Book picks similar to
LCD Soundsystem's Sound of Silver by Ryan Leas
music
nonfiction
33-1-3
non-fiction
Misery Obscura: The Photography of Eerie Von (1981-2009)
Eerie Von - 2009
Beginning as the unofficial photographer for punk legends The Misfits and later taking charge of the bass guitar as a founding member of underground pioneers Samhain and metal gods Danzig, the evil eye of Eerie Von's camera captured the dark heart of rock's most vital and bleeding-edge period, a time when rock and roll was not only dangerous, but downright menacing. Eerie Von's lens has documented everything from The Misfits' humble beginnings in Lodi, New Jersey, to the heights of Danzig's stadium-rock glory alongside metal superstars Metallica. As well as an essential visual document of music history, Eerie's road stories of triumph and damnation bring to life an era the likes of which will never again be seen.
The Many Lives of Tom Waits
Patrick Humphries - 1989
This book provides a critical overview of the career of a man whose voice is described as sounding 'like Ethel Merman and Louis Armstrong meeting in hell'.
Time Between: My Life as a Byrd, Burrito Brother, and Beyond
Chris Hillman - 2020
He went on to record and perform in various configurations, including as a member of Stephen Stills’s Manassas and as a co-founder of The Souther-Hillman-Furay Band. In the 1980s he formed The Desert Rose Band, scoring eight Top 10 Billboard country hits. He’s released a number of solo efforts, including 2017’s highly acclaimed Bidin’ My Time—the final album produced by the late Tom Petty. In Time Between, Hillman shares his quintessentially Southern Californian experience, from an idyllic, rural 1950s childhood; to achieving worldwide fame thanks to hits such as “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Turn! Turn! Turn!” and “Eight Miles High”; to becoming the first musician to move to Laurel Canyon. Featuring behind-the-scenes insights on his time in The Byrds, his productive but sometimes complicated relationship with Gram Parsons, his role in launching the careers of Buffalo Springfield and Emmylou Harris, and the ups and downs of life in various bands, music is only part of his story. Within the pages of Time Between, Hillman reveals the details of his personal life with candor and vulnerability, writing honestly about the shocking tragedy that struck his family when he was a teenager, his subsequent struggles with anger, and how his spiritual journey led him to a place of deep faith that allowed him to extend forgiveness and experience wholeness. Chris Hillman is much more than a rock star. He is truly a founding father of American music and a man who has faced down the challenges of life to discover what really matters.
The Stone Roses: And the Resurrection of British Pop
John Robb - 1997
This classic biography charts the phenomenal rise of The Stone Roses to the icons they are today, using interviews, rehearsal tapes and the archives of author John Robb who was with them from the beginning.
Robb's exclusive inside knowledge of The Stone Roses creates a compelling and intimate insight into how the band single-handedly set the blueprint for the resurgence of UK rock 'n' roll in the 1990s: Ian Brown's new lazy-style vocals, Reni's fluid, funk-tinged, ground-breaking drumming, and the guitar genius of John Squire.
From the band members' early years to the inception of the Roses, through the tours and success, their influences and style, to the demise of the original line-up and their solo careers; every high and low is documented in minute detail.
This is the definitive, most revered account of one of the most influential British bands in pop music history.
The Aesthetics Of Rock
Richard Meltzer - 1970
Richard Meltzer (a.k.a. R. Meltzer) took his training as a young philosopher and applied it with unalloyed enthusiasm to the lyrics, sound, and culture of rock and roll. Never before had anyone noticed the relationship between the philosophy of Heidegger and a tune by Little Anthony and the Imperials, heard the cries of agony in the Shangri Las' “Remember (Walkin' in the Sand)”, or transcribed every "papa-ooma-mow-mow" in the Trashmen's “Surfin' Bird.”From Dionne Warwick to Plato, Jim Morrison to Bert Brecht, Conway Twitty to Miguel de Unamuno, Meltzer subverts high and low culture in his search for meaning, emotion, and codes in popular music. At once an earnest investigation and a crypto put-on, the book can be read for its nuggets of information and insights or for its humor. Here with Greil Marcus's new introduction, yet another generation of readers can be outraged and inspired.
The Strangest Tribe: How a Group of Seattle Rock Bands Invented Grunge
Stephen Tow - 2011
Stephen Tow takes a second look at the music and community that vaulted the likes of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Mudhoney, and Soundgarden to international fame. Chock-full of interviews with the starring characters, Tow extensively chronicles the rise of rock 'n' roll s last great statement and contextualizes what the music really meant to the key players. Delving deep into the archives, Tow paints a vivid picture of the underground rock circuit of tattered warehouses and community centers. Seattle s heady punk scene of the late '80s gave birth to a rowdy and raucous movement, influenced by metal, but wholly its own. Seattle made its own sound, a sound that came to be known internationally as grunge. Tow walks the reader through this sonic evolution, interviewing members of every band along the way. In 1991, Seattle s sound took the world by storm--but this same storm had been brewing in the Pacific Northwest for a decade before it hit MTV.The Strangest Tribeis a reframing of this last transformative era in music. Not just plaid shirts, bleached hair, and angst, grunge is a word used to describe a rich community of artists and jokers."
Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge
Mark Yarm - 2011
Though it sold miserably, the record made music history by documenting a burgeoning regional sound, the raw fusion of heavy metal and punk rock that we now know as grunge. But it wasn’t until five years later, with the seemingly overnight success of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” that grunge became a household word and Seattle ground zero for the nineties alternative-rock explosion.Everybody Loves Our Town captures the grunge era in the words of the musicians, producers, managers, record executives, video directors, photographers, journalists, publicists, club owners, roadies, scenesters and hangers-on who lived through it. The book tells the whole story: from the founding of the Deep Six bands to the worldwide success of grunge’s big four (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains); from the rise of Seattle’s cash-poor, hype-rich indie label Sub Pop to the major-label feeding frenzy that overtook the Pacific Northwest; from the simple joys of making noise at basement parties and tiny rock clubs to the tragic, lonely deaths of superstars Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley.Drawn from more than 250 new interviews—with members of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Screaming Trees, Hole, Melvins, Mudhoney, Green River, Mother Love Bone, Temple of the Dog, Mad Season, L7, Babes in Toyland, 7 Year Bitch, TAD, the U-Men, Candlebox and many more — and featuring previously untold stories and never-before-published photographs, Everybody Loves Our Town is at once a moving, funny, lurid, and hugely insightful portrait of an extraordinary musical era.
Crossroads: The Life and Music of Eric Clapton
Michael Schumacher - 1995
His brilliant musicianship inspired his fans in London to scrawl graffiti in the underground train proclaiming, "Clapton is God." Nearly forty years later, this multi-million selling, Grammy award-winning virtuoso guitarist is still winning adulation from a whole new generation of fans.Crossroads, the definitive portrait of the man and his music, reveals with compassion and insight both the depths of Clapton's pain and the roots of his musical power. Michael Schumacher traces his career from the early years of the Yardbirds and John Mayall to the legendary supergroups Cream and Derek and the Dominoes to the solo career that has lasted a quarter of a century. Crossroads also explores the tumultuous life -- his heroin addiction, the excruciating relationship with Patti Boyd (George Harrison's wife and the woman who inspired the classic "Layla"), the year of 1990 when he lost four close friends, and the devastating death of his four-year-old son Connor the following year. Both revealing and sympathetic, this is the ultimate look at the enduring legend who transformed personal suffering into lasting artistic triumph.-- Revised and updated to include details on Clapton's new marriage and his recent recordings and tour-- Complete with a comprehensive discography and tour history
The Who: Maximum R&B
Richard Barnes - 1983
The band themselves have assisted in this official illustrated record, contributing over 400 photographs (many never seen outside the pages of this book), press cuttings, album sleeves and posters. The Who: Maximum R&B also features complete UK and US discographies, including solo work by the individual members.First published in 1982 and now in its fifth edition, The Who: Maximum R&B is a colourful pictorial joyride widely accepted as the best book on the Who. Updated to detail the creative tensions and the chemistry that allowed the group to reform for one more time on their 2002 tour, it describes the untimely death of bassist John Entwistle on that same tour and features an Introduction by songwriter/guitarist Townshend on the loss of his friend and his own recent legal problems.
Rolling Stone Magazine: The Uncensored History
Robert Draper - 1990
Draper's history is an intelligent and witty behind-the-scenes look at this cultural icon and its course from its hippie beginnings to a high-profile magazine. 16 pages of photographs.
Isle of Noises: Conversations with Great British Songwriters
Daniel Rachel - 2013
Artists discuss their individual approach to writing, the inspiration behind their most successful songs, and the techniques and methods they have independently developed. It is an incredible musical journey spanning fifty years, from ‘Waterloo Sunset’ by Ray Davies to ‘The Beast’ by Laura Marling, with many lyrical and melodic secrets revealed along the way.Original handwritten lyrics from personal archives and notebooks (many never-before-seen) offer a unique glimpse into the heart of the creative process, and some of the greatest names in photography, including Jill Furmanovsky, Pennie Smith and Sheila Rock, have contributed stunning portraits of each artist.The combination of individual personal insights and the breadth and depth of knowledge in their collected experience makes Isle of Noises the essential word on classic British songwriting – as told by the songwriters themselves.
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung
Lester Bangs - 1987
Advertising in Rolling Stone and other major publications.
Dude, Where's My Stethoscope?
5 Grays Publishing - 2013
Donovan Gray answers that question in Dude, Where's My Stethoscope? - a laugh-out-loud funny, heartbreaking and sometimes poignant collection of true-life medical short stories. We follow Dr. Gray through medical school and two decades of unforgettable ER and family practice. Humorously written in an engaging mash-up of formal prose and informal medical slang with a nod to pop culture and ancient mythology, Dude is a powerful book that captures the essence of what it is to be an emergency room doctor.
Guided by Voices: A Brief History: Twenty-One Years of Hunting Accidents in the Forests of Rock and Roll
James Greer - 2005
Critics internationally have lauded the band’s brain trust, Robert Pollard, as a once-in-a-generation artist. Pollard has been compared by The New York Times to Mozart, Rossini, and Paul McCartney (in the same sentence) and everyone from P. J. Harvey, Radiohead, R.E.M., the Strokes, and U2 has sung his praises and cited his music as an influence. But it all started rather prosaically when Pollard, a fourth-grade teacher in his early thirties from Dayton, Ohio, began recording songs with drinking buddies in his basement. James Greer, an acclaimed music writer and former Spin editor, enjoys a unique advantage in having played in the band for two years. This personal connection grants him unparalleled insight and complete access to the workings of Pollard’s muse.