Book picks similar to
The 500 Greatest Albums of All Times by Joe Levy
music
non-fiction
history
art
45
Bill Drummond - 2000
Whether he's recording 'Justified and Ancient' with Tammy Wynette; contemplating the dull lunacy of the Turner prize; resisting the urge to paint landscapes; or glorying in the crapness of rock comebacks; he is consistently amusing and thought-provoking, and draws us into his world with the seductive enthusiasm of a born storyteller. An artist with a singular approach to his work, Bill Drummond paused to take stock of his life and a career that spans over twenty-five eventful years. Famously enjoying international success with The KLF and inviting national controversy for burning a million quid with The K Foundation, these days Drummond spends much of his time writing profusely. He avoids and confronts issues, infuriates and inspires those around him, muses and confuses, creates and destroys. He has maintained a penchant for reckless schemes - all this while drinking endless pots of tea.
A Day in the Life: The Music and Artistry of the Beatles
Mark Hertsgaard - 1995
But for more than three decades, the secrets behind the Beatles' unparalleled artistic evolution were beyond reach--sealed in a locked room at London's Abbey Road Studios. In this comprehensive and brilliantly rendered book the only "outsider" to gain access to these invaluable musical archives provides a new, fascinating look at the music and artistry of the Beatles, revealing how four untrained musicians merged their collective genius into a single creative force, how they came together to paint pictures with sound...and how album by album, the Beatles transformed the landscape of popular music forever.Combining literary analysis and investigative reporting with page-turning storytelling and musical explication, author Mark Hertsgaard has written the first serious biography of the music of the Beatles. A Day in the Life takes readers inside the Beatles' creative process as never before, from the first tentative run-throughs in the studio of such classics as "Eleanor Rigby" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" to the final master tapes.Here we learn how George Harrison's stirring composition "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" was completely transformed from an achingly meditative acoustic masterpiece to a hard-rocking hit--in forty-four takes. We recall how the fantastic final mix of "Strawberry Fields Forever" opens the door to a psychedelic utopia, but discover it is the haunting solo version that takes us down to the core of John Lennon's disillusioned soul. And only here do we see how the Beatles' audacious ability to reinvent themselves stamped the group's unfolding ingenuity on each album like a fingerprint.With rare insight, Mark Hertsgaard unlocks the mystery of the century's most dynamic musical collaboration: the competitive and creative partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. A Day in the Life traces the way Lennon and McCartney worked together and paints an intricate picture of the composers as we have never seen them before: Paul, the optimistic foil who made John's ominous fragments whole...John, the natural poet who injected raw sexuality into "I Saw Her Standing There" by making a simple five word change.Smart, fresh, compulsively readable, A Day in the Life reveals John, Paul, George, and Ringo not as celebrities or cultural icons but as musicians whose work will be remembered as some of the most important art of the twentieth century.
Bootleg: The Secret History of the Other Recording Industry
Clinton Heylin - 1995
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.
Ray Davies: A Complicated Life
Johnny Rogan - 2015
In the summer of 1964, aged twenty, Ray Davies led The Kinks to fame with their number one hit ‘You Really Got Me’. Within months, they were challenging The Beatles and The Rolling Stones in the charts, swamped by fans and renowned for the rioting at their gigs. Over the next three decades, Davies wrote a string of enduring classics – ‘All Day and All of the Night’, ‘Sunny Afternoon’, ‘Waterloo Sunset’, ‘Lola’ – that secured his status as one of the handful of people to have redefined pop culture over the last fifty years.But Ray’s journey from working-class Muswell Hill to the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame was tumultuous in the extreme, featuring breakdowns, bitter lawsuits, spectacular punch-ups and a ban from entering the USA for almost four years. His relationship with his brother Dave, The Kinks’ lead guitarist, is surely the most ferocious and abusive in music history. Based on countless interviews conducted over several decades, this richly detailed and revelatory biography presents the most frank and intimate portrait yet of Ray Davies, and promises to be the definitive biography of this most fascinating and complicated life.
Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles
Geoff Emerick - 2006
He later worked with the Beatles as they recorded their singles “She Loves You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” the songs that would propel them to international superstardom. In 1964 he would witness the transformation of this young and playful group from Liverpool into professional, polished musicians as they put to tape classic songs such as “Eight Days A Week” and “I Feel Fine.” Then, in 1966, at age nineteen, Geoff Emerick became the Beatles’ chief engineer, the man responsible for their distinctive sound as they recorded the classic album Revolver, in which they pioneered innovative recording techniques that changed the course of rock history. Emerick would also engineer the monumental Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road albums, considered by many the greatest rock recordings of all time. In Here, There and Everywhere he reveals the creative process of the band in the studio, and describes how he achieved the sounds on their most famous songs. Emerick also brings to light the personal dynamics of the band, from the relentless (and increasingly mean-spirited) competition between Lennon and McCartney to the infighting and frustration that eventually brought a bitter end to the greatest rock band the world has ever known.
Fleetwood: My Life and Adventures in Fleetwood Mac
Mick Fleetwood - 1990
As the band enters its fourth decade, Fleetwood and Davis ( Hammer of the Gods ) recount the fun, turmoil and triumphs that shaped and, at times, threatened to destroy the group. Despite numerous personnel changes over the years, involvement with drugs, grueling road trips, divorces and reconciliations, the core members of the group--Fleetwood, John McVie and Christine McVie--seem to have the same enthusiasm for music they displayed together as a raunchy blues band playing in London pubs. Anecdotes about the group and its sometimes outrageous performances (on and off the stage) abound, as does commentary about rock stars who pop in and out of the text at unexpected places. Fleetwood emerges as hip and flip and the book is written in an assured, essentially happy tone.
Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution
Sara Marcus - 2010
A dynamic chronicle not just a movement but an era, this is the story of a group of pissed-off girls with no patience for sexism and no intention of keeping quiet.
Nilsson: The Life of a Singer-Songwriter
Alyn Shipton - 2013
With interviews from friends, family, and associates, and material drawn from an unfinished autobiography, Shipton probes beneath the enigma to discover the real Harry Nilsson. A major celebrity at a time when huge concerts and festivals were becoming the norm, Nilsson shunned live performance. His venue was the studio, his stage the dubbing booth, his greatest triumphs masterful examples of studio craft. He was a gifted composer of songs for a wide variety of performers, including the Ronettes, the Yardbirds, and the Monkees, yet Nilsson's own biggest hits were almost all written by other songwriters. He won two Grammy awards, in 1969 for "Everybody's Talkin'" (the theme song for Midnight Cowboy), and in 1972 for "Without You," had two top ten singles, numerous album successes, and wrote a number of songs--"Coconut" and "Jump into the Fire," to name just two--that still sound remarkably fresh and original today. He was once described by his producer Richard Perry as "the finest white male singer on the planet," but near the end of his life, Nilsson's career was marked by voice-damaging substance abuse and the infamous deaths of both Keith Moon and Mama Cass in his London flat.Drawing on exclusive access to Nilsson's papers, Alyn Shipton's biography offers readers an intimate portrait of a man who has seemed both famous and unknowable--until now.
Musicals: The Definitive Illustrated Story
Duncan Turner - 2015
Throughout, clear infographics, rich black-and-white and color photography, and a clever, informative design make this comprehensive overview of musical theater and movie musicals a true showstopper.
A New Day Yesterday: UK Progressive Rock & The 1970s
Mike Barnes - 2020
He examines the myths and misconceptions that have grown up around progressive rock and paints a vivid, colourful picture of the Seventies based on hundreds of hours of his own interviews with musicians, music business insiders, journalists and DJs, and from the personal testimonies of those who were fans of the music in that extraordinary decade.
The Story of Music
Howard Goodall - 2012
Instead he leads us through the story of music as it happened, idea by idea, so that each musical innovation – harmony, notation, sung theatre, the orchestra, dance music, recording, broadcasting – strikes us with its original force. He focuses on what changed when and why, picking out the discoveries that revolutionised man-made sound and bringing to life musical visionaries from the little-known Pérotin to the colossus of Wagner. Along the way, he also gives refreshingly clear descriptions of what music is and how it works: what scales are all about, why some chords sound discordant and what all post-war pop songs have in common.The story of music is the story of our urge to invent, connect, rebel – and entertain. Howard Goodall’s beautifully clear and compelling account is both a hymn to human endeavour and a groundbreaking map of our musical journey.
Spin: 20 Years of Alternative Music: Original Writing on Rock, Hip-Hop, Techno, and Beyond
Will Hermes - 2005
Through the introduction of MTV and the alternative rock revolution, it's been many things. Rude. Brilliant. Soulful. Snotty. Angry. Delirious. In the past two decades, genres have spawned like mad, from goth, indie rock, and gangsta rap to emo and the garage rock revival. This twentieth-anniversary tribute celebrates the passion and fury of the music, with original essays, quotes, and photographs by contributors who are as hopelessly obsessed with it as you are. SPIN: 20 Years of Alternative Music features: Alan Light on Beastie Boys, Ann Powers on U2, Charles Aaron on R.E.M., Dave Eggers on The Smiths + Morrissey, Marc Spitz on Goth, Simon Reynolds on Depeche Mode + Synth-pop, Dave Itzkoff on ’80s Teen Movies, Chuck Klosterman on Weezer, Will Hermes on Radiohead, Neil Strauss on Nine Inch Nails + Industrial, Sacha Jenkins on Public Enemy, Andy Greenwald on Emo, RJ Smith on Gangsta Rap, Jon Dolan on The White Stripes, Chris Norris on Nirvana, Doug Brod on Oasis + Britpop, Jim DeRogatis on Smashing Pumpkins, Laura Sinagra on Courtney Love, Ta-Nehisi Coates on Tupac
Love, Janis
Laura Joplin - 1992
By the time her life and artistry were cut tragically short by a heroin overdose, Joplin had become the stuff of rock–and–roll legend.Through the eyes of her family and closest friends , we see Janis as a young girl, already rebelling against injustice, racism, and hypocrisy in society. We follow Janis as she discovers her amazing talents in the Beat hangouts of Venice and North Beach–singing in coffeehouses, shooting speed to enhance her creativity, challenging the norms of straight society. Janis truly came into her own in the fantastic, psychedelic, acid–soaked world of Haight–Asbury. At the height of her fame, Janis's life is a whirlwind of public adoration and hard living. Laura Joplin shows us not only the public Janice who could drink Jim Morrison under the table and bean him with a bottle of booze when he got fresh; she shows us the private Janis, struggling to perfect her art, searching for the balance between love and stardom, battling to overcome her alcohol addiction and heroin use in a world where substance abuse was nearly universal.At the heart of Love, Janis is an astonishing series of letters by Janis herself that have never been previously published. In them she conveys as no one else could the wild ride from awkward small–town teenager to rock–and–roll queen. Love, Janis is the new life of Janis Joplin we have been waiting for–a celebration of the sixties' joyous experimentation and creativity, and a loving, compassionate examination of one of that era's greatest talents.
Miles: The Autobiography
Miles Davis - 1989
Universally acclaimed as a musical genius, Miles is one of the most important and influential musicians in the world. The subject of several biographies, now Miles speaks out himself about his extraordinary life.Miles: The Autobiography, like Miles himself, holds nothing back. For the first time Miles talks about his five-year silence. He speaks frankly and openly about his drug problem and how he overcame it. He condemns the racism he has encountered in the music business and in American society generally. And he discusses the women in his life. But above all, Miles talks about music and musicians, including the legends he has played with over the years: Bird, Dizzy, Monk, Trane, Mingus, and many others.The man who has given us some of the most exciting music of the past few decades has now given us a compelling and fascinating autobiography, featuring a concise discography and thirty-two pages of photographs.
Mind Over Matter, Revised Edition: The Images of Pink Floyd
Storm Thorgerson - 1997
The images of Pink Floyd album sleeves and the artwork they contain are the subject of Mind over Matter, a first-hand look at the music business and a consideration of where art ends and commerce begins.'