A biography of Townes Van Zandt which traces his background as the scion of a prominent Texas family; his troubled early years and his transformation from promising pre-law student to wandering folk singer; his life on the road and the demons that pursued and were pursued by him; and the women who loved and inspired him.

    Instead, he gives you a jaw-dropping, uncensored insider’s look into the world of music, movies, and television and its biggest stars, starting in the sixties and continuing through to the new century. Richard takes you on a journey that few have experienced: from his early days as a student at Oxford to the wild, lascivious nights of being a disco DJ touring the clubs of Europe, to coming to America and working with Michael Jackson, Barbra Streisand, and Sarah Jessica Parker and finally breaking through into the L.A. radio scene and becoming the number one morning drive personality in California. From his TV and radio shows to his feature films and live gigs, Richard shares stories that have until now remained secret. His unique perspective will take you on the road with Depeche Mode, to Australia with Spandau Ballet, into the recording studio with Morrissey, and onto the main stage at Live Aid with Duran Duran. He opens up about his friendships with Michael Hutchence and George Michael, as well as his passionate love affair with Terri Nunn of Berlin. This is a no-holds-barred look at life, sex, and death, set to a pulsing backbeat of music. For the first time, Richard Blade shares his extraordinary story, allowing us to see the world through his eyes.

    Described by one reviewer as “like getting stabbed in the head,” the $6 million film earned a grand total of $1,800 at the box office and closed after two weeks. Now in its tenth anniversary year, The Room is an international phenomenon to rival The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Thousands of fans wait in line for hours to attend screenings complete with costumes, audience rituals, merchandising, and thousands of plastic spoons.Readers need not have seen The Room to appreciate its costar Greg Sestero’s account of how Tommy Wiseau defied every law of artistry, business, and interpersonal relationships to achieve the dream only he could love. While it does unravel mysteries for fans, The Disaster Artist is more than just an hilarious story about cinematic hubris: It is ultimately a surprisingly inspiring tour de force that reads like a page-turning novel, an open-hearted portrait of a supremely enigmatic man who will capture your heart.

    By the age of twenty-three, he was on his first tour of America, facing an astonished audience in his tight silver hotpants, bare legs and a T-shirt with ROCK AND ROLL emblazoned across it in sequins. Elton John had arrived and the music world would never be the same again.His life has been full of drama, from the early rejection of his work with song-writing partner Bernie Taupin to spinning out of control as a chart-topping superstar; from half-heartedly trying to drown himself in his LA swimming pool to disco-dancing with the Queen; from friendships with John Lennon, Freddie Mercury and George Michael to setting up his AIDS Foundation. All the while, Elton was hiding a drug addiction that would grip him for over a decade.In Me Elton also writes about getting clean and changing his life, about finding love with David Furnish and becoming a father.

    Today they provide an incendiary portrait of the flash and dash and power brokering of the Excessive Eighties in New York and Hollywood.The Vanity Fair Diaries is the story of an Englishwoman barely out of her twenties who arrives in New York City with a dream. Summoned from London in hopes that she can save Conde Nast's troubled new flagship Vanity Fair, Tina Brown is immediately plunged into the maelstrom of the competitive New York media world and the backstabbing rivalries at the court of the planet's slickest, most glamour-focused magazine company. She survives the politics, the intrigue, and the attempts to derail her by a simple stratagem: succeeding. In the face of rampant skepticism, she triumphantly reinvents a failing magazine.Here are the inside stories of Vanity Fair scoops and covers that sold millions--the Reagan kiss, the meltdown of Princess Diana's marriage to Prince Charles, the sensational Annie Leibovitz cover of a gloriously pregnant, naked Demi Moore. In this cinematic audiobook, the drama, the comedy, and the struggle of running an "it" magazine come to life. Brown's Vanity Fair Diaries is also a woman's journey, of making a home in a new country and of the deep bonds with her husband, their prematurely born son, and their daughter.Astute, open-hearted, often riotously funny, Tina Brown's The Vanity Fair Diaries is a compulsively fascinating and intimate chronicle of a woman's life in a glittering era.

    Ian Hunter's revealing tour diary was first published in 1974 to coincide with the band's global success. It gives an insight into life with a rock group on the road.

    John was the thoughtful, intelligent one, celebrated for his sharp wit and swift put-downs. Privately, he was a complex man: a superstar who hated the restrictions of being famous; a singer who disliked the sound of his own voice; a devoted husband who was publicly unfaithful. His song-writing partnership with Paul McCartney changed the parameters of popular music, and his early prose writing added to the richness and diversity of the English language.After The Beatles broke up, John's relationship with Yoko Ono became one of the great love stories of our times, and with her he developed into both an interesting conceptual artist and an influential campaigner for peace. After an intense period of experimentation, his music also developed and matured. Despite his talent and commitment to the world of the arts, when his son Sean was born he took five years out of the public eye dedicating himself to raising his child.John Lennon: Unseen Archives comprehensively chronicles the life of the world's most famous pop-star peace campaigner. The majority of the photographs are from the archive of the Daily Mail and they are accompanied by a detailed commentary which provides an insight into how John Lennon became more than a musician and went on to influence an entire generation. This wonderful book captures the impact he made upon the world; the memories of which still linger with us today.Marie Clayton grew up during the Beatles years and was at art college when the Four were still Fab. She has since spent a great deal of time studying the history of pop culture and its most celebrated icons. She has written several books in this area, including The Beatles: Unseen Archives and Elvis Presley: Unseen Archives. She is also the author of St. Petersburg: Hidden Interiors, Thonet and The Grand Design.Gareth Thomas studied at Cardiff University. He now lives in Brighton and works in research and design.

    Generations have grown up with Cilla's music, TV shows, and performances. But how much do we really know about 'the girl with the bright red hair and the jet black voice'? What's It All About? is Cilla's own story, told for the first time ever. It's the story of a woman who has worked ceaselessly to stay at the top for forty years despite setbacks and personal tragedy; a life of incredible highs and terrible lows. In this deeply personal autobiography she tells her unique story in intimate and vivid detail for the very first time. This is the real Cilla Black.

    John Lennon was one of the greatest songwriters the world has ever known, creator of "Help!", "Come Together", "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Imagine", and dozens more. But it was in his correspondences that he let his personality and poetry flow unguarded. Now, gathered for the first time in book form, are his letters to family, friends, strangers, and lovers from every point in his life. Funny, informative, wise, poetic, and sometimes heartbreaking, his letters illuminate a never-before-seen intimate side of the private genius. This groundbreaking collection of almost 300 letters and postcards has been edited and annotated by Hunter Davies, whose authorized biography The Beatles (1968) was published to great acclaim. With unparalleled knowledge of Lennon and his contemporaries, Davies reads between the lines of the artist's words, contextualizing them in Lennon's life and using them to reveal the man himself.

    Waking up the neighbors and setting the U.S. music scene on fire in the 1970s and through the '80s, The Ramones' story is tragic and raw, sentiments that could also describe the band's songwriter, bass player, and unsung genius, Dee Dee. A wild ride into the heart and soul of New York City, Poisoned Heart is Vera Ramones King's last testament to her former husband, who shocked the world when he died in 2002 of a drug overdose despite having been clean for years. Dee Dee defined the punk-rock lifestyle. He was a rash, often violent, heroin addict, and no one better understood his twisted mentality, or insanity, than faithful wife Vera. But Vera, herself a less destructive Nancy to Dee Dee's Sid, also came to know the Dee Dee that music fans worldwide held near and dear: a generous, loving man who had a soft-spot for bums, who grew up in the tough streets of Queens, who never stopped working, writing, and performing, who often treated his wife like a Punk Rock Princess, and whose greatest joy was the look on his fans' faces as he played them a song. For true fans of The Ramones, those who remember the 1970s as a time of music innovation and inspired creativity, groupies, wannabes, and true music-lovers everywhere, Poisoned Heart is destined to become a literary--and rock--classic.

    He knocked the Beatles off the top of the charts, wrote the finest of all jazz autobiographies--without a collaborator--and created collages that have been compared to the art of Romare Bearden. The ranks of his admirers included Johnny Cash, Jackson Pollock and Orson Welles. Offstage he was witty, introspective and unexpectedly complex, a beloved colleague with an explosive temper whose larger-than-life personality was tougher and more sharp-edged than his worshipping fans ever knew. Wall Street Journal arts columnist Terry Teachout has drawn on a cache of important new sources unavailable to previous Armstrong biographers, including hundreds of private recordings of backstage and after-hours conversations that Armstrong made throughout the second half of his life, to craft a sweeping new narrative biography of this towering figure that shares full, accurate versions of such storied events as Armstrong's decision to break up his big band and his quarrel with President Eisenhower for the first time. Certain to be the definitive word on Armstrong for our generation, Pops paints a gripping portrait of the man, his world and his music that will stand alongside Gary Giddins' Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams and Peter Guralnick's Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley as a classic biography of a major American musician. Amazon Exclusive: A Letter from Terry Teachout, Author of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong[image] Dear Amazon Readers: Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, my new book, is the story of a great artist who was also a good man. A genius who was born in the gutter--and became a celebrity known in every corner of the world. A beloved entertainer who was more complex--and much tougher--than his fans ever imagined. It's not the first Armstrong biography, but it's the first one to tell Satchmo's story accurately. I based it in part on hundreds of private, after-hours recordings made by Armstrong himself, candid tapes in which he tells the amazing tale of his ascent to stardom in blunt, plainspoken language. I'm the first biographer to have had access to those tapes. Read Pops and you'll learn the facts about his 1930 marijuana arrest, his life-threatening run-in with the gangsters of Chicago, his triumphant Broadway and Hollywood debuts, his complicated love life, and much, much more. You'll also come away understanding exactly what it was that made him the most influential jazz musician of the twentieth century, an entertainer so irresistibly magnetic that he knocked the Beatles off the top of the charts four decades after he cut his first record. If you've ever thrilled to the sounds of "West End Blues," "Mack the Knife," "Hello, Dolly!" or "What a Wonderful World," this is the book for you and yours. Give Pops a read and find out all about the man from New Orleans who changed the face of American music. Sincerely yours, Terry Teachout (Photo © Ken Howard) Amazon Exclusive: Terry Teachout's Top 10 Louis Armstrong Recordings In Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, I tell the story of a beloved giant of jazz whose greathearted, larger-than-life personality shone through every record he made. Here are ten of my special favorites: 1. "I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues" (1933). Of all Louis Armstrong's records, this is the one I love best. Listen to how he floats atop the beat in the last chorus--he sounds just like a tenor going for a high C. 2. "West End Blues" (1928). The most celebrated of all Armstrong recordings and the quintessence of swing." 3. "Hotter Than That" (1927). “I just played the way I sang," Pops said. His wordless vocal on this Hot Seven track proves it. 4. "Star Dust" (1931). Further proof: listen to how he rewrites the lyrics to this familiar Hoagy Carmichael ballad. 5. "Darling Nelly Gray" (1937). Satchmo transforms an old slave song, backed up by the suavely swinging Mills Brothers. 6. "Jeepers Creepers" (1939). A charming souvenir of Armstrong's film career--he introduced this Johnny Mercer song in "Going Places." 7. "Struttin' with Some Barbecue" (1938). A boiling-hot big-band remake of a classic 1927 Hot Five side in which the trumpeter improves on perfection. 8. "You Rascal, You" (1950). Louis meets Louis in this raucous romp through an Armstrong standard, accompanied to high-spirited effect by Louis Jordan's Tympany Five. 9. "New Orleans Function" (1950). An old-time New Orleans jazz funeral recreated by the All Stars, with Earl Hines on piano and Jack Teagarden on trombone. 10. "Sleepy Time Down South" (1941). Armstrong's theme song, an irreplaceable example of his rich and resplendent lyricism.

    David writes from life experience as he has lived more lives than most people ever will, and he did it all over the globe. David is an accomplished Glass artist, Tattoo artist, Five Diploma Harley Davidson Motorcycle Mechanic, Producer, Director and an award winning Writer and Actor. David is a member of the most famous and notorious motorcycle club in the world. David was the Technical Advisor on the hit TV series Sons of Anarchy from the inception to the completion of the series. David was also a series regular on the show, reaching that position after being hired as the technical advisor, then becoming a day player actor, then a recurring character then moving to series regular. All of these things had to be earned, as they were not for sale at any price. Becoming A Son is not about them. It’s about David getting to those spots. It’s about overcoming great odds and coming out alive. David left home at fifteen years old and hit the streets. This is David’s journey of discovery and redemption spanning a course of forty years. From the beaches of Hawaii and California, to the forest of the great Northwest, to years in Amsterdam, San Francisco, New York City, Miami then back to California. David hit some highs and survived severe lows, living years on the streets, in and out of jail only to take his life back, and then squeeze every bit out of it that life has to offer. Becoming A Son is a journey of epic proportion. It’s about realizing your dreams and then against the odds achieving them. Adventuring across the globe David learned many lessons by reaching out and trying everything, making many mistakes and paying the price for it and living through it. Now he wrote about it. David has been writing and getting published for over 14 years. He wrote for the Motorcycle magazine ‘The Horse’ then had his own column in the National Hot Rod Magazine ‘Ol Skool Rodz’ for eight years. He co-wrote Episode ten in season four of SOA which Time magazine awarded an honorable mention to as best of the season. David also won the 2013 Readers Choice Buzz focus award for Best Wildcard Actor. Like great authors before him Labrava takes the reader into some dark places most people would never dare to go. Becoming A Son is a modern day story of living on the street and redemption, it is one man’s journey into the darkness of himself crossing the planet and transcending all levels and then coming back again full circle. It is an inspiration for anyone who is chasing their dreams and making them their reality. Becoming A Son will come to be known as an instant classic.

    . . A rollicking you-are-there history of the 60s-80s rock era.---Entertainment WeeklyIn this extraordinary memoir, world-renowned guitarist Andy Summers provides the revealing and passionate account of a life dedicated to music. From his first guitar at age thirteen and his early days on the English music scene to the ascendancy of his band, the Police, Summers recounts his relationships and encounters with the Big Roll Band, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, the Animals, John Belushi, and others, all the while proving himself a master of telling detail and dramatic anecdote. Andy's account of his role as guitarist for the Police---a gig that was only confirmed by a chance encounter with drummer Stewart Copeland on a London train---has been long-awaited by music fans worldwide. The heights of fame that the Police achieved have rarely been duplicated, and the band's triumphs were rivaled only by the personal chaos that such success brought about, an insight never lost on Summers in the telling. Complete with never-before-published photos from Summers's personal collection, One Train Later is a constantly surprising and poignant memoir, and the work of a world-class musician and a first-class writer.

    (Music)

    It is a study of the contribution made, not only by George VI and his redoubtable Queen, but also by the entire royal family during those turbulent years. And of how that contribution strengthened and popularized the monarchy. This is a family saga; an account of the lives, as much private as public, of all the diverse members of what George VI called 'The Firm'. Together with the tireless efforts of the King and Queen, it deals with such aspects as the Duke of Windsor's flirtation with Fascism, the ground-clearing obsessions of Queen Mary, the mysterious death of the Duke of Kent, the activities of the Athlones in Canada and the Gloucesters in Australia, and the imprisonment of the Princess Royal's eldest son, Viscount Lascelles. Occasionally tragic, often amusing, always interesting, it is a richly detailed panorama of the monarchy in one of its finest hours. Theo Aronson has been granted an unprecedented series of audiences with the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret, Princess Alice. Duchess of Gloucester, and the late Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, as well as interviews with many other members of the royal family and of the royal households. He has been permitted the use of previously unpublished letters, diaries and papers. The result is a colourful study by an author who has been consistently praised for his insight, scholarship and, above all, readability.