We'll hear of the great love stories ranging from Johnny Cash and June Carter in the 1960s to Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, who married in 2005. We'll get the truth of the tragedies that led to the loss of three stars all in the same month, starting the rumor of the "Opry Curse." We'll learn how after being stabbed, shot, and maimed, Trace Adkins calls his early honky-tonk years "combat country," and we'll find inspiration from DeFord Bailey, an African American harmonica player in 1927 crippled by childhood polio who rose to fame as one of the first Opry stars. Our hearts will break for Willie Nelson, who lost his only son on Christmas Day, and soar for Amy Grant and Vince Gill, who found true love. Based on over 150 firsthand interviews with the stars of The Grand Ole Opry, these are stories that tell the heart of country--the lives that are lived and inspire the songs we love.

    From his unique childhood growing up with a gay father and a domineering mother to his tragically early death in 2007 after battling the NHS for a drug that could prolong his life, David Nolan investigates the lives and times of the man they called "Mr. Manchester." Drawing on nearly 50 interviews with musicians, DJs, writers, actors, family, and friends—including Wilson's partner of 17 years Yvette Livesey, You're Entitled To An Opinion . . . paints a picture of a unique, driven, and chaotic man whose inspiration and influence is still being felt today across the worlds of music and television.

    It’s as devastating and as simple as that’ Noel Gallagher Slade’s music and style dominated and defined the 1970s. With six consecutive number one singles they were the UK’s number one group and sold millions of records all over the world. At their peak, Slade enjoyed success and adulation not seen since The Beatles. Now, for the first time, the man whose outlandish costumes, glittering make-up and unmistakable hairstyle made Slade the definitive act of Glam Rock tells his story.Growing up in a council house in 1950s Wolverhampton, Dave always knew he wanted to be a musician and in the mid-sixties, with Don Powell, founded the band that in 1970 would settle on the name Slade. Their powerful guitar-driven anthems formed the soundtrack for a whole generation, and their Top of the Pops performances, led by their flamboyant, ever-smiling lead guitarist, became legendary.But So Here It Is reveals that there’s much more to Dave’s life than Top of the Pops and good times. Packed with previously unseen personal photos, the book uncovers surprising family secrets, tells the inside story of the original band’s painful break-up, explores Dave’s battles with depression, his decision to reform Slade and go back on the road and his recovery from the stroke that threatened to cut short his career.Told with great heart and humour, So Here It Is is the story of the irresistible rise of Dave Hill, Superyob; the definitive account of his journey from working-class lad to global rock star.

    We live in an age when the most beautiful of recording formats, vinyl, is back in vogue and thriving. In the early 90s, with the march of the cd and record company disinterest oin the format, vinyl was looking like an anachronism. And with its demise came the gradual erosion of a once beautiful and unique landscape known as the independent record shop. Richard King, author of How Soon is Now, blends memoir and elegiac music writing on the likes of Captain Beefheart, CAN and Julian Cope, to create a book that recalls the debauched glory days of the independent record shop. Chaotic, amateurish and extravagantly dysfunctional, this is a book full of rare personalities and rum stories. It is a book about landscape, place and the personal; the first piece of writing to treat the environment of the record shop as a natural resource with its own peculiar rhythms and anecdotal histories.

    When you think about the kind of guy you are going to marry, a Romany living in an old caravan does not normally come to mind! Can't think why, can you?! So, there I was. 19 years old and fed up with 'normal' guys who only wanted one thing. Yep you guessed it! But then.... along comes this guy, tall, skinny, bad hair, ugly/handsome..... did I say bad hair? Oh yes! And that was just the beginning! But little did I know that he was a gypsy! Oh boy! Gypsies and gorgi's don't mix.....do they? I was about to find out! Honest, raw, colourful, and downright hilarious! Based on the true story of Nell Rose Loveridge and Jake her gypsy rover!

    A must for all Rollins fans.

    evil. Heavy Metal guitarist, Dimebag Darrell Abbott, was attacked and murdered on stage, December 8th, 2004 at the Alrosa Villa Nightclub. Erin Halk, Jeff Thompson and Nathan Bray each lost their lives trying to help Dimebag and others from the attack of an armed madman. While Dimebag is certainly a part of the story contained within the book, the focus is squarely on the background of Halk, Bray & Thompson, in addition to the killer, his motives and the actual incident at the venue. "A Vulgar Display Of Power: Courage And Carnage At The Alrosa Villa" is a deep, moving story which does an amazing job of honoring the memories Jeff, Nate, Erin, and Darrell. Of the victims who lost their lives, Nathan Bray is the only person who is survived by a wife and child. MJS Music Publications is contributing proceeds from every copy sold to a college fund set up for his son, Anthony. Music History/True Crime/Biography 352 pages, 240+ pictures.

    From the 1960s graffiti proclaiming 'Clapton is God', to his seminal work in supergroup Cream and his phenomenally successful solo career, Eric Clapton has achieved the status of bona fide living legend and enduring icon.Now in his sixth decade in the music business, he occupies an exulted position at the pinnacle of the rock world thanks to songs like Layla, Wonderful Tonight and Tears In Heaven, and for many is considered the greatest guitarist who ever lived.This book will chart his rise to stardom in the 60s and his unparalleled success since walking out of the Yardbirds as a 20-year-old to follow his chosen path of the blues with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and later with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker in supergroup Cream, as well as his successful solo career. However, his success has come at a price. Once a happy well-adjusted boy, the young Clapton was devastated by the realisation at the age of nine that the woman he thought was his sister was in fact his mother, and that the couple he thought were his parents were his maternal grandparents. His treatment by his mother was also to shape his future turbulent relationships with the women in his life, including his failed first marriage to model Pattie Boyd, who was married to Clapton's close friend George Harrison when he fell for her. Motherless Child also chronicles his battles with the demons of drugs and alcohol, his successful journey to sobriety, and examines his legacy as one of the most influential musicans of his generation.This is essential reading for any Clapton fan.

    The book also features an exclusive foreword by rock legend Glenn Hughes (Black Sabbath, Deep Purple).

    This was Bowie's third appearance on TOTP but this was the one that properly resonated with its audience, the one that would go on to cause a seismic shift in the Zeitgeist. This is the performance that turned Bowie into a star, embedding his Ziggy Stardust persona into the nation's consciousness.With a tall, flame-orange cockade quiff (stolen from a Kansai Yamamoto model on the cover of Honey), lavishly applied make-up, white nail polish, and wearing a multi-coloured jump-suit that looked as though it were made from fluorescent fish skin (chosen by Ziggy co-shaper, the designer Freddie Buretti), and carrying a brand spanking new, blue acoustic guitar, a bone-thin Bowie appeared not so much as a pop singer, but rather as some sort of benevolent alien, a concept helped along by the provocative appearance of his guitarist, the chicken-headed Mick Ronson, with both of them unapologetically sporting knee-length patent leather wrestler's boots (Bowie's were red). 'Most people are scared of colour,' Bowie said later. 'Their lives are built up in shades of grey. It doesn't matter how straight the style is, make it brightly coloured material and everyone starts acting weird.'Suddenly Bowie - a man called alias - had the world at his nail-varnished fingertips, and in no time at all he would be the biggest star in the world.

    Earlier this year he published the Kindle-only No.1 bestseller, Paranoid, a dark, twisted and frequently hilarious memoir of his time working at the heavy end of the music business in the 1970s and 80s.Now comes his sensational Kindle-only biography of Pink Floyd, The Endless Journey: 50 Years Of Pink Floyd. Timed to coincide with The Endless River, the first all-new Pink Floyd album for 20 years, this is the book Wall describes as “The one I’ve been waiting all my life to write.”As the book explains, ‘Spread across four sides of music The Endless River is very much a Pink Floyd album in the historic, legendary sense. One meant to be listened to as one, long continuous, flowing piece.’As David Gilmour comments on the official Pink Floyd website, “I think the way the three of us, me, Nick and Rick have something when we play together, that has a magic that is louder than words.”This book is a tribute to that magic. The story of Pink Floyd, then and now, ebbing and flowing, like the tides of the moon, across time and space, to bring you to now.

    A quintessential Englishman, he has since pursued several overlapping careers, bringing to each of them his trademark preoccupation with quality control and restless curiosity.In 1975, after leaving the band that made him famous he diversified into writing movie soundtracks, various audio-visual ventures, tireless charity work and supporting major peace initiatives. He also became world music’s most illustrious champion, launching the WOMAD festival and recording solo albums that featured musicians from every corner of the globe. These and several other careers make writing Peter Gabriel’s biography an unusually challenging task, but Daryl Easlea has undertaken hours of new interviews with key friends, musicians, aides and confidants to get to the very heart and soul of Peter Gabriel, his music and his complex life. The result is an extraordinary biography of an extraordinary man.

    A Fast Ride Out of Here tells a story that is so shocking, so outrageous, so packed with excess and leading to such uproar and tragic consequences as to be almost beyond compare. Put simply, in terms of jaw-dropping incident, self-destruction and all-round craziness, Pete Way's rock'n'roll life makes even Keith Richards's appear routine and Ozzy Osbourne seem positively mild-mannered in comparison. Not for nothing did Nikki Sixx, bassist with LA shock-rockers Motley Crue and who 'died' for eight minutes following a heroin overdose in 1988, consider that he was a disciple of and apprenticed to Way.During a forty-year career as founding member and bassist of the venerated British hard rock band UFO, and which has also included a stint in his hell-raising buddy Ozzy's band, Pete Way has both scaled giddy heights and plunged to unfathomable lows. A heroin addict for more than ten years, he blew millions on drugs and booze and left behind him a trail of chaos and carnage. The human cost of this runs to six marriages, four divorces, a pair of estranged daughters and two dead ex-wives. Latterly, Way has fought cancer, but has survived it all and is now ready to tell his extraordinary tale. By turns hilarious, heart-rending, mordant, scabrous, self-lacerating, brutally honest and entirely compulsive, A Fast Ride Out of Here will be a monument to rock'n'roll debauchery on an epic, unparalleled scale and also to one man's sheer indestructability.

    That same year, he finished third on the Big Wave World Tour, despite only surfing three of the five events. Chris’s mantra is Dream it, See it, Believe it, Achieve it. With his infectious enthusiasm, Chris tells how he pulled off death-defying antics, time and again, overcame overwhelming obstacles and manoeuvred around the many random twists of fate to achieve his goals and fulfil his dreams.

    The bloke can write. He rhapsodizes about heroin better than anyone since Jim Carroll. With the flick of his enviable pen, he can summarize childhood thus: ‘My very first utterance in life was not a single word, but a sentence. It was, ‘Don’t do that.’... Russell Brand has a compelling story." — New York Times Book ReviewThe gleeful and candid New York Times bestselling autobiography of addiction, recovery, and rise to fame from Russell Brand, star of Forgetting Sarah Marshall and one of the biggest personalities in comedy today.Picking up where he left off in My Booky Wook, movie star and comedian Russell Brand details his rapid climb to fame and fortune in a shockingly candid, resolutely funny, and unbelievably electrifying tell-all: Booky Wook 2. Brand’s performances in Arthur, Get Him to the Greek, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall have earned him a place in fans’ hearts; now, with a drop of Chelsea Handler’s Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang, a dash of Tommy Lee’s Dirt, and a spoonful of Nikki Sixx’s The Heroin Diaries, Brand goes all the way—exposing the mad genius behind the audacious comic we all know (or think we know) and love (or at least, lust).