Book picks similar to
Something Quite Peculiar by Steve Kilbey
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In My Skin: A Memoir
Kate Holden - 2005
. . the work of a stunningly talented writer who both graces and surpasses her material" (Guardian), this is the frank, harrowing, and true story of one young woman's descent into heroin addiction and prostitution and the long, arduous struggle to redeem her life that made her stronger. A shy, bookish college graduate from a solid middle-class home, Kate Holden was uncertain of her way in life. When she decided to try her first hit of heroin as a one-time adventure with friends, she did not anticipate that the drug would take over. She lost her job and apartment and stole from her family. Desperation drove her first to offer her body on the streets and then in high-class brothels, where she discovered hidden strengths as well as parts of herself that frightened her. With the acceptance and unyielding love of a family that never abandoned her, Kate Holden ultimately defeated the drug and left her netherworld behind.
Lost in the Woods: Syd Barrett and the Pink Floyd
Julian Palacios - 1998
He has now abandoned his past. Through interviews with Barrett's family and friends, this book provides an account of the man and his illness.
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.
Stay With Me, Rhys: The heartbreaking story of Rhys Jones, by his mother. As seen on ITV’s new documentary Police Tapes
Mel Jones - 2018
‘Please stay with me. I love you.’
There was still no expression in his eyes. I was talking and talking to him, desperate to let him know I was there, but there was no flicker in his face. In hindsight, it was like he’d already gone.
It's a Wednesday evening in Liverpool in the summer holidays, and Melanie is expecting her Everton-mad eleven-year-old son back from football practice very soon. She turns on Coronation Street and sets about stripping the wallpaper off the walls in the lounge, which is long-overdue a makeover. Suddenly she receives a frantic knock at the door. Rhys has been shot on his way home.From that fateful day when Melanie cradled her child as he lay dying, repeating to him ‘Stay with Me, Rhys’, to the day in court when his killers were finally sent down, this is a story of a family in trauma, of a community united behind them and of how a notorious local gang who terrorised the neighbourhood was brought to justice.In 2017, more than 7 million people watched the drama unfold in the highly-acclaimed ITV series Little Boy Blue. And now Melanie Jones tells the family's unbelievable story for the first time.Melanie, her husband Steve and Rhys’s brother Owen have been through unimaginable pain. The grief doesn’t go away, but the strength they’ve found within it is an inspiration.
Light My Fire
Ray Manzarek - 1998
Includes 16 pages of photos."A refreshingly candid read...a Doors bio worth opening." --Entertainment WeeklyNo other band has ever sounded quite like the Doors, and no other frontman has ever transfixed an audience quite the way Jim Morrison did. Ray Manzarek, the band's co-founder and keyboard player, was there from the very start--and until the sad dissolution--of the Doors. In this heartfelt and colorfully detailed memoir, complete with 16 pages of photographs, he brings us an insider's view of the brief, brilliant history...from the beginning to the end."An engaging read." --Washington Post Book World
Street Justice
Chuck Zito - 2002
From Hells Angel to celebrity bodyguard. The revealing autobiography of an American man.Chuck Zito comes by his reputation honestly as one of the toughest, most uncompromising men ever to sit astride a Harley. Now, with tales both hilarious and chilling, violent and truthful, Zito tells his life story in his own words.From growing up on the mean streets of Brooklyn and the Bronx, where fighting was a way of life, to becoming president of the New York chapter of the Hells Angels, to the wild and crazy life of protecting some of the world's biggest celebrities, Zito might be seen as a latter-day outlaw, the last of a dying breed of men. But throughout his tempestuous days, one thing defined him: his unfailing sense of justice, of what's really right and what's really wrong. That's how Zito found himself facing his biggest challenge: refusing to cooperate with a federal investigation into his brothers, the Hells Angels, and in the process losing the very thing he cherished most-his freedom.Zito's astonishing recovery from this experience, and the unique kind of stardom he forged based on hard work and sheer will, is a testament to his courage, his ambition, and his indomitable heart-a testament now recorded unflinchingly in Street Justice.
Strictly Personal: Manmohan and Gursharan
Daman Singh - 2014
My mother smiles encouragingly. My father shows nosign of having heard. He is immersed in an editorial,no doubt another scathing comment on the state ofthe nation. Bravely, I continue. I say I am thinking ofwriting a book about them.' Strictly Personal: Manmohan and Gursharan is that book. In 2004, Manmohan Singh became prime minister of India. Over the next ten years he led the country through opportunities and challenges,not without some controversy. But this is not that story. This is the story of what went before, and it is told by his daughter Daman Singh. It charts the journey of a young boy growing up in undivided India, battling family hardship to pursue his dream of higher education, determining his intellectual and moral compass and learning to live life on his own terms. It is equally about Gursharan Kaur, the womanwith whom he made that life. Vivacious and talented Gursharan, the centre of the family and of the circle of friends they shared. And about their three daughters, Upinder, Daman and Amrit, growing up with aresilient mother and a workaholic father who stepped into the limelight.Based on conversations with her parents and hours spent in libraries and archives, this honest and affectionate memoir provides new insights into the former prime minister and his wife. Movingfrom Gah, Nowshera and Peshawar; through Amritsar, Patiala and Hoshiarpur; to Chandigarh, Cambridge and Oxford; then New York, Bombay and Geneva; and on to New Delhi, this intimate portrayal of two lives is also the history of a nation unfolding over half a century.
White Line Fever: The Autobiography
Lemmy Kilmister - 2002
This is the story of the heaviest drinking, most oversexed speed freak in the music business.Ian Fraser Kilmister was born on Christmas Eve, 1945. Learning from an early age that chicks really do appreciate a guy with a guitar, and inspired by the music of Elvis and Buddy Holly, Lemmy quickly outgrew his local bands in Wales, choosing instead to head to Manchester to experience everything he could get his hands on. And he never looked back.Lemmy tripped through his early career with the Rocking Vicars, backstage touring with Jimi Hendrix, as a member of Opal Butterflies and Hawkwind. In 1975, he went on to create speed metal and form the legendary band Motorhead.During their twenty-seven-year history, Motorhead has released 21 albums, been nominated for a Grammy, and conquered the rock world with such songs as "Ace of Spades," "Bomber," and "Overkill." Throughout the creation of this impressive discography, the Motorhead lineup has seen many changes, but Lemmy has always been firmly at the helm.White Line Fever, a headbanging tour of the excesses of a man being true to his music and his pleasures, offers a sometimes hilarious, often outrageous, but always highly entertaining ride with the frontman of the loudest rock band in the world.
21 Years Gone: The Autobiography
Jack Osbourne - 2006
By the time Jack was 16, he was addicted to alcohol and prescription drugs, was hanging out with rock stars in LA and living a life that any teenager would aspire to—and then the reality show The Osbournes turned him into a global celebrity. As much as Jack enjoyed his fame, underneath it all he was still an awkward teenager, using his sense of humor as a protective shield. With fame and money came greater access to drugs and soon his addictions took a firmer hold on him and his behavior was soon out of control. In 21 Years Gone Jack writes with brutal frankness about his descent into addiction and the low point he reached when his mother Sharon was diagnosed with cancer. Scared that his she might die, Jack retreated further into his alcoholic shell, hating who he was, hating what he did. When Sharon realized what was happening she told Jack he had to go into rehab and slowly he turned his life around. Discovering a passion for extreme sports, he went from overweight and unfit to the lean young man he is today—courtesy of such adventures as running with the bulls in Pamplona, fighting a Thai martial arts expert, and scaling El Capitan, one of the world's toughest climbs.
A Cure For Gravity: A Musical Pilgrimage
Joe Jackson - 1999
. . . This is an intelligent, thoughtful look into the mind of an artist."--New York Times Book Review Since the release of his first best-selling album Look Sharp in 1979, Joe Jackson has forged a singular career in music through his originality as a composer and his notoriously independent stance toward music-business fashion. He has also been a famously private person, whose lack of interest in his own celebrity has been interpreted by some as aloofness. That reputation is shattered by A Cure for Gravity, Jackson's enormously funny and revealing memoir of growing up musical, from a culturally impoverished childhood in a rough English port town to the Royal Academy of Music, through London's Punk and New Wave scenes, up to the brink of pop stardom. Jackson describes his life as a teenage Beethoven fanatic; his early piano gigs for audiences of glass-throwing skinheads; and his days on the road with long-forgotten club bands. Far from a standard-issue celebrity autobiography, A Cure for Gravity is a smart, passionate book about music, the creative process, and coming of age as an artist.Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award Finalist