Through interviews, road stories, geographical and sociological interpretations, and detailed music criticism, Petrusich traces the rise of Americana music from its gospel origins through its new and compelling incarnations (as evidenced in bands and artists from Elvis to Iron and Wine, the Carter Family to Animal Collective, Johnny Cash to Will Oldham) and explores how the genre is adapting to the twenty-first century. Ultimately the book is an examination of all things American: guitars, cars, kids, motion, passion, enterprise, and change, in a fervent attempt to reconcile the American past with the American present, using only dusty records and highway maps as guides.

    It was an agenda mirrored in the Clash’s music, which swiftly evolved from ferocious punk rock to incorporate reggae, ska, funk, jazz, soul, and hip-hop. Passion Is a Fashion draws on over 70 interviews with the key participants in the story—roadies, producers, friends, and fans—and conversations with the Clash: Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, and Topper Headon. The first book to give real insight into what went on behind the scenes during the Clash’s ten-year career, it charts the Clash’s picaresque progress through the days of the early punk scene and their groundbreaking Rock Against Racism gigs, to the arduous touring, to their break out in America, and the making of the classic London Calling album, all the way to the band’s eventual dissolution and the sudden, sad death of frontman Joe Strummer. Gritty, compelling, and above all authoritative, Passion Is a Fashion is the biography the Clash has long deserved.

    More than just Pelé and the New York Cosmos, it lured the biggest names of the world game like Johan Cruyff, Franz Beckenbauer, Eusebio, Gerd Müller and George Best to play the sport as it was meant to be played-without inhibition, to please the fans.The first complete look at the ambitious, star-studded NASL, Rock 'n' Roll Soccer reveals how this precursor to modern soccer laid the foundations for the sport's tremendous popularity in America today. Bringing to life the color and chaos of an unfairly maligned league, soccer journalist Ian Plenderleith draws from research and interviews with the men who were there to reveal the madness of its marketing, the wild expectations of businessmen and corporations hoping to make a killing out of the next big thing, and the insanity of franchises in scorching cities like Las Vegas and Hawaii. That's not to mention the league's on-running fight with FIFA as the trailblazing North American continent battled to innovate, surprise, and sell soccer to a whole new world.As entertaining and raucous as the league itself, Rock 'n' Roll Soccer recounts the hype and chaos surrounding the rapid rise and cataclysmic fall of the NASL, an enterprising and groundbreaking league that did too much right to ignore.

    Hewitt has even been the inspiration for some of Weller's songs - and he has extraordinary in-depth knowledge of the inspiration behind the rest.Once, when Hewitt interviewed Weller for a music magazine, he complained - 'I don't know why people ask me all these questions. All the answers are in my songs.' Largely unnoticed, Weller has used thirty-years of lyrics to explore his personal history and beliefs. Taking as his starting point these lyrics, alongside a lifetime's friendship, Paolo Hewitt shows us the real Paul Weller, the man inside the music.

    More than forty years and $37 billion later, Star Wars-related products outnumber human beings, a stormtrooper army spans the globe, and "Jediism" has become a religion in its own right. Lucas's creation has grown into far more than a cinematic classic; it is, quite simply, one of the most lucrative, influential, and interactive franchises of all time. Yet until now, the complete history of Star Wars - its influences and impact, the controversies it has spawned, its financial growth and long-term prospects - has never been told.In How Star Wars Conquered the Universe, veteran journalist Chris Taylor traces the series from the difficult birth of the original film through its sequels, the franchise's death and rebirth, the prequels, and the preparations for a new trilogy. Taylor provides portraits of the friends, writers, artists, producers, and marketers who labored behind the scenes to turn Lucas's idea into a legend. He also jousts with modern-day Jedi, tinkers with droid builders, and gets inside Boba Fett's helmet, all to find out how Star Wars has attracted and inspired so many fans for so long.Since the first film's release in 1977, Taylor shows, Star Wars has conquered our culture with a sense of lightness and exuberance, while remaining serious enough to influence politics around the world and spread a spirituality that appeals to religious groups and atheists alike. Controversial digital upgrades and critically savaged prequels have actually made the franchise stronger than ever. Now, with a new set of savvy bosses holding the reins and Episode VII on the horizon, it looks like Star Wars is just getting started.An energetic, fast-moving account of this creative and commercial phenomenon, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe explains how a filmmaker's fragile dream beat out a surprising number of rivals and gained a diehard, multigenerational fan base - and why it will be galvanizing our imaginations and minting money for generations to come.

    But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else." So writes Bob Dylan in Chronicles: Volume One, his remarkable book exploring critical junctures in his life and career. Through Dylan's eyes and open mind, we see Greenwich Village, circa 1961, when he first arrives in Manhattan. Dylan's New York is a magical city of possibilities -- smoky, nightlong parties; literary awakenings; transient loves and unbreakable friendships. Elegiac observations are punctuated by jabs of memories, penetrating and tough. With the book's side trips to New Orleans, Woodstock, Minnesota and points west, Chronicles: Volume One is an intimate and intensely personal recollection of extraordinary times.By turns revealing, poetical, passionate and witty, Chronicles: Volume One is a mesmerizing window on Bob Dylan's thoughts and influences. Dylan's voice is distinctively American: generous of spirit, engaged, fanciful and rhythmic. Utilizing his unparalleled gifts of storytelling and the exquisite expressiveness that are the hallmarks of his music, Bob Dylan turns Chronicles: Volume One into a poignant reflection on life, and the people and places that helped shape the man and the art.

    Based on ten years of original, exclusive interviews with the man himself and conversations with a legion of musical associates like Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme, DC punk legend Ian MacKaye, and Nevermind producer Butch Vig, this is Grohl's story. He speaks candidly and honestly about Kurt Cobain, the arguments that almost tore Nirvana apart, the feuds that threatened to derail the Foo Fighters's global success, and the dark days that almost caused him to quit music for good.Dave Grohl has emerged as one of the most recognizable and respected musicians in the world. He is the last true hero to emerge from the American underground. This Is a Call vividly recounts this incredible rock 'n' roll journey.

    Culture Club. Wham!. Soft Cell. Duran Duran. Sade. Spandau Ballet. The Eurythmics...'Who better to tell the story of the super-stylish New Romantic movement than GQ editor Jones, who lived through it?'i News, 75 Best New Books for Autumn'Jones has finally produced the tribute that one of Britain's most culturally rich periods truly deserves.' Classic Pop *****One of the most creative entrepreneurial periods since the Sixties, the era of the New Romantics grew out of the remnants of post-punk and developed quickly alongside club culture, ska, electronica, and goth. The scene had a huge influence on the growth of print and broadcast media, and was arguably one of the most bohemian environments of the late twentieth century. Not only did it visually define the decade, it was the catalyst for the Second British Invasion, when the US charts would be colonised by British pop music - making it one of the most powerful cultural exports since the Beatles.In Sweet Dreams, Dylan Jones charts the rise of the New Romantics through testimony from the people who lived it.For a while, Sweet Dreams were made of this.

    It was such a radical idea that almost no one thought it would actually succeed, much less become a force in the worlds of music, television, film, fashion, sports, and even politics. But it did work. MTV became more than anyone had ever imagined.I Want My MTV tells the story of the first decade of MTV, the golden era when MTV's programming was all videos, all the time, and kids watched religiously to see their favorite bands, learn about new music, and have something to talk about at parties. From its start in 1981 with a small cache of videos by mostly unknown British new wave acts to the launch of the reality-television craze with The Real World in 1992, MTV grew into a tastemaker, a career maker, and a mammoth business. Featuring interviews with nearly four hundred artists, directors, VJs, and television and music executives, I Want My MTV is a testament to the channel that changed popular culture forever.

    Along with many illustrations of the creative packages, this is the whole story of the $250 million industry that sustains itself on the great figures of rock music and their biggest admirers.

    Rollins's observations range from the wry to the raucous in this blistering account of a six-year career with the band - a time marked by crazed fans, vicious cops, near-starvation, substance abuse, and mind numbing all-night drives. Rollins decided to revise this edition by adding a wealth of new photographs, a new foreword, and an afterword to include some "where-are-they-now" information on the people featured in the book. This new edition includes 40 previously unpublished black-and-white photographs from Rollins's private collection and show flyers by artist Raymond Pettibon. Called "a soul-frying experience not to be undertaken by lightweights" by Wired magazine, Get in the Van perfectly embodies what one critic called the "secular gospel" of one of punk and post-punk's most respected and controversial figures.

    Rock and roll made it otherwise. From meeting Elvis, to seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, to producing Del Shannon, backing Bob Dylan, putting together a band with George Harrison, Dylan, Roy Orbison, and Jeff Lynne, making records with Johnny Cash, and sending well more than a dozen of his own celebrated recordings high onto the charts, Tom Petty's story has all the drama of a rock and roll epic. Now in his mid-sixties, still making records and still touring, Petty, known for his reclusive style, has shared with Warren Zanes his insights and arguments, his regrets and lasting ambitions, and the details of his life on and off the stage.This is a book for those who know and love the songs, from "American Girl" and "Refugee" to "Free Fallin'" and "Mary Jane's Last Dance," and for those who want to see the classic rock and roll era embodied in one man's remarkable story. Dark and mysterious, Petty manages to come back, again and again, showing us what the music can do and where it can take us.

    

    Few could or would have predicted that the improvised raps and raw beats busting out of New York City's urban underclass would one day become a multimillion-dollar business and one of music's most lucrative genres. Among those few were two visionaries: Russell Simmons, a young black man from Hollis, Queens, and Rick Rubin, a Jewish kid from Long Island. Though the two came from different backgrounds, their all-consuming passion for hip-hop brought them together. Soon they would revolutionize the music industry with their groundbreaking label, Def Jam Records. Def Jam, Inc. traces the company's incredible rise from the NYU dorm room of nineteen-year-old Rubin (where LL Cool J was discovered on a demo tape) to the powerhouse it is today; from financial struggles and scandals-including The Beastie Boys's departure from the label and Rubin's and Simmons's eventual parting-to revealing anecdotes about artists like Slick Rick, Public Enemy, Foxy Brown, Jay-Z, and DMX. Stacy Gueraseva, former editor in chief of Russell Simmons's magazine, Oneworld, had access to the biggest players on the scene, and brings you real conversations and a behind-the-scenes look from a decade-and a company-that turned the music world upside down. She takes you back to New York in the '80s, when late-night spots such as Danceteria and Nell's were burning with young, fresh rappers, and Simmons and Rubin had nothing but a hunch that they were on to something huge. Far more than just a biography of the two men who made it happen, Def Jam, Inc. is a journey into the world of rap itself. Both an intriguing business history as well as a gritty narrative, here is the definitive book on Def Jam-a must read for any fan of hip-hop as well as all popular-culture junkies.

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