Learn all about Barrett's career as lead member of the original Pink Floyd, his subsequent release from the group, and solo career. A revealing investigation into the life of a reclusive cult genius.

    As well as the sixties heavy-hitters, this book also offers wonderfully vivid portraits of a whole host of other musicians: everyone from the great jazzman Coleman Hawkins to the folk diva Sandy Denny, Lonnie Johnson to Eric Clapton, Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Fairport Convention.Record and film producer Joe Boyd was born in Boston in 1942 and graduated from Harvard in 1964. He went on to produce Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, R.E.M., and many others. He produced the documentary Jimi Hendrix and the film Scandal. In 1980 he started Hannibal Records and ran it for twenty years. He lives in London.

    Drawing on extraordinarily candid firsthand interviews Barney Hoskyns has conducted over more than three decades, Hotel California takes you on an intimate tour—from the Sunset Strip to Laurel Canyon—of the creative and personal lives of the legendary songwriters, superstars, and producers who made the music that everyone listened to. You'll read things you've never read before about such fascinating, complex people as Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Jackson Browne, Glenn Frey, Mama Cass Elliot, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, David Geffen, and many others. Packed with riveting anecdotes and sharp musical insights, Hotel California captures the amazing results of brilliant creative collaboration and the dark side of fame,wealth, and unbridled ambition. It is a story of rise and fall like none other, and you won't be able to put it down.

    Louis. With a theater degree in hand, she was certain everything would fall easily into place. Never mind that she didn’t know a single person in the entertainment industry. She was determined, she was confident, she was ready to work hard. So, what could go wrong?Uh, basically everything. It would be eight long years before she landed her Emmy-nominated role of Pam Beesley on The Office—nearly a decade of failure, struggle, rejection and doubt. The path to professional acting was more competitive than she’d ever imagined. Headshots, agents, classes, auditions . . . there was a lot to learn. And with so many obstacles to navigate, it wasn’t always easy to fight off discouragement. If only she’d had a handbook for the struggling actor. Or, better yet, someone to show her the way—an established actor who could manage her expectations, educate her about the business, and reassure her in those moments of despair.Jenna Fischer wants to be that person for you. With candor and wit, Fischer lays out what it takes to establish yourself in the profession. Based on her own memorable and hilarious experiences, she provides invaluable advice on how to get the right head shot, what to look for in representation, and the importance of getting out there and just doing something. She also provides helpful hints on how to be gutsy and take risks, the tricks to good auditioning and callbacks, and how not to fall for certain scams. (Auditions in a guy’s apartment are probably not legit—or at least not for the kind of part you’re looking for!)Fischer’s inspiring guidance will make you feel like you have a trusted friend who’s made the journey and has now returned to walk beside you, pointing out the pitfalls as you blaze your own path toward the life of a professional actor.

    But even before that, she stood out in her conservative oil town. She was a tomboy who was also intellectually curious and artistic. By the time she reached high school, she had drawn the scorn of her peers for her embrace of the Beats and her racially progressive views. Her parents doted on her in many ways, but were ultimately put off by her repeated acts of defiance. Janis Joplin has passed into legend as a brash, impassioned soul doomed by the pain that produced one of the most extraordinary voices in rock history. But in these pages, Holly George-Warren provides a revelatory and deeply satisfying portrait of a woman who wasn’t all about suffering. Janis was a perfectionist: a passionate, erudite musician who was born with talent but also worked exceptionally hard to develop it. She was a woman who pushed the boundaries of gender and sexuality long before it was socially acceptable. She was a sensitive seeker who wanted to marry and settle down—but couldn’t, or wouldn’t. She was a Texan who yearned to flee Texas but could never quite get away—even after becoming a countercultural icon in San Francisco. Written by one of the most highly regarded chroniclers of American music history, and based on unprecedented access to Janis Joplin’s family, friends, band mates, archives, and long-lost interviews, Janis is a complex, rewarding portrait of a remarkable artist finally getting her due.

    This book takes us on the journey of Queen - three academics and a frustrated art student, tired of having no money, taking on the music industry on their own terms. Spurred on by an almost uncontrollable, ambitious and forthright Mercury, Queen succeeded, becoming the biggest band of the generations to come.The story, told in his own words shows how on many occasions, the band almost split, but was always kept together by their shared love of breaching musical boundaries. Freddie's own personal story is one of pursuing a dream, dealing with wealth and fame, looking back and having no regrets, coming to reflect on his thoughts on getting old, his legacy and death. Though Freddie talked rarely to others about himself, the interviews published - and some unpublished up until now, compiled in this book, together with an intriguing insight into the man who outwardly exuded confidence and arrogance but behind that public perception spent periods alone and searching for happiness. This title includes a foreword by Freddie's Mother Jer Bulsara.

    Now that book on rock's most incredible survivor has been expanded to accommodate ten more years of his storied life.

    MacGowan's music, innovative and powerful, is as distinctive as his chaotic, breakdown-scarred, drug and alcohol-fuelled lifestyle. MacGowan has an enormous fan-base hungry for stories of his wild behaviour, but this is also a book that celebrates this unique and charming musician, and offers insight into his remarkable perspective on this world - and the next!

    Pantera was different. Instead of humoring the market, the band instead demanded that the audience come to them by releasing a series of fiercely uncompromising, platinum albums, including Vulgar Display of Power and Far Beyond Driven—two #1 albums that, like Metallica’s And Justice for All, sold millions of copies despite minimal airplay.Rex Brown’s memoir is the definitive account of life inside one of rock’s biggest bands, which succeeded against all odds but ultimately ended in tragedy when iconic lead guitarist Darrell 'Dimebag' Abbott was murdered mid-performance by a deranged fan.This is a lucid account of the previously untold story behind one of the most influential bands in heavy metal history, written by the man best qualified to tell the truth about those incredible and often difficult years of fame and excess.

    Fans and non-fans alike will be shocked by the stories of murder, suicide, addiction, counterfeiting, riots, bondage, terminal illness, the Yakuza, and drinking pee. Told from the perspective of each of the band's members, this book looks back at more than thirty years of comedy, tragedy, and completely inexplicable success.

    For millions of fans spanning several generations across the world, they are an ear-bleedingly loud, sweat-soaked religion, courtesy of such classic albums as Highway to Hell and Back in Black.Now, in a book of astonishing breadth and scope, comes, for the very first time, the complete story of AC/DC. Everything you ever wanted to know and plenty more you never dreamt of is all here, the ultimate balls-out adventure, laced with sex, drunken escapades and brawls. It's a journey that started in the suburban Sydney, Australia, bedrooms of brothers Malcolm and Angus Young, boys who could wreak havoc with their guitars. Over their power chords were the lyrics and voice of Bon Scott, who would lead them higher and higher—until his tragic death in 1980. The bittersweet irony after his death was that not only did the Youngs manage to hold together without him, but the band's fortunes and status skyrocketed with his replacement, Brian Johnson, and the album Back in Black.Five long years in the making, AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll is sourced from more than 1,300 interviews the band has given over the past thirty years combined with in excess of 75 of the authors' own interviews with those who worked with AC/DC both in the studio and on the road—many of whom have never spoken about the band publicly. It's topped off with stunning, never-before-seen photos to create the ultimate portrait of the ultimate rock band.

    Thompson. Born a rebel in Louisville, Kentucky, Thompson spent a lifetime channeling his energy and insight into such landmark works as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - and his singular and provocative style challenged and revolutionized writing.Now, for the first time ever, Jann Wenner and Corey Seymour have interviewed the Good Doctor's friends, family, acquaintances and colleagues and woven their memories into a brilliant oral biography. From Hell's Angels leader Sonny Barger to Ralph Steadman to Jack Nicholson to Jimmy Buffett to Pat Buchanan to Marilyn Manson and Thompson's two wives, son, and longtime personal assistant, more than 100 members of Thompson's inner circle bring into vivid focus the life of a man who was even more complicated, tormented, and talented than any previous portrait has shown. It's all here in its uncensored glory: the creative frenzies, the love affairs, the drugs and booze and guns and explosives and, ultimately, the tragic suicide. As Thompson was fond of saying, "Buy the ticket, take the ride."

    Critics have called her "sweet, adorable, and vicious." But there is so much more to be said about Samantha Bee. For one, she's Canadian. Whatever that means. And now, she opens up for the very first time about her checkered Canadian past. With charming candor, she admits to her Lennie from "Of Mice and Men"-style love of baby animals, her teenage crime spree as one-half of a car-thieving couple (Bonnie and Clyde in Bermuda shorts and braces), and the fact that strangers seem compelled to show her their genitals. She also details her intriguing career history, which includes stints working in a frame store, at a penis clinic, and as a Japanese anime character in a touring children's show.Samantha delves into all these topics and many more in this thoroughly hilarious, unabashedly frank collection of personal essays. Whether detailing the creepiness that ensues when strangers assume that your mom is your lesbian lover, or recalling her girlhood crush on Jesus (who looked like Kris Kristofferson and sang like Kenny Loggins), Samantha turns the spotlight on her own imperfect yet highly entertaining life as relentlessly as she skewers hapless interview subjects on "The Daily Show." She shares her unique point of view on a variety of subjects as wide ranging as her deep affinity for old people, to her hatred of hot ham. It's all here, in irresistible prose that will leave you in stitches and eager for more.

    A godlike entity in the history of rock and roll, this twentieth-century icon with a dazzling voice blended gospel and traditionally black rhythm and blues with country to create a completely new kind of music and new way of expressing male sexuality, which simply blew the doors off a staid and repressed 1950s America.In Being Elvis veteran rock journalist Ray Connolly takes a fresh look at the career of the world’s most loved singer, placing him, forty years after his death, not exhaustively in the garish neon lights of Las Vegas but back in his mid-twentieth-century, distinctly southern world. For new and seasoned fans alike, Connolly, who interviewed Elvis in 1969, re-creates a man who sprang from poverty in Tupelo, Mississippi, to unprecedented overnight fame, eclipsing Frank Sinatra and then inspiring the Beatles along the way.Juxtaposing the music, the songs, and the incendiary live concerts with a personal life that would later careen wildly out of control, Connolly demonstrates that Elvis’s amphetamine use began as early as his touring days of hysteria in the late 1950s, and that the financial needs that drove him in the beginning would return to plague him at the very end. With a narrative informed by interviews over many years with John Lennon, Bob Dylan, B. B. King, Sam Phillips, and Roy Orbison, among many others, Connolly creates one of the most nuanced and mature portraits of this cultural phenomenon to date.What distinguishes Being Elvis beyond the narrative itself is Connolly’s more subtle examinations of white poverty, class aspirations, and the prison that is extreme fame. As we reach the end of this poignant account, Elvis’s death at forty-two takes on the hue of a profoundly American tragedy. The creator of an American sound that resonates today, Elvis remains frozen in time, an enduring American icon who could “seamlessly soar into a falsetto of pleading and yearning” and capture an inner emotion, perhaps of eternal yearning, to which all of us can still relate.Intimate and unsparing, Being Elvis explores the extravagance and irrationality inherent in the Elvis mythology, ultimately offering a thoughtful celebration of an immortal life.

    We were five years old."So began a lifelong friendship that fourteen years later would result in the formation of The Cure, a quintessential post-punk band whose albums-such as Three Imaginary Boys, Pornography, and Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me-remain among the best-loved and most influential of all time.As two of the first punks in the provincial English town of Crawley, Lol Tolhurst and Robert Smith didn't have it easy. Outsiders from the start, theirs was a friendship based initially on proximity and a shared love of music, from the punk that was raging in nearby London to the groundbreaking experimentation of David Bowie's "Berlin Trilogy." First known as The Easy Cure, they began playing in pubs and soon developed their own unique style and approach to songwriting, resulting in timeless songs that sparked a deep sense of identification and empathy in listeners, songs like "Boys Don't Cry," "Just Like Heaven," and "Why Can't I Be You?," spearheading a new subculture dubbed "Goth" by the press. The music of The Cure was not only accessible but also deeply subversive, challenging conventional notions of pop music and gender roles while inspiring a generation of devoted fans and a revolution in style.Cured is not only the first insider account of the early days of the band, it is a revealing look at the artistic evolution of the enigmatic Robert Smith, the iconic lead singer, songwriter, and innovative guitarist at the heart of The Cure. A deeply rebellious, sensitive, tough, and often surprisingly "normal" young man, Smith was from the start destined for stardom, a fearless non-conformist and provocateur who soon found his own musical language through which to express his considerable and unique talent.But there was also a dark side to The Cure's intense and bewildering success. Tolhurst, on drums and keyboards, was nursing a growing alcoholism that would destroy his place in The Cure and nearly end his life. Cured tells the harrowing and unforgettable story of his crash-and-burn, recovery, and rebirth.Intensely lyrical and evocative, gripping and unforgettable, Cured is the definitive story of a singular band whose legacy endures many decades hence, told from the point of view of a participant and eyewitness who was there when it happened-and even before it all began.