The authors are pop culture experts and lifelong Beatles aficionados whose enlightening commentary sheds new light on the subject. The book is profusely illustrated with great photos of the band at work and play, and all of the memorable album cover art that has come to represent a generation. Appendices include a complete song list, discography, videography, and bibliography, making it a one-stop source of Beatles facts and figures.

    Saint ... Lunatic ... Genius ... Muse .... Once described by Jack Kerouac as "more like Dostoevsky than anyone I know," Neal Cassady lived what others could only write about. Serving as the model for Kerouac's frenetic hero, the hip, Noble Savage Dean Moriarty in On the Road, and "N.C., the secret hero" of Allen Ginsberg's provocative poem "Howl," Cassady was a genius of life lived on the edge of the abyss. Now, William Plummer strips away the mystery surrounding this enigmatic figure. Plummer brings Cassady to life: his coming of age in a Denver flophouse, his hustling across America, the car thefts that landed him in jail, his meeting with Kerouac and their mad-cap cross-country adventures, his experiments with sex and drugs, his second marriage to Carolyn Cassady, his teaming with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters on an epochal acid trip, and finally his bizarre death. Black-and-white photographs add to this engrossing biography of an outrageous but fascinating life.

    Jah Wobble begins by offering the most authentic insider's account of the beginning of punk rock yet written, but there's much more to him than that. His is an eventful life, as the celebrated ups - PiL's The Metal Box, 90s hit Visions Of You with Sinead O'Connor - are balanced by major downs - chronic alcoholism and marital breakdown. It begins with an East End childhood in a London barely recovered from the War and ends with Wobble finally turning his back on London that no longer feels like home. Through the book Wobble tell it like he sees it: his opinions of the great and good from Malcolm Mclaren to Peter Gabriel to Brian Eno to Iain Sinclair are refreshingly disrespectful. Oh and if you ever wondered how got his name, the answer is here: his teenage pal Sid Vicious gave it to him when he drunkenly slurred Wobble's real name, John Wardle.

    He had a front-row seat as they elevated pop music into an art form, and he was present at the creation of some of the most iconic music of our times.Asher is also a talented musician in his own right, with a great ear for what was new and fresh. Once, when Paul McCartney wrote a song that John Lennon didn’t think was right for the Beatles, Asher asked if he could record it. “A World Without Love” became a global No. 1 hit for his duo, Peter & Gordon. A few years later Asher was asked by Paul McCartney to help start Apple Records; the first artist Asher discovered and signed up was a young American singer-songwriter named James Taylor. Before long he would be not only managing and producing Taylor but also (having left Apple and moved to Los Angeles) working with Linda Ronstadt, Neil Diamond, Robin Williams, Joni Mitchell, and Cher, among others.The Beatles from A to Zed grows out of his popular radio program “From Me to You” on SiriusXM's The Beatles Channel, where he shares memories and insights about the Fab Four and their music. Here he weaves his reflections into a whimsical alphabetical journey that focuses not only on songs whose titles start with each letter, but also on recurrent themes in the Beatles’ music, the instruments they played, the innovations they pioneered, the artists who influenced them, the key people in their lives, and the cultural events of the time.Few can match Peter Asher for his fresh and personal perspective on the Beatles. And no one is a more congenial and entertaining guide to their music.

    Helping to bring these forgotten figures into the light, Andrew Gimson's illuminating accounts are accompanied by sketches from Guardian sartirical cartoonist, Martin Rowson, making this the perfect gift for all lovers of history and politics.

    Two days later he was playing his first show as bass player with AC/DC; within a week he was on Countdown, rocking out next to wildman Bon Scott, who was dressed as a pigtailed, cigarette-smoking schoolgirl - and waving a mallet - and Angus who was - of course - decked out as a schoolboy. And all for the princely wage of $60 a week!Then came nearly being burnt alive on the video shoot for 'Jailbreak', and working with legends Vanda and Young on the massive album TNT, on which Mark's take-no-prisoners basslines anchored such immortal hits as 'TNT' and 'It's a Long Way To the Top'. Within a year, the band had relocated to London and were on the road to rock 'n' roll stardom, living the life of rock gods and making the most of all that had to offer. Until the tragic death of his good friend Bon Scott changed everything.Dirty Deeds is the first book about AC/DC written from the inside, by an insider - which is gold for any AC/DC fan. It is an honest, gripping, sometimes laugh-out-loud account of a band that lived fast, played hard and broke every one of the rules - before they broke all the records. It is also a revealing and frank memoir of a man who's had to contend with everything life has thrown at him - a rough-as-guts upbringing, lucky breaks and soaring highs, as well as terrible personal tragedy and loss. The hard lessons Mark has learned along the way will inspire any reader.

    An Internet phenomenon, the R&B cutie has nearly two million followers on Twitter and three million on Facebook, and his music videos have gained more than 130 million hits on YouTube. Signed by music legend Usher, his second album shot straight to the top of the charts, and he found himself singing at the White House Christmas celebration and appearing on Saturday Night Live. This brilliant book gives fans the low-down on the whirlwind rise of the world’s hottest teen star. Crammed with cool quotes, top trivia, fun quizzes, gorgeous photos, and fantastic facts, fans can find out everything about their favorite star.

    . . This is Francis Rossi as you have never seen him before. Status Quo have sold over 100 million records worldwide, including 65 hit singles and 32 hit albums. The legendary band's career has mirrored the evolution of rock music. From the struggles of the flower-power '60s, the highs of the denim-clad '70s, the coke- and tequila-induced blur of the '80s, to fighting for musical integrity in the '90s and '00s and a fresh lease of life from new band members in recent years, Rossi has been there for the entirety of Quo's turbulent history.In I Talk Too Much, Rossi will reveal the truth behind one of the biggest rock bands of all time, as well as the personal highs and lows of a career spanning over 50 years. He lifts the lid on the man behind the music - from humble beginnings in Forest Hill and being labelled a has-been by the press in his twenties to opening Live Aid in 1985 - and why he's still going strong at seventy. Along the way he has fathered eight children with three mothers and beaten both alcoholism and cocaine addiction. Rossi comes clean about the time he almost left the band, what he really thinks about the music industry today and the complexities of his fifty-year friendship with Rick Parfitt.Painfully honest, riotously funny and frequently outrageous, I Talk Too Much covers the glory years, the dark days and the real stories behind the creation of some of the greatest rock music of all time.

    Shotton's unique vantage as an insider and friend makes his account a must-read for Beatles fans everywhere. Photos.

    -The New York Times Book Review

    

    With Roger Miret as front man, legendary band Agnostic Front’s focused fury and aggression defined the times and continue to resonate today.Born in Cuba, Roger Miret fled with his family to the US to escape the Castro regime. Through vivid language and graphic details, Miret recounts growing up in a strange new land with a tyrannical, abusive stepfather and the roles that poverty and violence played in shaping the toughness that became critical to his survival. In his teen years, he finds himself squatting in abandoned buildings with other runaways and victims of similar childhood trauma. Soon he becomes a respected and feared kingpin of the scene, and a protector of its misfits and outcasts.Miret’s gripping memoir is a testament to the perils of growing up too young too fast and finding redemption through sheer strength, perseverance, and courage.Roger Miret is the godfather of the New York hardcore scene. He joined Agnostic Front in 1982. Jon Wiederhorn is the co-author of Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal, Ministry (with Al Jourgensen), and I’m the Man (with Scott Ian). He has written for Revolver, Rolling Stone, and SPIN, among others.

    In conversation with legendary rock critics and authors he respected, Reed’s interviews are as pithy and brilliant as the man himself.

    Neither an apology nor a condemnation, Kurt Cobain presents a vivid insider's view of the life and death of a man who galvanized a generation and gave birth to the "grunge" revolution with his band Nirvana. Sandford portrays the provocative, small-town rebel with the talent of John Lennon, and then shows him at work on concert stages in Seattle, New York, and London. Readers follow the struggles of Cobain's emotional life—his tumultuous relationships with family and his fellow band members, his drug addiction and sexual appetite, his stormy marriage to Courtney Love, and the birth of his daughter, who, as Cobain wrote in his suicide note, "reminds me too much of who I used to be." During his research, Sandford has had access to Cobain's family, his colleagues, his former friends and lovers, and even author William S. Burroughs, whom Cobain considered to be his "greatest influence." The result is a graphic account of the life that led to the day in April 1994 when Cobain turned a shotgun on himself and became a martyr to disaffected youth around the world.

    For the next 15 years, Trident Studios, was at the epicentre of the music industry, recording some of the era's greatest artists, from The Beatles and David Bowie to Elton John and Genesis. Trident also developed their own talent, including a raw and demanding four-piece band called Queen. After an acrimonious split with Trident, their volatile leader Freddie Mercury famously dedicated a song to Norman: Death On Two Legs. In Life On Two Legs, this legendary music figure breaks his forty year silence and sets the record straight, not just about Freddie and Queen but also about artists from John Lennon and Marc Bolan to Harry Nilsson and Phil Collins and the recording of such classics as Hey Jude by The Beatles and Space Oddity by David Bowie. Funny, fascinating and occasionally irreverent - and with a foreword by Sir Paul McCartney - this is an unmissable memoir that brings to vivid life some of rock's greatest characters as well as the era and the studio that produced some of its classic music.