After a couple of failed attempts to kill his brother Martin, his parents gave him a guitar for Christmas.From schoolyard battles between the Bowie Boys and the Prog Rockers to Mrs Kemp’s firm insistence on net curtains, and from acting for the Children’s Film Foundation to manning a fruit and veg stall on Saturdays, Gary brilliantly evokes an upbringing full of love, creativity and optimism.As the Thatcher years begin, Gary’s account of the outrageous London club scene centred around the Blitz and Billy’s is just sizzling. Out of this glamorous mayhem of kilt-wearing mascara’d peacocks would emerge Spandau Ballet – the band that would define the era, and hold high the victorious standard of the New Romantics.Gary’s thrilling journey with Spandau Ballet would see them record worldwide hits such as ‘True’, ‘Gold’ and ‘Through the Barricades’, play the biggest stadiums in the world and take to the stage in togas when their luggage gets lost in flight. Stallions, supermodels and dwarves would be hired for video shoots, and through it all, Gary records the wonderful friendships, and the slowly-building tensions, that would eventually see five old friends facing each other in court.‘I Know This Much’ tells the story of Spandau Ballet, but it’s far more than a book about being in a band. Whether it’s meeting Ronnie Kray before filming ‘The Krays’, sketching out the fashions and subcultures of the day, or hanging out with Princess Diana, this book offers a story on every page. And all the more so because it’s all written – brilliantly – by Gary himself.

    In this photographic tour of Dylan’s breakthrough years, 1964 to 1965, Daniel Kramer shows the human side of this legendary figure — playing chess, making coffee, and in one whimsical moment, sitting in a tree — and also in the studio and onstage. An essay by the photographer sheds further light on the man and his music.

    The Bee Gee's journey from Fifties child act to musical institution is one of pop's most turbulent legends. Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb somehow managed to survive changing musical fashions and bitter personal feuds to create musical partnership that has already lasted four times as long as The Beatles. Described by the authors as their objective tribute, this unflinching biography chronicles everything - the good, the bad... and the bushed-up. Youthful delinquency, disastrous marriages, bitter lawsuits, gay sex scandals, serious drug problems and the death of younger brother Andy have sometimes made the personal lives of the Brothers Gibb look as bleak as the low spots of a career that once reduced them to playing the Batley Variety Club. Yet every time the Bee Gees roller coaster seemed derailed for good, they recorded and went on to even greater triumphs. Today they are revered among pop music's all-time great performers, producers and songwriters. But the true story of their success and the high price they paid for it has never been fully revealed... until now. This new edition of The Ultimate Biography incorporates a complete listing of every song written or recorded by the Gibbs.

    Freak Out the Squares is Russell's exceptionally witty, unusual and enlightening account of the heady times being a key member of Britpop's best-loved and most enduringly relevant band. The first account of life in Pulp, it takes as its starting point the band's reunion tour in 2011, which culminated in a triumphant Glastonbury performance. It's packed with good stories about Britpop luminaries, including Jarvis of course, and digs back into Pulp's origins in Sheffield and to their glory days at the height of Britpop. Russell Senior is a man too smart to have ever been a pop star. And Pulp were too odd a band ever to have become so big. But we can only be grateful that he was, and they did – and that Freak Out the Squares tells the story in Russell's inimitable, entertaining and fascinating way.

    Prince was a musical genius, one of the most talented, beloved, accomplished, popular, and acclaimed musicians in history. He was also a startlingly original visionary with an imagination deep enough to whip up whole worlds, from the sexy, gritty funk paradise of “Uptown” to the mythical landscape of Purple Rain to the psychedelia of “Paisley Park.” But his most ambitious creative act was turning Prince Rogers Nelson, born in Minnesota, into Prince, the greatest pop star of his era. The Beautiful Ones is the story of how Prince became Prince—a first-person account of a kid absorbing the world around him and then creating a persona, an artistic vision, and a life, before the hits and fame that would come to define him. The book is told in four parts. The first is composed of the memoir he was writing before his tragic death, pages that brings us into Prince’s childhood world through his own lyrical prose. The second part takes us into Prince’s early years as a musician, before his first album released, through a scrapbook of Prince’s writing and photos. The third section shows us Prince’s evolution through candid images that take us up to the cusp of his greatest achievement, which we see in the book’s fourth section: his original handwritten treatment for Purple Rain—the final stage in Prince’s self-creation, as he retells the autobiography we’ve seen in the first three parts as a heroic journey.The book is framed by editor Dan Piepenbring’s riveting and moving introduction about his short but profound collaboration with Prince in his final months—a time when Prince was thinking deeply about how to reveal more of himself and his ideas to the world, while retaining the mystery and mystique he’d so carefully cultivated—and annotations that provide context to each of the book’s images. This work is not just a tribute to Prince, but an original and energizing literary work, full of Prince’s ideas and vision, his voice and image, his undying gift to the world.

    For every incredible career high there was a hefty personal downside: divorce, drunkenness, and death seemed as synonymous with the Gibbs as falsetto harmonies, flares, and multi-platinum record sales.Not long before his death, Robin made it clear that he believed the Gibbs had been forced to pay the highest possible cost for their success. "All the tragedies my family has suffered . . . is a kind of karmic price we are paying for all the fame and fortune we've had." This is the story of the brothers' incredible careers and an examination of the Gibb 'curse'--an all-too-human look at the rollercoaster ride of fame.

    . . .  Jazz aficionados . . . should be grateful to have so much good writing on the subject in one place."--The New York Times Book Review"Alluring. . . . Capture[s] much of the breadth of the music, as well as the passionate debates it has stirred, more vividly than any other jazz anthology to date."--Chicago TribuneNo musical idiom has inspired more fine writing than jazz, and nowhere has that writing been presented with greater comprehensiveness and taste than in this glorious collection. In Reading Jazz, editor Robert Gottlieb combs through eighty years of autobiography, reportage, and criticism by the music's greatest players, commentators, and fans to create what is at once a monumental tapestry of jazz history and testimony to the elegance, vigor, and variety of jazz writing.          Here are Jelly Roll Morton, recalling the whorehouse piano players of New Orleans in 1902; Whitney Balliett, profiling clarinetist Pee Wee Russell; poet Philip Larkin, with an eloquently dyspeptic jeremiad against bop. Here, too, are the voices of Billie Holiday and Charles Mingus, Albert Murray and Leonard Bernstein, Stanley Crouch and LeRoi Jones, reminiscing, analyzing, celebrating, and settling scores. For anyone who loves the music--or the music of great prose--Reading Jazz is indispensable.  "The ideal gift for jazzniks and boppers everywhere. . . . It gathers the best and most varied jazz writing of more than a century."--Sunday Times (London)

    Perhaps it's because while his wider musical and professional milieu has been in constant change, his boundless enthusiasm has been constant. Reggae's been lucky to have him' Ian Harrison, MOJO 'Rodigan was a major part of my childhood, he played the hottest tunes and in a style that just resonated with me and millions like me. Being able to contribute anything to a man that filled my life with such joy is an honour, respect, David Rodigan' Ian Wright'David is a pioneer in Reggae music. As a selector and radio personality, his vast knowledge of Jamaican music and its culture has helped to educate and fascinate music lovers around the world; he's an amazing son of the music, and an icon. We couldn't have made it this far without him' ShaggyThis is the unlikely story of David Rodigan: an Army sergeant's son from the English countryside who has become the man who has taught the world about Reggae. As the sound of Jamaica has morphed over five decades through a succession of different genres - from Ska and Rock Steady, to Dub, Roots and Dancehall - Rodigan has remained its constant champion, winning the respect of generation after generation of Reggae followers across the globe.Today, at the age of 63, he is a headline performer at almost all the UK's big music festivals, as well as events across the world. Young people revere him and he is a leading presenter on the BBC's youth network 1Xtra as well as a regular fixture at leading nightclubs such as London's Fabric and at student unions throughout the land. And he continues to go into the heartlands of Reggae, to the downtown dancehalls of Kingston and Montego Bay in Jamaica to compete in tournaments against the greatest sound systems. And yet, for all of this, David Rodigan is the antithesis of the stereotype of an international dance music DJ. 'I look like an accountant or a dentist,' he admitted to The Independent a decade ago. A man of impeccable manners, Rodigan prepares for a big sound clash by retiring to his hotel bed with a Thomas Hardy novel before taking a nap and then a cup of espresso before heading to the club. Rodigan is the inside story of this apparent paradox. It tells how a boy from Kidlington has become an admired international ambassador for a music form that remains as proud as ever of its African roots, a sound that emanates from and fiercely represents the ghetto poor. He now reaches across the age groups, from teens through to those of his own vintage. At the pinnacle of his career, Rodigan has become the DJ for all generations. 'David Rodigan is a force of nature. His spirit and passion are a rare and wonderful thing. He has dedicated his life to carrying the torch for Reggae music and is hugely respected all over the world for his knowledge and talent as a broadcaster and a DJ. Long may he reign on our stages and on our airwaves' Annie Mac

    Yet few have addressed his contribution in the darkest hour of the civil rights movement. Telling the untold story of his historic Boston Garden concert of 1968, The Hardest Working Man also captures the magnificent achievements that made Brown a revolutionary icon of American popular culture. Acclaimed journalist James Sullivan begins his stirring account by depicting the racially charged climate of Boston in the hours after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death. Brown’s concert was slated for cancellation as police geared up for mass retaliation. After Brown butted heads with the mayor, the show was allowed to go on—and his emotional, electric performance was broadcast live on local television. Though rioting erupted in more than a hundred U.S. cities that night, Boston remained quiet. Not only bringing to life that transforming show, James Sullivan also charts Brown’s incredible rise from poverty to self-made millionaire and the pivotal voice behind the signature anthem “Say It Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud,” making The Hardest Working Man a tribute to an unforgettable concert and a rousing biography of a revolutionary musician.

    From his childhood in Oklahoma City and his first job in a Hollywood mail room to the ownership of his own public relations firm and his work as a personal manager and television producer, Bernstein's life is chronicled in his own words. In addition to his rise to greatness, Bernstein also describes the relationships he had with stars and relates the stories behind some of the crazy stunts he pulled to garner attention, such as paying women to throw hotel keys at Tom Jones, having Entertainment Tonight host Mary Hart's legs insured for one million dollars, and getting married underwater for an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Written with style and a sense of humor, this autobiography shares the intimate details of Jay Bernstein's fascinating life.

    The controversial and flamboyant former basketball star, who recently had a tryout with the Denver Nuggets and has played with the Long Beach Jam of the ABA in hopes of getting another shot at the National Basketball Association, is back in the national spotlight once again with I Should Be Dead By Now.The new book from the two—time best—selling author details Rodman's struggles in life since he stopped playing in the NBA, including the breakup of his marriage to movie and TV star Carmen Electra and his problems with alcohol. I Should Be Dead By Now is a look at the life of one of America's most recognizable sports stars since the lights of professional basketball stopped shining as brightly, and how Dennis Rodman hopes to make a successful return to the game that made him famous.

    Featuring pithy, humorous, and illuminating one-on-one songwriting lessons with Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, Ray Davies of the Kinks, Andy Partridge of XTC, Arthur Lee of Love, Chan Marshall of Cat Power, Bob Stanley of Saint Etienne, Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals, and a host of others who run the gamut from unknown muses to cult icons to superstars-including Hodgkinson's lovable crew of ne'er-do-wells first introduced in Guitar Man-Song Man is at once an investigation into the most ephemeral of arts and a highly readable journey of discovery.

    Dubbed the 'man in black', guitarist Ritchie Blackmore found fame with Seventies rock giants Deep Purple, then walked away from them to create Rainbow, only to abandon them and form another band in 1997 - Blackmore's Night.

    Interviewing countless friends, advisers, family members, teachers, coworkers, business partners, neighbors, intimates, and employees, Andersen paints a mesmerizing, often shocking, portrayal of the Man in the Mirror.

    In this comprehensive account of the label’s first two decades (up to the point that Russell left), music journalist Martin Aston explores the fascinating story with unique access to all the key players and pretty much every artist who released a record on 4AD during that time, and to its notoriously reclusive founder.With a cover designed by Vaughan Oliver this is an essential book for all 4AD fans and anyone who loved the music of that time.