He continues to be a household name today and his velvety voice can be heard on Radio 2's The Bob Harris Show and Bob Harris Country. In this fully revised and updated autobiography, with a forward by Robert Plant, Bob tells his story of over 40 years of broadcasting with the BBC, from the young, passionate music fan who moved to London determined to make music his life, to being presented with an OBE for his services to music broadcasting. Much like his musical heroes, Bob's personal life has had somewhat of a rock 'n' roll vibe: he has been married three times, gone bankrupt, fought cancer, weathered a very public spat with a fellow DJ and has had to revamp his career four times. Throughout all these times, however, his love of music and talent for broadcasting has endured. The Whispering Years is a frank, vibrant and inspiring tale of one of the most influential names on the radio and reveals the story of the man behind the voice.

    When he was seventeen years old, his demons led him to a Massachusetts mental institution where he confronted them the only way he knew how, by writing his first songs. Thirty years later, Taylor's songs are among the most popular in the annals of music, but the demons are still with him. But unlike many of his contemporaries who faced a similar struggle, Taylor managed to emerge as an inspirational figure. Fire and Rain traces this remarkable path, including his troubled marriage to pop star Carly Simon and the premature alcoholism-related death of his brother: Taylor's ten-month stay in the exclusive private psychiatric institution where he finished high school; His self-imposed exile to England where he submitted some of his music to the Beatles' Apple Records, which signed him to his first record contract in 1968. Paul McCartney mentored Taylor's early career; The story behind his second album, Sweet Baby James, which contained the song "Fire and Rain" about the hopelessness of mental illness and suicide; As Taylor's fame increased, so did his problems with heroin, alcohol, and mental illness. In the seventies, the singer nearly fell over the edge many times.

    Nobody rockedor partiedharder. Photographer Neil Zlozower first met the band in 1978, worked with them again on Van Halen II, and soon became their friend, hanging out in L.A. and hitting the road on tour with them. Van Halen collects more than 250 backstage, candid, and full rock-out photos of the all-powerful, spandexed, high-kicking, guitar blazing, stadium-shaking, original Van Halen lineup. Accompanying Zlozower's amazing photos are an introduction about his wild ride with VH, a foreword by David Lee Roth, and testimony from the rock pantheon paying homage to the band, including members of Led Zeppelin, Guns N' Roses, Def Leppard, Judas Priest, KISS, Motley Cre, and more. Turn it up!

    It is a story that, like its subject, reflects the tidal ebbs and flows of American history in the twentieth century. To his fans, he was the ultimate hipster; to his detractors, he was temperamental, eccentric, taciturn, or childlike. His angular melodies and dissonant harmonies shook the jazz world to its foundations, ushering in the birth of “bebop” and establishing Monk as one of America’s greatest com­posers. Elegantly written and rich with humor and pathos, Thelonious Monk is the definitive work on modern jazz’s most original composer.

    He also talked a fair amount about mayonnaise. The interview was conducted by Mara Altman, the author of four bestselling Kindle Singles including “Baby Steps” and “Bearded Lady.” Altman has worked as a staff writer for The Village Voice, and has also written for New York Magazine and The New York Times. In 2009, HarperCollins published Altman's first book, “Thanks For Coming: A Young Woman's Quest for an Orgasm,” which was optioned as a comedy series by HBO. Cover design by Adil Dara Kim.

    The book unveils a truth of universal importance, namely, by helping others in need we can become their miracles.

    His passion for the game is at the fore on the BBC 's number one cricket podcast and 5Live show, Tailenders, which he co-presents with Greg James and Jimmy Anderson. It's Always Summer Somewhere is his funny, heartbreaking and endlessly engaging love letter to the game.Felix takes us through his life growing up in South West London and describes how his story is forever punctuated and given meaning by cricket. Through his own exploits as a slow left arm spinner of 'lovely loopy stuff', to the tragic illness of his mother, life with The Maccabees and his cricket redemption, Felix touches on both the comedic and the tragic in equal measure. Throughout, there's the ever-present roller coaster of following the England cricket team. The exploits of Tufnell (another bowler of 'lovely loopy stuff'), Atherton, Hussain et al, are given extra import through the eyes of a cricket-obsessed youth. Felix meets them at each signposted moment to find out what was really behind those moments that gave cricket fans everywhere sporting memories that would last forever, sending the book into an exploration of grief, transgenerational displacement and how the people we've known and things we've loved culminate and take expression in our lives. It's Always Summer Somewhere is an incredibly honest detail of a life lived with cricket. It offers a sense of genuine empathy and understanding not just with cricket fans, but sports and music fans across the world, in articulating our reasons for pouring so much meaning into something that we simply cannot control.Culminating in the heart-stopping World Cup Final in 2019, the book finally answers that question fans have so often asked...what is it about this game?

    Jimmy Nail has been a household name since Auf Wiedersehen, Pet hit our screens in the 1980s. since then, his career as an actor and a musician has put on him on the silver screen alongside Madonna and given him a No. 1 hit single. Success on this astonishing scale was beyond the wildest dreams of the working class lad whose harsh childhood and brutal schooling put him on a collision course with Strangeways. But a short spell in prison helped propel Nail onwards and upwards. With the support of his friends and family, it wasn't long before Jimmy's unique talents and single-minded determination brought him attention of a different kind - and changed his life for ever. In A Northern Soul, Jimmy Nail tells his own vivid story in this intriguing, inspiring and sometimes confounding account of how one man rose to fame and fortune by refusing to be anything but himself.

    One of the most influential collections of music ever published, Style and Idea includes Schoenberg’s writings about himself and his music as well as studies of many other composers and reflections on art and society.

    The Dolls, peddling trans-gender posturing and incendiary rock 'n' roll, were dumped by the record business after making just two albums. But their influence lives on...

    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.

    But the powerful influence of the blues, with its dramatic, artful storytelling about the elemental experience of being alive, is found in the works of some of our most important literary voices as well. This volume -- a companion to the groundbreaking seven-part documentary series "Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues" -- represents a literary sampler every bit as vibrant and original and diverse as the films and music that inspired it. Included in this stunning collection are newly commissioned essays by David Halberstam, Hilton Als, Suzan-Lori Parks, Elmore Leonard, Luc Sante, John Edgar Wideman, and others; timeless archival pieces by the likes of Stanley Booth, Paul Oliver, and Mack McCormick; evocative color illustrations and rare vintage photography; illuminating and in-depth conversations and portraits of musicians, ranging from Robert Johnson and Bessie Smith to John Lee Hooker and Eric Clapton; lyrics of legendary blues compositions; personal essays by the series directors Martin Scorsese, Charles Burnett, Richard Pearce, Wim Wenders, Marc Levin, Mike Figgis, and Clint Eastwood; and excerpts from such literary masters as James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison, Eudora Welty and Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes and William Faulkner. The result is a unique and timeless celebration of the blues, from writers and artists as esteemed and revered as the music that moved them. In these pages one not only reads about the blues, one hears them, feels them, lives them. "Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues" is more than atimeless collection of great writing to be savored and shared: it is an unforgettable initiation into the very essence of American music and culture.

    The recording engineer heard a car pull into the lot, and soon the biggest man he had ever seen walked through the door. Six foot three, 500 pounds, the guy looked like a house carrying an 'ukulele. When he stepped into the studio, the floated floor shifted unnervingly beneath the engineer's feet. Israel Kamakawiwo'ole engulfed the engineer's hand in his and said, "Hi, bruddah." The product of that impromptu late-night recording session, a delicate medley of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and "What a Wonderful World," has driven sales of 1993's Facing Future to nearly two million copies. Each time the medley is licensed to appear in advertisements, in movies, even on American Idol, Mainlanders embrace it anew as a touch of the unfamiliar in their otherwise staid record collections. But in Hawai'i, a state struggling like no other with the responsibility of its native heritage, Facing Future is much more. Gaining unprecedented access to Israel's family, friends, bandmates, lawyer, and label, Dan Kois tells the remarkable story of Bruddah Iz and the album that changed his life--and his death.

    This book provides a critical overview of the career of a man whose voice is described as sounding 'like Ethel Merman and Louis Armstrong meeting in hell'.

    Over the course of eighteen shows, Mordden demonstrates that Sondheim is a classical composer who happens to write musicals. Sondheim has intellectualized the musical by tackling serious content usually reserved for the spoken stage: nonconformism (in Anyone Can Whistle, 1964), history (in Pacific Overtures, 1976), and cannibalism as a metaphor for class warfare (Sweeney Todd, 1979). Yet his work combines complex music and intellectual plots with a masterly skill for the fabric of theatre. His shows are all intensely theatrical, produced with flair and brilliance, whether in the lush operetta of A Little Night Music (1973) or the quixotic fairy-tale magic of Into the Woods (1987).Mordden provides fresh insights and analyses of every Sondheim show, from his first hit (West Side Story, 1957) to his most recent title (Road Show, 2008). Each musical has a dedicated chapter, including articles on Sondheim's life and his major influences, and comprehensive bibliographical and discographical essays place the Sondheim literature and recordings in perspective. Writing with his usual blend of the scholarly and the popular - with a wicked sense of humor - Ethan Mordden reveals why Stephen Sondheim has become Broadway's most significant voice in the last fifty years.