Showing titles in History & Criticism

A Rough Trade Book of the Year A Guardian Music Book of the Year 'Beautifully written and meticulously researched' Classic Pop '[An] all-encompassing repository of Cure wisdom' Record Collector The Cure are indisputable titans of alternative rock. Recognisable as much for their iconic aesthetic...

Allan Jones launched Uncut magazine in 1997 and for 15 years wrote a popular monthly column called Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before, based on his experiences as a music journalist in the 70s and 80s. By turns hilarious, cautionary, poignant and powerful, the Stop Me...stories collected here include encounters with some of rock's most iconic stars, including David Bowie, Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Elvis Costello, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Smiths, R.E.M. and Pearl Jam.

A GUARDIAN AND INDEPENDENT BEST MUSIC BOOK OF 2017. ‘At last an expert classicist gets to grips with Bob Dylan’ Mary Beard ‘Thomas’s elegant, charming book offers something for everyone – not just the super-fans’ Independent When the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob...

The music of Frank Sinatra, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, and many other artists provides the score to the reflections of a musician on the road in this memoir of Neil Peart's travels from Los Angeles to Big Bend National Park. The emotional associations and stories behind each album Peart plays guide his recollections of his childhood on Lake Ontario, the first bands that he performed with, and his travels with the band Rush. The evocative and resonant writing vividly captures the meanderings of a musical mind.

"A wild ride through a vital chapter in rock ’n’ roll history." —Publishers Weekly Time-travel to the punk scene of 1970s New York and beyond, as seen through the eyes of its chief reporter known as “the original punk” who gave the movement its name. Part memoir and part cultural...

Chega de saudade reconstitui a vida boêmia e cultural carioca dos tempos da Bossa Nova - boate por boate, tiete por tiete, história por história. Para compor este fascinante mosaico envolvendo música e comportamento, Ruy Castro ouviu dezenas de seus participantes: compositores, cantores...

Musical Truth Volume 3 completes club and radio DJ-turned author/ researcher Mark Devlin’s trilogy of books, exposing the real nature of the corporate music industry and those that populate it.

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.

Bloomsbury presents M Train written and read by Patti Smith. 'So honest and pure as to count as a true rapture' JOAN DIDION 'A poetic masterpiece' JOHNNY DEPP 'Our St John of the Cross, a mystic full of compassion' EDMUND WHITE 'A roadmap to my life', from the National Book Award-winning author...

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY BILLY BRAGG Over the last seven decades, some of rock 'n' roll's most celebrated figureheads have flirted with the imagery and theatre of the Third Reich. From Keith Moon and Vivian Stanshall kitting themselves out in Nazi uniforms to Siouxsie Sioux and Sid Vicious...

The follow-up to The McCartney Legacy, Volume 1, the most complete work on the life and work of Paul McCartney ever published. Volume 2 continues to paint the portrait of one of the world’s greatest musicians, his work post-Beatles, and his life from 1974 to 1980. By 1974 the Beatles were a...

Brought to you by Penguin. The brilliant coming-of-age-and-into-superstardom story of one of the greatest artists of all time, in his own words - featuring the exquisite memoir he began writing before his tragic death. Prince was a musical genius, one of the most beloved, accomplished, and...

A four-thousand-year history of music that reveals how songs have shifted societies and sparked revolutions. “A dauntingly ambitious, obsessively researched labor of cultural provocation.” ―Los Angeles Times Histories of music overwhelmingly suppress stories of the outsiders and rebels who...

1959 saw Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the other members of Miles’s sextet come together to record the seminal jazz album of all time Kind of Blue. 3 Shades of Blue is a magnificent, blended biography on the meandering paths which led Miles, Coltrane and Evans to the mountaintop...

WINNER OF THE SILVER ARIAS AWARD 2024 IN THE BEST AUDIO BOOK OR READING CATEGORY 'Love this book! It triggers so many memories of the rave era. Thoroughly recommended.' - FATBOY SLIM 'Captures the hedonism and humour of the nineties with a laugh-out-loud honesty. The perfect Ibiza holiday read...

‘I was spotty, wore an anorak, had biro-engraved flared blue jeans with “purple” and “Sabbath” written on the thighs, and rode an ear-splittingly uncool moped. Oh yes, and I wanted to be a drummer…’ Bruce Dickinson – Iron Maiden’s legendary front man – is one of the world’s...

Brought to you by Penguin. From the author of Abbey Road comes the story of how enduring rock icons like Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen and many more have remained in the ever changing music game. When Paul McCartney closed Live Aid in July 1985 we thought he was rock's Grand Old Man. He was...

The first biography to focus exclusively on Angus Young - from his remarkable rise from working-class Glasgow and Sydney to the biggest stages in the world. Angus Young, the cofounder and the last remaining original member of AC/DC, has for more than 40 years been the face, the sound and sometimes the exposed backside of the trailblazing rock band.

'Fabulous... What a ghost story! A ripping read.' IAIN SINCLAIR, author of London Orbital 'Vividly celebrates Bowie as not just a chameleonic visionary, but a nomadic one, a creature informed by place and circumstance" STUART MACONIE 'Bowieland will make you want to take your very own pilgrimage...

When Miranda Sawyer interviewed Liam Gallagher in 1994, his gag wishing Damon Albarn would die of AIDS became front-page news all over the world. This fascinating pop history, exploring the moment British music suddenly meant everything, explains why. Picking out twenty key songs, delving into the surprising stories behind them and their unlikely creators, UNCOMMON PEOPLE takes us back to when Jarvis Cocker became a national hero, films like Trainspotting were international hits, rave became what everybody did - and it felt like the revolution was happening.