Best of
Rock-N-Roll

2016

Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements


Bob Mehr - 2016
    With full participation from reclusive singer and chief songwriter Paul Westerberg, bassist Tommy Stinson, guitarist Slim Dunlap, and the family of late band co-founder Bob Stinson, author Bob Mehr is able to tell the real story of this highly influential group, capturing their chaotic, tragic journey from the basements of Minneapolis to rock legend. Drawing on years of research and access to the band's archives at Twin/Tone Records and Warner Bros. Mehr also discovers previously unrevealed details from those in the group's inner circle, including family, managers, musical friends and collaborators.

Altamont: The Rolling Stones, the Hells Angels, and the Inside Story of Rock's Darkest Day


Joel Selvin - 2016
    While most people know of the events from the film Gimme Shelter, the whole story has remained buried in varied accounts, rumor, and myth—until now.Altamont explores rock’s darkest day, a fiasco that began well before the climactic death of Meredith Hunter and continued beyond that infamous December night. Joel Selvin probes every aspect of the show—from the Stones’ hastily planned tour preceding the concert to the bad acid that swept through the audience to other deaths that also occurred that evening—to capture the full scope of the tragedy and its aftermath. He also provides an in-depth look at the Grateful Dead’s role in the events leading to Altamont, examining the band’s behind-the-scenes presence in both arranging the show and hiring the Hells Angels as security.The product of twenty years of exhaustive research and dozens of interviews with many key players, including medical staff, Hells Angels members, the stage crew, and the musicians who were there, and featuring sixteen pages of color photos, Altamont is the ultimate account of the final event in rock’s formative and most turbulent decade.

Seeing Stars


Jennifer Bernard - 2016
    She has to make things right with her nemesis, Hope Falls’ own Karina Black. And she has to do it without the paparazzi finding out. If only she didn’t have to leave behind the man she’s been secretly pining for—her sinfully hot bodyguard Hunter McGraw.Hunter just turned in his resignation. He desperately needs to get some distance from the distracting, enchanting Starly and get on with his life. But if she’s going to Hope Falls, he’s going after her. Who else is going to keep her out of trouble? And with two feuding pop stars in the same tiny town, trouble is inevitable. They can deal with the paparazzi. They can deal with the curious Hope Falls residents. But can they keep their feelings secret from each other? Is that even possible when every touch has them seeing stars?

Sylvie + Shandor (Rocker Shenanigans Book 1)


Sunniva Dee - 2016
    So when it comes to love it's no surprise they screw up just as hard. Join an amusing cast of characters from Sunniva Dee's and Alyson Santos' rock star novels as they meet and pursue each other amidst the backstage chaos of their world. Rocker Shenanigans is a romantic comedy series of short novels that will toss you into the fun, sexy, and hilarious side of rocker life.Rocker Shenanigans I:Sylvie Drake is ecstatic when her rock-goddess sister invites her to a charity event in the Bahamas. With a lineup featuring legends like Night Shifts Black, Clown Irruption, and Tracing Holland, how could this weekend not be totally epic?One word: Shandor.Smoldering gaze, cocky smile, and passionate hands that dominate a guitar. Everything about this mysterious stranger screams out-of-her-league.Shandor Xodyar is here to work. And keep his fiery cousin out of trouble with the threat of former flames breathing down their necks. What he didn’t count on is a three-word bombshell disrupting his mission:Holland’s teen sister.Unassumingly sexy, raw, and barely legal, there’s no way entertaining the forbidden electricity can end well. Then again, some ignored warnings are worth the consequences.

Lonely Boy


Steve Jones - 2016
    And without Steve Jones there would be no Sex Pistols. It was Steve who formed Kutie Jones and his Sex Pistols, the band that eventually went on to become the Sex Pistols, with his schoolmate Paul Cook and who was its original leader. As the world celebrates the 40th anniversary of Punk – the influence and cultural significance of which is still felt in music, fashion and the visual arts to this day – Steve tells his story for the very first time. Steve’s modern Dickensian tale begins in the streets of Hammersmith and Shepherd’s Bush, West London, where as a lonely, neglected boy living off his wits and his petty thievery, he is given purpose by the glam art rock of David Bowie and Roxy Music and becomes one of the first generation of ragamuffin punks taken under the wings of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood. For the very first time Steve describes the sadness of never knowing his dad, the neglect and abuse he suffered at the hands of his step father, and how his interest in music and fashion saved him from a potential life of crime spent in remand centres and prison. From the Kings Road of the early seventies, through the years of the Sex Pistols, Punk Rock and the recording of Never Mind the Bollocks (ranked number 41 in Rolling Stone magazine’s Best Albums of All Time), to his self-imposed exile in New York and Los Angeles where he battled with alcohol, heroin and sex addiction – caught in a cycle of rehab and relapse – Lonely Boy, written with music journalist and author Ben Thompson, is the story of an unlikely guitar hero who, with the Sex Pistols, changed history.Publication coincides with the 40th anniversary of the release of the Sex Pistols first record, ‘Anarchy in the UK’, and of Steve’s infamous confrontation on Bill Grundy’s Today programme – that interview ushered in the ‘Filth and the Fury’ headlines that catapulted Punk into the national consciousness.

Cowboy Song: The Authorised Biography Of Philip Lynott


Graeme Thomson - 2016
    Leading music writer Graeme Thompson explores the fascinating contradictions between Lynott's unbridled rock star excesses and the shy, sensitive 'orphan' raised in working class Dublin. The mixed-race child of a Catholic teenager and a Guyanese stowaway, Lynott rose above daunting obstacles and wounding abandonments to become Ireland's first rock star. Cowboy Song examines his key musical alliances as well as the unique blend of cultural influences which informed Lynott's writing, connecting Ireland's rich reserves of music, myth and poetry to hard rock, progressive folk, punk, soul and New Wave. Published on the thirtieth anniversary of Lynott's death in January 1986, Thompson draws on scores of exclusive interviews with family, friends, band mates and collaborators. Cowboy Song is both the ultimate depiction of a multi-faceted rock icon, and an intimate portrait of a much-loved father, son and husband.

I Live Inside: Memoirs of a Babe in Toyland


Michelle Leon - 2016
    A founding member of Babes in Toyland takes readers on the roller coaster ride of the rock-and-roll lifestyle and her own journey of self-discovery.

Don't You Leave Me Here: My Life


Wilko Johnson - 2016
    With ten months to live, he decided to accept his imminent death and went on the road. His calm, philosophical response made him even more beloved and admired. And then the strangest thing happened: he didn't die. Don't You Leave Me Here is the story of his life in music, his life with cancer, and his life now - in the future he never thought he would see.

Walls Come Tumbling Down: The Music and Politics of Rock Against Racism, 2 Tone and Red Wedge


Daniel Rachel - 2016
    The following sixteen years saw politics and pop music come together as never before to challenge racism, gender inequality and social and class divisions. For the first time in UK history, musicians became instigators of social change and their political persuasion as important as the songs they sang.Through the voices of campaigners, musicians, artists and politicians, Daniel Rachel charts this extraordinary and pivotal period between 1976 and 1992, following the rise and fall of three key movements of the time: Rock Against Racism, 2 Tone and Red Wedge, revealing how they both shaped, and were shaped by, the music of a generation.Consisting of new and exclusive in-depth conversations with over 100 contributors, including Pauline Black, Billy Bragg, Jerry Dammers, Phill Jupitus, Neil Kinnock, Linton Kwesi-Johnson, Tom Robinson, Clare Short, Tracey Thorn and many more, Walls Come Tumbling Down is a fascinating, polyphonic and authoritative account of those crucial sixteen years in Britain's history, from the acclaimed writer of Isle of Noises.Walls Come Tumbling Down also features more than 150 images – many rare or previously unpublished – from some of the greatest names in photography, including Adrian Boot, Chalkie Davies, Jill Furmanovsky, Syd Shelton, Pennie Smith, Steve Rapport and Virginia Turbett.

Total Chaos: The Story of the Stooges


Iggy Pop - 2016
    And I also believe that their music is as important as the product of any rock group working today."—Lester Bangs, Creem (1970)"[The Stooges'] Fun House is one of the greatest rock & roll records of all time and as great as they were, the Stones never went so deep, the Beatles never sounded so alive, and anyone would have a hard time matching Iggy Pop's ferocity as a vocalist."—Scott Seward, The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004)TOTAL CHAOS is the first book telling Iggy Pop's story of The Stooges from his own words. Grammy winning editor and avid music historian Jeff Gold spent two days at the rock legend's home sharing pictures and memorabilia from his collection. Featuring a trove of unseen photos, TOTAL CHAOS shows and tells, with the help of best-selling author Jon Savage, the story of the Stooges from those tell-all interviews.Iggy Pop is a musician and actor. He was the vocalist for, and is the last remaining original member of the Stooges, a band Rolling Stone lists in their one hundred greatest artists of all time. The Stooges were first active 1967–1975, reunited in 2003, and in 2010 were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The Sun & The Moon & The Rolling Stones


Rich Cohen - 2016
    Rich Cohen enters the Stones epic as a young journalist on the road with the band and quickly falls under their sway—privy to the jokes, the camaraderie, the bitchiness, the hard living. Inspired by a lifelong appreciation of the music that borders on obsession, Cohen’s chronicle of the band is informed by the rigorous views of a kid who grew up on the music and for whom the Stones will always be the greatest rock ’n’ roll band of all time.The story begins at the beginning: the fateful meeting of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards on a train platform in 1961—and goes on to span decades, with a focus on the golden run—from the albums Beggars Banquet (1968) to Exile on Main Street (1972)—when the Stones were prolific and innovative and at the height of their powers. Cohen is equally as good on the low points as the highs, and he puts his finger on the moments that not only defined the Stones as gifted musicians schooled in the blues and arguably the most innovative songwriters of their generation, but as the avatars of so much in our modern culture.   In the end, though, after the drugs and the girlfriends and the rows, there is the music. The Sun & The Moon & The Rolling Stones makes you want to listen to every song in your library anew and search out the obscure gems that you’ve yet to hear. The music, together with Cohen’s fresh and galvanizing consideration of the band, will define, once and forever, why the Stones will always matter.Praise for The Sun & The Moon & The Rolling Stones“Cohen has arrived as one of the greatest social and cultural historians of postwar twentieth-century America. By gracefully blending fastidious reporting, lucid commentary, and an unabashed love for his subjects, Cohen has managed to write about gods and elevate them into human beings.”—Richard Price “This is a completely fascinating book. Rich Cohen locks into everything that’s crazy and passionate about the Rolling Stones while never losing his clear-sighted presence of mind. Funny, soulful, impeccably reported, and beautifully written, this will be the book about the Stones that will last.”—Ian Frazier “Cohen writes like Mick Jagger sings: He’s full of energy, swagger, and creativity. In one sense, this book is easy to categorize: File under ‘books that are awesome and delightful to read.’ But it’s also hard to categorize. It’s part memoir, part cultural history, part biography, part manifesto, part behind-the-scenes look at the joyful debauchery of one of the world’s greatest bands. However you label it, you’ll have a blast reading it.”—A. J. Jacobs “Cohen is one of the select few to be invited behind the curtain of the Rolling Stones’ real-life rock ’n’ roll circus, but he never loses the perspective of having once been a kid staring in awe at his brother’s poster of the band.”—Alan Light“I have no interest in the lives of rock stars. I could not put down The Sun & The Moon & The Rolling Stones. Rich Cohen was born to write this book, and he waited just long enough to do it. Reporting the hell out of a lifelong obsession, he gives us the Rolling Stones in so many dimensions they stalk off the page. The fanboy becomes a man, with judgments seasoned, supple, razor-sharp, slyly funny, and still besotted. A great story, masterfully told.”—William Finnegan

Heyday: 35 Years of Music in Minneapolis


Daniel Corrigan - 2016
    A look back at more than three decades of music in Minneapolis through the lens of one of the most prolific and renowned photographers on the scene.

Teenage Kicks: My Life as an Undertone


Michael Bradley - 2016
    They had two guitars and no singer. Four years later the Undertones recorded 'Teenage Kicks', John Peel's favourite record, and became one of the most fondly remembered UK bands of the post punk era. Sticking to their punk rock principles, they signed terrible deals, made great records and had a wonderful time. They broke up in 1983 when they realised there was no pot of gold at the end of the rock and roll rainbow. His story is a bitter-sweet, heart-warming and occasionally droll tale of unlikely success, petty feuding and playful mischief during five years of growing up in the music industry. Wiser but not much richer, Michael became a bicycle courier in Soho after the Undertones split. "Sixty miles a day, fresh air, no responsibilities," he writes. "Sometimes I think it was the best job I ever had. It wasn't, of course."

Exit Signs


Patrice Locke - 2016
     Rock star Jesse Elliot is sure Tracy is demented, and she believes he wouldn’t recognize the truth in a lineup of Bibles. Their only hope is to stop trying to read each other’s minds and start speaking their own. Anyone who has ever had a crush, felt betrayed, or been forgiven will appreciate Tracy's struggle to claim the life she never knew she wanted.

I'm Not with the Band: A Writer's Life Lost in Music


Sylvia Patterson - 2016
    a scenic search for elusive human happiness through music, magazines, silly jokes, stupid shoes, useless blokes, hopeless homes, booze, drugs, love, loss, A&E, death, disillusion and hope - while trying to make Prince laugh, startle Beyoncé, cheer Eminem up, annoy Madonna, drink with Shaun Ryder and finish off Westlife forever (with varying degrees of success).In 1986, Sylvia Patterson boarded a train to London armed with a tea-chest full of vinyl records, a peroxide quiff and a dream: to write about music, for ever. She got her wish.Escaping a troubled home, Sylvia embarks on a lifelong quest to discover The Meaning of It All. The problem is she's mostly hanging out with flaky pop stars, rock 'n' roll heroes and unreliable hip-hop legends. As she encounters music's biggest names, she is confronted by glamour and tragedy; wisdom and lunacy; drink, drugs and disaster. And Bros.Here is Madonna in her Earth Mother phase, flinging her hands up in horror at one of Sylv's Very Stupid Questions. Prince compliments her shoes while Eminem threatens to kill her. She shares fruit with Johnny Cash, make-up with Amy Winehouse and several pints with the Manics' lost soul-man Richey Edwards. She finds the Beckhams fragrant in LA, a Gallagher madferrit in her living room and Shaun Ryder and Bez as you'd expect, in Jamaica.From the 80s to the present day, I'm Not with the Band is a funny, barmy, utterly gripping chronicle of the last thirty years in music and beyond. It is also the story of one woman's wayward search for love, peace and a wonderful life. And whether, or not, she found them.

Fearless as Possible (Under the Circumstances): A Memoir


Denise Donlon - 2016
    In Fearless as Possible (Under the Circumstances), Donlon chronicles her impressive and storied career at MuchMusic, Sony Music Canada, and CBC English Radio, which put her at the forefront of the massive changes in the music industry and media. Throughout her incredible journey, she shares colourful and entertaining stories of growing up tall, flat, and bullied in east Scarborough; interviewing musical icons such as Keith Richards, Run-DMC, Ice-T, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Annie Lennox, and Sting; and detailing her life-changing experiences with War Child Canada, Live8, and the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership.Told with humour and honesty, Fearless as Possible (Under the Circumstances) is a candid memoir of one woman’s journey, navigating corporate culture with integrity, responsibility, and an irrepressible passion to be a force for good.

Appetite For Dysfunction: A Cautionary Tale


Vicky Hamilton - 2016
    A small town girl who risks everything by dropping out of art school, leaving behind the safety of loved ones and small town values, and making her way to Hollywood. When Vicky arrived, she landed a job as a mere record store clerk, to then miraculously find herself deep in the trenches of an unscrupulous, male dominated, music entertainment business, and blossomed into Hollywood’s most controversial A&R woman and band manager. Vicky followed her dream and achieved it. She became the top female record company executive and personal band manager. Only to reach her aspirations while working with Guns N’ Roses, to then take on the most coveted A&R position to date at Geffen Records, under David Geffen himself. It was common knowledge, that while David Geffen was relaxing at his Malibu beach house, Hamilton was busy scouring dark clubs for talent. Doing the kind of legwork many larger record labels had gotten away from.Appetite For Dysfunction is the first time Vicky candidly speaks out about the life she lived on the front lines, deep in the heartless world of the music business. Hamilton brings to this book her unbiased observations and shrewd glimpses about who these rock stars and executives are at the core of their beings, and about herself, as well. She expresses her gratitude for her historic past and her accomplishments, as well as her own shortcomings along the way. She shares her victories, her mistakes, the horror stories, and her dark comedic approach to “making it” in the entertainment business. Even while getting her heart broken on many occasions, leading to some cataclysmic breakdowns,Vicky battles to hang on to her integrity. Painfully taking the highroad, as she loses her job at Capitol Records, while facing eviction and a phone that suddenly stopped ringing, Vicky holds her head high, humbly reinvents herself, and literally, goes on with the show.One of the many highlights of this book is when Vicky produced and released June Carter-Cash’s record, Press On>. Hamilton was so determined to get June a record deal that, when no one else wanted to make a record with June, Vicky started her own label, Small Hairy Dog. Through her relationship with Carter-Cash, while making Press On>, Vicky found herself trusting her own faith and intuition and began questioning her personal lifestyle choices and stopped looking outside of herself for happiness. No longer coming from a place of fear, Vicky finds sobriety and a new perspective on life. Vicky’s persistence and shift of faith paid off when June’s record won a Grammy.This book is about a small town girl who follows her heart to Hollywood, finds success only to lose it all, after chasing a dream that becomes a nightmare, because nothing and no one are what they appear to be. Hitting the bottom of a dark and lonely abyss to then climb out triumphantly. This book shares Vicky Hamilton’s undeniable optimism, hope and faith-eternal, and is a must read for anyone who is a music fan and curious about the golden era of the record business, and for anyone with a dream of their own.Vicky Hamilton is a long time Grammy Award-Winning music industry executive and personal manager, featured on VH-1s, Biography Channel's and BBC. 

She is considered one of the most successful female music executives in the industry. Pull down the safety bar, Appetite For Dysfunction is a wild and exhilarating ride.

Band For Life


Anya Davidson - 2016
    Though beset with disaster at every turn—and frequently reduced to squabbling—they stick together because the band is the core of their existence, and they help each other find their way. Band for Life is a love letter to people compelled to create with no hope of financial reward.

The History of Rock & Roll, Volume 1: 1920-1963


Ed Ward - 2016
    Beginning in the 1920s when blues, country, and black popular music played over the air waves and the first independent record labels were born, this first volume of a two-part series finishes in December 1963, just as an immense sea-change begins to take hold and the Beatles prepare for their first American tour. Ward introduces you to the musicians, DJs, record executives, and producers who were at the forefront of the genre. Sharing story after story of some of the most unforgettable and groundbreaking moments in rock history, Ward reveals how different sounds, harmonies, and trends came together to create the music we all know and love today.Ed Ward has been NPR’s Fresh Air rock & roll historian for the last thirty-five years reaching 14 million listeners. In these pages he shares his endless depth of knowledge and through engrossing storytelling hops seamlessly from Memphis to Chicago, Detroit, England, New York, and everywhere in between covering all the big-name acts everyone is already familiar with, from Elvis and Buddy Holly to Chuck Berry, while filling in gaps of knowledge with the more obscure and forgotten names of music’s past like T-Bone Walker and The Ventures.For all music lovers and rock & roll fans, this sweeping history will shine a light on the corners of the genre to reveal some of the less well-known yet hugely influential artists who changed the musical landscape forever.