While paintings of Picasso and Jackson Pollock sell for a hundred million dollars or more, and lines from T. S. Eliot are quoted on the yearbook pages of alienated teenagers across the land, twentieth-century classical music still sends ripples of unease through audiences. At the same time, its influence can be felt everywhere. Atonal chords crop up in jazz. Avant-garde sounds populate the soundtracks of Hollywood thrillers. Minimalism has had a huge effect on rock, pop, and dance music from the Velvet Underground onward.The Rest Is Noise shows why twentieth-century composers felt compelled to create a famously bewildering variety of sounds, from the purest beauty to the purest noise. It tells of a remarkable array of maverick personalities who resisted the cult of the classical past, struggled against the indifference of a wide public, and defied the will of dictators. Whether they have charmed audiences with sweet sounds or battered them with dissonance, composers have always been exuberantly of the present, defying the stereotype of classical music as a dying art. The narrative goes from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties, from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies. We follow the rise of mass culture and mass politics, of dramatic new technologies, of hot and cold wars, of experiments, revolutions, riots, and friendships forged and broken. The end result is not so much a history of twentieth-century music as a history of the twentieth century through its music.

    Included are original and revealing interviews with band members and the key people close to U2. The band's rich cultural and social context is fully explored, providing a colorful backdrop to the songs. U2: Into the Heart traces U2's meteoric rise from the early days of their career with Boy, their first album, to the spanning success of The Joshua Tree, Rattle and Hum, Achtung Baby, and Pop. U2 is a group that has become a world-class rock 'n' roll band; a band that continues to invent themselves and are not afraid to take chances with their craft—as well as make a unique impact in the world of music with their raw, emotional energy.

    Filled with 'the holy spirit of rock n roll' his destiny is sealed with the arrival of the Sex Pistols and punk rock which to Bobby, represents an iconoclastic vision of class rebellion and would ultimately lead to him becoming an artist initially in the Jesus and Mary Chain then in Primal Scream.Structured in four parts, Tenement Kid builds like a breakbeat crescendo to the final quarter of the book, the Summer of Love, Boys Own parties, and the fateful meeting with Andrew Weatherall in an East Sussex field. As the '80s bleed into the '90s and a new kind of electronic soul music starts to pulse through the nation's consciousness, Primal Scream become the most innovative British band of the new decade, representing a new psychedelic vanguard taking shape at Creation Records.Ending with the release of Screamadelica and the tour that followed in the autumn, Tenement Kid is a book filled with the joy and wonder of a rock n roll apostle who would radically reshape the future sounds of fin de siecle British pop. Published thirty years after the release of their masterpiece, Bobby Gillespie's memoir cuts a righteous path through a decade lost to Thatcherism and saved by acid house.

    Already a young veteran of the prototype American metal band Dust, Bell took residence in artistic, seedy Lower Manhattan, where he played drums in bands that would shape rock music for decades to come, including Wayne County, who pioneered transsexual rock, and Richard Hell and the Voidoids, who directly inspired the entire early British punk scene.If punk had royalty, in 1978 Marc became part of it when he was knighted "Marky Ramone" by Johnny, Joey, and Dee Dee of the iconoclastic Ramones. The band of tough misfits were a natural fit for Marky, who dressed punk before there was punk, and who brought his "blitzkrieg" style of drumming as well as the studio and stage experience the band needed to solidify its lineup. Together, they changed the world.But Marky Ramone changed, too. The epic wear and tear of a dysfunctional group (and the Ramones were a step beyond dysfunction) endlessly crisscrossing the country and the world in an Econoline "practically a psychiatric ward on wheels" drove Marky from partying to alcoholism. When his life started to look more out of control then Dee Dees, he knew he had a problem. Marky left music in the mid-eighties to enter recovery and eventually returned to help the Ramones finally receive their due as one of the greatest and most influential bands of all time.Covering in unflinching detail the cult film Rock ’N’ Roll High School to “I Wanna Be Sedated” to Marky’s own struggles, Punk Rock Blitzkrieg is an authentic and always honest look at the people who reinvented rock music, and not a moment too soon.

    The Smiths, the band with the signature sound he cofounded, remains one of the most beloved bands ever, and have a profound influence on a number of acts that followed—from the Stone Roses, Suede, Blur, and Radiohead to Oasis, The Libertines, and Arctic Monkeys.Marr recalls his childhood growing up in the northern working-class city of Manchester, in a house filled with music. He takes us back to the summer of 1982 when, at eighteen, he sought out one Stephen Morrissey to form a new band they called The Smiths. Marr invites fans on stage, on the road, and in the studio for the five years The Smiths were together and how after a rapid ascent, the working-class teenage rock star enjoyed and battled with the perks of success until ideological differences, combined with his much publicized strained relationships with fellow band mates, caused him to leave in 1987. Marr’s “escape” as he calls it, ensured the beginning of the end for one of the most influential groups of a generation. But The Smiths’ end was only the beginning for Marr. The bona-fide guitar hero continues to experiment and evolve in his solo career to this day, playing with Paul McCartney, Pretenders, Modest Mouse, Oasis and collaborating today’s most creative and renowned artists. Rising above and beyond the personal struggles and bitter feuds, Marr delivers the story of his music and his band, sharing the real insights of a man who has made music his life, and finally giving fans what they’ve truly been waiting for.

    Through Cave's fronting of the incendiary bands The Birthday Party and The Bad Seeds, producing music of unfettered expression and explosive intensity, to his creative collaborations outside of the rock industry in film and literature, BAD SEED illustrates a life lived in barely controlled chaos: and unravels the motivation and unique appeal of a reluctant icon whose songs, according to the Rolling Stones, possess "the authority of the most primal kind of myth."

    Herman Poole "Sonny" Blount (1914–1993), has been hailed as "one of the great big-band leaders, pianists, and surrealists of jazz" (New York Times) and as "the missing link between Duke Ellington and Public Enemy" (Rolling Stone). Composer, keyboardist, bandleader, philosopher, poet, and self-proclaimed extraterrestrial from Saturn, Sun Ra led his "Intergalactic Arkestra" of thirty-plus musicians in a career that ranged from boogie-woogie and swing to be-bop, free jazz, fusion, and New Age music. This definitive biography reveals the life, philosophy, and musical growth of one of the twentieth century's greatest avant-garde musicians.

    8-page color insert.

    Her store was a hang-out for The Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company; it was where Wes Wilson’s posters hung and Bill Graham sold concert tickets and Owsley’s LSD was enjoyed. Caserta’s world of psychedelic peace, love, LSD, and rock kaleidoscoped into bereavement, heroin addiction, prison, and desperation. She was hated, betrayed, and self-exiled, and after many, many years has recovered, returning home to the bayou to care for her mother with dementia. Now Caserta is giving a new generation an inside-look into a revolution—both countercultural and personal—in her new memoir. It’s the celebration of a transitional time in history, and an attempt at redemption.

    An influence on Rod Stewart, Marriott is adored by Blur, Oasis, and Paul Weller.All Too Beautiful was published in hardcover to universal critical acclaim and was shortlisted for the 2005 US ARSC (Association for Recorded Sound Collections) Awards for excellence in historical recording research.

    His foremost interpreter revisits more than forty years of listening to Dylan?weaving individual moods and moments into a brilliant history of their changing times

    Featuring new introductions by Ono and Wenner, and containing substantial material never before seen in print, Lennon Remembers presents a compelling portrait of a complex musical genius at the height of his career. Sometimes anguished and angry, often tender and poignant, these interviews are indispensable to understanding who John Lennon was and why his legacy continues to resonate today.

    The complete account of the Sex Pistols saga.

    This is the autobiography of their lead singer, Ian Gillan. Here he tells his life story, and that of the band he helped to make great. Stories of friction and violence, groupies and non-stop partying, drugs and alcohol, and how, finally, it all spiralled out of control to destroy the band.

    More recently, Rolling Stone named it the twenty-fifth greatest album of all time and the hit TV series Glee devoted an entire episode to songs from "Rumours," introducing it to a new generation. Now, for the first time, Ken Caillat, the album's co-producer, tells the full story of what really went into making "Rumours"--from the endless partying and relationship dramas to the creative struggles to write and record "You Make Loving Fun," "Don't Stop," "Go Your Own Way," "The Chain," and other timeless tracks.Tells the fascinating, behind-the-music story of the making of Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours," written by the producer who saw it all happen Filled with new and surprising details, such as Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham's screaming match while recording "You Make Loving Fun," how the band coped with the pressures of increasing success, how the master tape nearly disintegrated, and the incredible attention paid to even the tiniest elements of songs, from Lindsey playing a chair to Mick breaking glass Includes eighty black-and-white photographs