Book picks similar to
Robert Plant: A Life by Paul Rees


music
biography
non-fiction
biographies

A Pure Drop: The Life of Jeff Buckley


Jeff Apter - 2008
    His real life was only revealed after his tragic death 10 years ago, when he was found in the Mississippi river just hours before he was due to start rehearsals for the follow-up album to Grace., In this startling new bio, Jeff Buckley's friends, peers, enemies, lovers, collaborators, and others all speak of the Jeff Buckley they knew - or, in some cases, thought they knew. The contents of his many personal letters are revealed for the first time. His struggle with writer's block is explored, as are his battles with the concept of stardom, his desire for escape, and his attempts to deal with the unavoidable legacy of his equally gifted father, Tim Buckley. Even 10 years after his death, Buckley is still influential - Radiohead and Coldplay readily confess to the debt they owe him.

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.

Long Time Gone


David Crosby - 1988
    25 photos. 2 segments on "Good Morning America".

Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography


Neil Patrick Harris - 2014
    You will be born in New Mexico. You will get your big break at an acting camp. You will get into a bizarre confrontation outside a nightclub with actor Scott Caan. Even better, at each critical juncture of your life, you will choose how to proceed. You will decide whether to try out for Doogie Howser, M.D. You will decide whether to spend years struggling with your sexuality. You will decide what kind of caviar you want to eat on board Elton John’s yacht. Choose correctly and you’ll find fame, fortune, and true love. Choose incorrectly and you’ll find misery, heartbreak, and a hideous death by piranhas. All this, plus magic tricks, cocktail recipes, embarrassing pictures from your time as a child actor, and even a closing song. Yes, if you buy one book this year, congratulations on being above the American average, but make that book Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography!

The Princess Diarist


Carrie Fisher - 2016
    When Carrie Fisher discovered the journals she kept during the filming of the first Star Wars movie, she was astonished to see what they had preserved--plaintive love poems, unbridled musings with youthful naiveté, and a vulnerability that she barely recognized. Before her passing, her fame as an author, actress, and pop-culture icon was indisputable, but in 1977, Carrie Fisher was just a teenager with an all-consuming crush on her costar, Harrison Ford.With these excerpts from her handwritten notebooks, The Princess Diarist is Fisher's intimate and revealing recollection of what happened on one of the most famous film sets of all time--and what developed behind the scenes. Fisher also ponders the joys and insanity of celebrity, and the absurdity of a life spawned by Hollywood royalty, only to be surpassed by her own outer-space royalty. Laugh-out-loud hilarious and endlessly quotable, The Princess Diarist brims with the candor and introspection of a diary while offering shrewd insight into one of Hollywood's most beloved stars.

Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens


Eddie Izzard - 2017
    Born in Yemen, and raised in Ireland, Wales and post-war England, he lost his mother at the age of six. In his teens, he dropped out of university and took to the streets of London as part of a two-man escape act; when his partner went on vacation, Izzard kept busy by inventing a one-man act, and thus a career was ignited. As a stand-up comedian, Izzard has captivated audiences with his surreal, stream-of-consciousness comedy--lines such as "Cake or Death?" "Death Star Canteen," and "Do You Have a Flag?" have the status of great rock lyrics. As a self-proclaimed "Executive Transvestite," Izzard broke the mold performing in full make-up and heels, and has become as famous for his advocacy for LGBT rights as he has for his art. In Believe Me, he recounts the dizzying rise he made from street busking to London's West End, to Wembley Stadium and New York's Madison Square Garden. Still performing more than 100 shows a year--thus far in a record-breaking twenty-eight countries worldwide--Izzard is arguably one of today's top Kings of Comedy. With his brand of keenly intelligent humor, that ranges from world history to pop culture, politics and philosophy, he has built an extraordinary fan base that transcends age, gender, and race. Writing with the same candor and razor-sharp insight evident in his comedy, he reflects on a childhood marked by unutterable loss, sexuality and coming out, as well as a life in show business, politics, and philanthropy. Honest and generous, Izzard's Believe Me is an inspired account of a very singular life thus far.

sTORI Telling


Tori Spelling - 2008
    This is Tori's opportunity to define herself on her own terms.

My Love Story


Tina Turner - 2018
    Emphatically showcasing Tina’s signature blend of strength, energy, heart, and soul, this is a gorgeously wrought memoir as enthralling and moving as any of her greatest hits.

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon


Crystal Zevon - 2007
    As Warren once said, "I got to be Jim Morrison a lot longer than he did."I'll Sleep When I'm Dead is an intimate and unusual oral history of one of our most original and distinctive rock-and-roll antiheroes. Narrated by his former wife and longtime co-conspirator, Crystal Zevon, the book draws on over eighty interviews with the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Stephen King, Billy Bob Thornton, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, and countless others who came under his mischievous spell. The result is a raucous and moving tale of love and obsession, creative genius and epic bad behavior. Told in the words and images of the friends, lovers, and legends who knew him best, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead captures Warren Zevon in all his turbulent glory.

Remembered for a While


Gabrielle Drake - 2014
    Drake released only three complete albums -- Five Leaves Left (1969), Bryter Layter (1970), Pink Moon (1972) -- and was not well known before his death in 1974. Yet he gained a massive posthumous following, inspiring leading musicians such as R.E.M.'s Peter Buck and Robert Smith of The Cure and bands such as Coldplay and The Black Crowes.Forty years after Nick's death, Remembered for a While peels back some of the mystery surrounding his life. The book will feature gorgeous color photographs, as well as original letters and interviews with family and friends. As Nick's sister writes in the introduction, Remembered for a While will reveal "the poet, the musician, the friend, the son, the brother, who was also more than all of these together, and as indefinable as the morning mist."At long last, Remembered for a While paints a portrait of a visionary musician who inspired a fanatical following and whose legacy continues to inspire future generations of musicians -- and the lives of his fans.

Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead


Phil Lesh - 2005
    There are many books out there about the Dead told from the perspective of roadies, journalists, third party observers, and fans. However, with the exceptions of Jerry Garcia's ramblings in Garcia: A Signpost to New Space and Conversations With the Dead, Lesh's Searching for the Sound is the first time a founding member of America's favorite band tells their own story of what it was like inside the Grateful Dead. And what a wonderful, strange tale it is.Phil Lesh, considered the most academic of the group due to his avant-garde classical composition training, literate mind, and passion for the arts, decided to write his story himself. Written without the crutch of a ghostwriter, Searching for the Sound might be considered disjointed in places, but overall it comes across as conversational, intimate, informative, and candid (particularly regarding topics of drug use and death). If you are familiar with the band and their extended family, their history, the sixties' musical milestones and influences and all the band's famous tales (the Garcia/ Lesh "silent" confrontation, being busted on Bourbon Street, the Wall of Sound), you may be a little disgruntled there is not much new here in the way of content. However, what is "new" and totally satisfying is Phil's warm, optimistic perspective on the many events that helped shape his life. As described by Lesh, his life's journey, much like the Dead's music, is "a [series] of recurring themes, transpositions, repetitions, unexpected developments, all converging to define form that is not necessarily apparent until it's ending has come and gone." For the many fans who enjoyed the fruits of his life pursuit of sonic explorations, Searching for the Sound is a welcome addition to their Dead library.

Me: Stories of My Life


Katharine Hepburn - 1991
    Now Miss Hepburn breaks her long-kept silence about her private life in this absorbing and provocative memoir.A NEW YORK TIMES Notable Book of the YearA Book-of-the-Month-Club Main Selection

Margrave of the Marshes


John Peel - 2005
    He was a genuinely great Briton, beloved by millions. John's unique voice and sensibility were evident in everything he did, and nowhere is that more true than in these pages.Margrave of the Marshes is the astonishing book John Peel began to write before his untimely death in October 2004, completed by the woman who knew him best, his wife Sheila. It is a unique and intimate portrait of a life, a marriage and a family which is every bit as extraordinary as the man himself - a fitting tribute to a bona fide legend.

Up Till Now


William Shatner - 2008
    And it seems as if Shatner is everywhere. Winning an Emmy for his role on Boston Legal. Doing commercials for Priceline.com. In the movie theaters. Singing with Ben Folds. He’s sitting next to Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel, and he’s practically a regular on Howard Stern’s show. He was recently honored with election to the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame. He was a target on a Comedy Central’s Celebrity Roast entitled “The Shat Hits the Fan.” In Up Till Now, Shatner sits down with readers and offers the remarkable, full story of his life and explains how he got to be, well, everywhere. It was the original Star Trek series, and later its films, that made Shatner instantly recognizable, called by name---or at least by Captain Kirk’s name---across the globe. But Shatner neither began nor has ended his career with that role. From the very start, he took his skills as an actor and put them to use wherever he could. He straddled the classic world of the theater and the new world of television, whether stepping in for Christopher Plummer in Shakespeare’s Henry V or staring at “something on the wing” in a classic episode of The Twilight Zone. And since then, he’s gone on to star in numerous successful shows, such as T.J. Hooker, Rescue 911, and most recently Boston Legal. William Shatner has always been willing to take risks for his art. What other actor would star in history’s first---and probably only---all-Esperanto-language film? Who else would share the screen with thousands of tarantulas, release an album called Has Been, or film a racially incendiary film in the Deep South during the height of the civil rights era? And who else would willingly paramotor into a field of waiting fans armed with paintball guns, all waiting for a chance to stun Captain…er, Shatner? In this touching and very funny autobiography, William Shatner reveals the man behind these unforgettable moments, and how he’s become the worldwide star and experienced actor he is today.

Talking as Fast as I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls (and Everything in Between)


Lauren Graham - 2016
    In Talking as Fast as I Can, Lauren Graham hits pause for a moment and looks back on her life, sharing laugh-out-loud stories about growing up, starting out as an actress, and, years later, sitting in her trailer on the Parenthood set and asking herself, “Did you, um, make it?” She opens up about the challenges of being single in Hollywood (“Strangers were worried about me; that’s how long I was single!”), the time she was asked to audition her butt for a role, and her experience being a judge on Project Runway (“It’s like I had a fashion-induced blackout”). In “What It Was Like, Part One,” Graham sits down for an epic Gilmore Girls marathon and reflects on being cast as the fast-talking Lorelai Gilmore. The essay “What It Was Like, Part Two” reveals how it felt to pick up the role again nine years later, and what doing so has meant to her. Some more things you will learn about Lauren: She once tried to go vegan just to bond with Ellen DeGeneres, she’s aware that meeting guys at awards shows has its pitfalls (“If you’re meeting someone for the first time after three hours of hair, makeup, and styling, you’ve already set the bar too high”), and she’s a card-carrying REI shopper (“My bungee cords now earn points!”). Including photos and excerpts from the diary Graham kept during the filming of the recent Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, this book is like a cozy night in, catching up with your best friend, laughing and swapping stories, and—of course—talking as fast as you can.