaissance, first in Italy and then across the rest of Europe. 

This is the impassioned and exhilarating story of the composers who dared to challenge the conventional world of classical music in the twentieth century. Traversing the globe from Ethiopia and the Philippines to Mexico, Jerusalem, Russia and beyond, journalist, critic and BBC Radio 3 broadcaster Kate Molleson tells the stories of ten figures who altered the course of musical history, only to be side-lined and denied recognition during an era that systemically favoured certain sounds—and people—over others.

Hold Tight is the book that kick-started the 'Grime Library'. Bursting into bookshops in July 2017 to rave reviews and a sold-out event at Rough Trade East, Hold Tight paved the way for Grime-related books such as Wiley's Eskiboy, Dan Hancox's Inner City Pressure and DJ Target’s Grime Kids. Celebrating more than 60 key songs that make up Grime’s DNA, Jeffrey Boakye explores the meaning of the music and why it has such resonance in the UK. 

Zuzana Ruzickova grew up in 1930s Czechoslovakia dreaming of two things: Johann Sebastian Bach and the piano. But her peaceful, melodic childhood was torn apart when the Nazis invaded. Uprooted from her home, the teenage Zuzana faced a series of devastating defeats. A small slip of paper printed with her favourite piece of Bach’s music became her talisman.

Nellie Melba is remembered as a squarish, late middle-aged woman dressed in furs and large hats, an imperious Dame whose voice ruled the world for three decades and inspired a peach and raspberry dessert. But to succeed she had to battle social expectations and misogyny that would have preferred she stay a housewife in outback Queensland rather than parade herself on stage. She endured the violence of a bad marriage, was denied by scandal a true love with the would-be king of France and suffered the loss for more than decade of her only son, stolen by his angry, vengeful father.