The Man Called CASH: The Life, Love and Faith of an American Legend


Steve Turner - 2004
    While he was an icon to people of all ages during his life, Cash's legacy continues after his death. His remarkable story is captured in this exclusive authorized biography, addressing the whole life of Johnny Cash-not just his unforgettable music but also his relationship with June Carter Cash and his faith in Christ. His authenticity, love for God and family, and unassuming persona are what Steve Turner captures with passion and focus in this inspiring book.Different from other books written about him, The Man Called CASH brings Cash's faith and love for God into the foreground and tells the story of a man redeemed, without watering-down or sugar-coating. The Man Called CASH will be a huge success with his millions of fans and will draw in many new fans with this inspiring story of faith and redemption.

Me and a Guy Named Elvis: My Lifelong Friendship with Elvis Presley


Jerry Schilling - 2006
    The two became fast friends, even as Elvis turned into the world’s biggest star. In 1964, Elvis invited Jerry to work for him as part of his “Memphis Mafia,” and Jerry soon found himself living with Elvis full-time in a Bel Air mansion and, later, in his own room at Graceland. Over the next thirteen years Jerry would work for Elvis in various capacities—from bodyguard to photo double to co-executive producer on a karate film. But more than anything else he was Elvis’s close friend and confidant: Elvis trusted Jerry with protecting his life when he received death threats, he asked Jerry to drive him and Priscilla to the hospital the day Lisa Marie was born and to accompany him during the famous “lost weekend” when he traveled to meet President Nixon at the White House. Me and a Guy Named Elvis looks at Presley from a friend’s perspective, offering readers the man rather than the icon—including insights into the creative frustrations that lead to Elvis’s abuse of prescription medicine and his tragic death. Jerry offers never-before-told stories about life inside Elvis’s inner circle and an emotional recounting of the great times, hard times, and unique times he and Elvis shared. These vivid memories will be priceless to Elvis’s millions of fans, and the compelling story will fascinate an even wider audience. BACKCOVER: Advance Praise for Me and a Guy Named Elvis “This book kept me up late into the night as I turned the pages, reliving every situation and every story as if I were there all over again, until I finished. Jerry Schilling’s words brought tears to my eyes, making me smile and nod as it filled my head with things I had forgotten but thankfully he remembered. Jerry tells his story with the freshness and purity of a man who truly loved his friend. Me and a Guy Named Elvis is not only authentic, honest, and truly moving—it is a marvel.” —Priscilla Presley “Jerry had the keys to the kingdom, the keys to the King’s houses, to the King’s cars, to the heart of what made Elvis a King in the first place. Here he unlocks every door and his own heart to boot. In this book, Jerry Schilling brings grace to Graceland.” —Bono “Jerry Schilling has captured the beauty of my father’s spirit in a way that has never been done before. I will admit that I was nervous to read another book on this subject, especially by a friend (there are not many who remain in my life from this time period, as Jerry does), but this book is by far my favorite. It is a captivating, well-written, and un-crucifying account of many historic moments that shows the real birth and evolution of Rock and Roll and how it bridged the racial divide. Jerry tells his story of a young boy growing up poor with no real family before fate changed his life during one Sunday afternoon game of football—and he tells it with humility, honesty, and dignity.” —Lisa Marie Presley “What Jerry Schilling has written in Me and a Guy Named Elvis is an account of one man’s experience, a personal memoir that, while it places its narrator squarely in the midst of historic events, never claims credit for those events in the way that so many self-serving memoirs are inclined to do. It is a balanced treatment of a complex subject . . . What I think distinguishes the book most of all, though, is its emotional honesty, the generosity of spirit with which Jerry seeks to emulate his friend and mentor.” —Peter Guralnick, author of Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love

Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink


Elvis Costello - 2015
    Costello went into the family business and had taken the popular music world by storm before he was twenty-four.Costello continues to add to one of the most intriguing and extensive songbooks of the day. His performances have taken him from a cardboard guitar in his front room to fronting a rock and roll band on your television screen and performing in the world's greatest concert halls in a wild variety of company. Unfaithful Music describes how Costello's career has somehow endured for almost four decades through a combination of dumb luck and animal cunning, even managing the occasional absurd episode of pop stardom.This memoir, written with the same inimitable touch as his lyrics, and including dozens of images from his personal archive, offers his unique view of his unlikely and sometimes comical rise to international success, with diversions through the previously undocumented emotional foundations of some of his best known songs and the hits of tomorrow. The book contains many stories and observations about his renowned co-writers and co-conspirators, though Costello also pauses along the way for considerations on the less appealing side of infamy.Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink is destined to be a classic, idiosyncratic memoir of a singular man.

Kurt Cobain


Christopher Sandford - 1995
    Neither an apology nor a condemnation, Kurt Cobain presents a vivid insider's view of the life and death of a man who galvanized a generation and gave birth to the "grunge" revolution with his band Nirvana. Sandford portrays the provocative, small-town rebel with the talent of John Lennon, and then shows him at work on concert stages in Seattle, New York, and London. Readers follow the struggles of Cobain's emotional life—his tumultuous relationships with family and his fellow band members, his drug addiction and sexual appetite, his stormy marriage to Courtney Love, and the birth of his daughter, who, as Cobain wrote in his suicide note, "reminds me too much of who I used to be." During his research, Sandford has had access to Cobain's family, his colleagues, his former friends and lovers, and even author William S. Burroughs, whom Cobain considered to be his "greatest influence." The result is a graphic account of the life that led to the day in April 1994 when Cobain turned a shotgun on himself and became a martyr to disaffected youth around the world.

The Evolution of a Cro-Magnon


John Joseph - 2007
    A traumatic...see site for more info.

Tori Amos: All These Years: The Authorized Biography


Kalen Rogers - 1994
    The only fully authorized story of the girl and her piano, containing over 150 never-before-seen photographs.

A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead


Dennis McNally - 2002
    The creative synchronicity among Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan exploded out of the artistic ferment of the early sixties’ roots and folk scene, providing the soundtrack for the Dionysian revels of the counterculture. To those in the know, the Dead was an ongoing tour de force: a band whose constant commitment to exploring new realms lay at the center of a thirty-year journey through an ever-shifting array of musical, cultural, and mental landscapes.Dennis McNally, the band’s historian and publicist for more than twenty years, takes readers back through the Dead’s history in A Long Strange Trip. In a kaleidoscopic narrative, McNally not only chronicles their experiences in a fascinatingly detailed fashion, but veers off into side trips on the band’s intricate stage setup, the magic of the Grateful Dead concert experience, or metaphysical musings excerpted from a conversation among band members. He brings to vivid life the Dead’s early days in late-sixties San Francisco–an era of astounding creativity and change that reverberates to this day. Here we see the group at its most raw and powerful, playing as the house band at Ken Kesey’s acid tests, mingling with such legendary psychonauts as Neal Cassady and Owsley “Bear” Stanley, and performing the alchemical experiments, both live and in the studio, that produced some of their most searing and evocative music. But McNally carries the Dead’s saga through the seventies and into the more recent years of constant touring and incessant musical exploration, which have cemented a unique bond between performers and audience, and created the business enterprise that is much more a family than a corporation.Written with the same zeal and spirit that the Grateful Dead brought to its music for more than thirty years, the book takes readers on a personal tour through the band’s inner circle, highlighting its frenetic and very human faces. A Long Strange Trip is not only a wide-ranging cultural history, it is a definitive musical biography.

Stand by Your Man


Tammy Wynette - 1979
    An autobiography with Joan Dew - illustrated with photo section - Burt Reynolds Ode to Tammy

Dance Music Sex Romance: Prince- The First Decade (Revised Edition)


Per Nilsen - 1999
    Illustrated with previously unseen photographs and drawing on over 300 hours of interviews with band members, producers, friends, former lovers and associates, this biography traces the artist's life from his Minneapolis roots through controversial stardom to his rejection of the Prince persona.

And I Don't Want to Live This Life: A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder


Deborah Spungen - 1983
    But for Deborah Spungen, the mother of Nancy, who was stabbed to death at the Chelsea Hotel, it was both a relief and a tragedy. Here is the incredible story of an infant who never stopped screaming, a toddler who attacked people, a teenager addicted to drugs, violence, and easy sex, a daughter completely out of control--who almost destroyed her parents' marriage and the happiness of the rest of her family.

The Day the Music Died: The Last Tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens


Larry Lehmer - 1997
    Drawing on new documentary information, the author recreates the often grueling conditions of an early rock and roll tour, and provides new facts about "the day the music died." With 50 photos.

Nöthin' But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the '80s Hard Rock Explosion


Tom Beaujour - 2021
    Indeed, fist-pumping hits like Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It," Mötley Crüe's "Girls, Girls, Girls," and Guns N' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" are as inextricably linked to the era as Reaganomics, Pac-Man, and E.T.From the do-or-die early days of self-financed recordings and D.I.Y. concert productions that were as flashy as they were foolhardy, to the multi-Platinum, MTV-powered glory years of stadium-shaking anthems and chart-topping power ballads, to the ultimate crash when grunge bands like Nirvana forever altered the entire climate of the business, Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock's "Nothin' But a Good Time" captures the energy and excess of the hair metal years in the words of the musicians, managers, producers, engineers, label executives, publicists, stylists, costume designers, photographers, journalists, magazine publishers, video directors, club bookers, roadies, groupies, and hangers-on who lived it.

Let Fury Have the Hour: The Punk Rock Politics of Joe Strummer


Antonino D'Ambrosio - 2004
    The quintessential Rude Boy, punker, rebel musician, artist and activist, Strummer wrote some of the most important and influential music of the last century including "Guns of Brixton," "The Washington Bullets," "Spanish Bombs," "White Man in Hammersmith Palace," "London's Burning," "Lost in the Supermarket," and "Garageland." Effectively melding raw creativity with radical politics, Strummer transformed punk rock from its early associations with reactionary, right wing and nihilistic politics into a social movement. From Rock Against Racism to the Anti-Nazi League Festival to supporting the H-Block protests, Strummer and The Clash led the charge for human rights. Let Fury Have the Hour collects articles, interviews, essays and reviews that chronicle Strummer's life both as a musician and a political activist. Included in this collection are essays and interviews by Antonino D'Ambrosio, alongside contributions from Peter Silverton, Barry Miles, Anya Philips, Sylvia Simmons, Vic Garbarini, Caroline Coons, Todd Martens, Joel Schalit and others. This book also includes original lyrics, photography, art, posters, and flyers, and offers the first serious examination of the life of this extraordinary man.

Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011


Lizzy Goodman - 2017
    But as the end of the millennium neared, cutting-edge bands began emerging from Seattle, Austin, and London, pushing New York further from the epicenter. The behemoth music industry, too, found itself in free fall, under siege from technology. Then 9/11/2001 plunged the country into a state of uncertainty and war—and a dozen New York City bands that had been honing their sound and style in relative obscurity suddenly became symbols of glamour for a young, web-savvy, forward-looking generation in need of an anthem.Meet Me in the Bathroom charts the transformation of the New York music scene in the first decade of the 2000s, the bands behind it—including The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem, Interpol, and Vampire Weekend—and the cultural forces that shaped it, from the Internet to a booming real estate market that forced artists out of the Lower East Side to Williamsburg. Drawing on 200 original interviews with James Murphy, Julian Casablancas, Karen O, Ezra Koenig, and many others musicians, artists, journalists, bloggers, photographers, managers, music executives, groupies, models, movie stars, and DJs who lived through this explosive time, journalist Lizzy Goodman offers a fascinating portrait of a time and a place that gave birth to a new era in modern rock-and-roll.

Marilyn Monroe: A Life in Pictures


Anne Verlhac - 2007
    Marilyn Monroe: A Life in Pictures is the only book to bring together all of the most iconic images of the legendary bombshell. Glamorous shots by celebrity photographers mix with casual snapshots and childhood portraits to span Marilyn's luminous but too-short life. Hundreds of evocative images, both lush and poignant, are interwoven with quotations by and about Marilyn to create an elegant collective portrait like no other. Aesthetically arresting throughout, this volume illuminates the life of a legend, both onscreen and off.