His real life was only revealed after his tragic death 10 years ago, when he was found in the Mississippi river just hours before he was due to start rehearsals for the follow-up album to Grace., In this startling new bio, Jeff Buckley's friends, peers, enemies, lovers, collaborators, and others all speak of the Jeff Buckley they knew - or, in some cases, thought they knew. The contents of his many personal letters are revealed for the first time. His struggle with writer's block is explored, as are his battles with the concept of stardom, his desire for escape, and his attempts to deal with the unavoidable legacy of his equally gifted father, Tim Buckley. Even 10 years after his death, Buckley is still influential - Radiohead and Coldplay readily confess to the debt they owe him.

    Now reformed, they are launching their Best Of... album in 2002. The book features exclusive interviews and photos and is written by personal friend and journalist Paul Mather, from London.

    In The Most Beautiful, a title inspired by the hit song Prince wrote about their legendary love story, Mayte Garcia for the first time shares the deeply personal story of their relationship and offers a singular perspective on the music icon and their world together: from their unconventional meeting backstage at a concert (and the long-distance romance that followed), to their fairy-tale wedding (and their groundbreaking artistic partnership), to the devastating losses that ultimately dissolved their romantic relationship for good. Throughout it all, they shared a bond more intimate than any other in Prince's life. No one else can tell this story or can provide a deeper, more nuanced portrait of Prince - both the famously private man and the pioneering, beloved artist - than Mayte, his partner during some of the most pivotal personal and professional years of his career. The Most Beautiful is a book that will be returned to for decades, as Prince's music lives on with generations to come.

    This is his memoir of life at the heart of prog rock, art rock, & modern jazz. It is an honest, entertaining, well-written account of life on the road & in the studio.

    Beloved by a devoted Canadian audience, Lightfoot's work has been performed and admired by musicians from around the world, including Joni Mitchell, Nico, Ronnie Hawkins and Robbie Robertson. Nobel Prize-winner Bob Dylan once listed Sundown and If You Could Read My Mind among his favourite Lightfoot songs, before adding, I can't think of any I don't like. In addition to winning nearly every Canadian music award, in 2012, Lightfoot was inducted into the American Songwriters Hall of Fame alongside such luminaries as Leonard Cohen, Kris Kristoffersen, and Dylan; it honoured Lightfoot as a singer who helped "define the folk-pop sound of the 1960s and '70s."Biographer Nick Jennings has had unprecedented access to the notoriously reticent musician. He chronicles Lightfoot's early efforts--his school principal recorded a disc of "Gordie" singing at age 9--to his beginnings as a songwriter to his heyday in concert halls around the globe. Possessed of a strong work ethic and a perfectionist bent, Lightfoot brought discipline to his craft and performances. But he partied just as hard in that rock 'n' roll era, and alcoholism began to take its toll. Lightfoot toured relentlessly and his personal life suffered as marriages and relationships unravelled. At 63, he suffered an aortic aneurysm that nearly killed him and kept him in a coma for six weeks. But his amazing stamina helped him survive and miraculously saw him on stage once again, resuming his touring and yearly sold-out show at Massey Hall.Jennings paints an unforgettable portrait of an artist in the making, set against the turbulent era of sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll. Voices from the music industry mix with loyal fans to illustrate how the boy from small-town Ontario became the legendary bard of Canada. Stuffed with anecdotes and the singer's own reminisences, Lightfoot is an exhilarating read.

    In his much-awaited memoir, Not Dead Yet, he tells the story of his epic career, with an auspicious debut at age 11 in a crowd shot from the Beatles’ legendary film A Hard Day’s Night. A drummer since almost before he could walk, Collins received on the job training in the seedy, thrilling bars and clubs of 1960s swinging London before finally landing the drum seat in Genesis. Soon, he would step into the spotlight on vocals after the departure of Peter Gabriel and begin to stockpile the songs that would rocket him to international fame with the release of Face Value and In the Air Tonight. Whether he’s recalling jamming with Eric Clapton and Robert Plant, pulling together a big band fronted by Tony Bennett, or writing the music for Disney’s smash-hit animated Tarzan, Collins’s storytelling chops never waver. And of course he answers the pressing question on everyone’s mind: just what does Sussudio mean? Not Dead Yet is Phil Collins’s candid, witty, unvarnished story of the songs and shows, the hits and pans, his marriages and divorces, the ascents to the top of the charts and into the tabloid headlines. As one of only three musicians to sell 100 million records both in a group and as a solo artist, Collins breathes rare air, but has never lost his touch at crafting songs from the heart that touch listeners around the globe. That same touch is on magnificent display here, especially as he unfolds his harrowing descent into darkness after his “official” retirement in 2007, and the profound, enduring love that helped save him. This is Phil Collins as you’ve always known him, but also as you’ve never heard him before.'

    Her life is tangled in myth--much of it of her own invention. Rock and roll cultural historian Jennifer Bickerdike delivers a definitive book that unravels the story while making a convincing case for Nico's enduring importance. Over the course of her career, Nico was an ever-evolving myth: art film house actress, highly coveted fashion model, Dietrich of Punk, Femme Fatale, Chelsea Girl, Garbo of Goth, The Last Bohemian, Heroin Junkie. Lester Bangs described her as 'a true enigma.' At age 27, Nico became Andy Warhol's newest Superstar, featuring in his one commercial break out hit film Chelsea Girls and garnering the position of chanteuse for the Velvet Underground. It wasn't Nico's musical chops which got her the gig; it was her striking beauty. Her seeming otherworldly and unattainable presence was further amplified by her reputation for dating rock stars (Brian Jones, Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, among others). She became famous for being Nico. Yet Nico's talent and her contribution to rock culture are often overlooked. She spent most of her career as a solo artist on the road, determined to make music, seemingly against all the odds, enduring empty concert halls, abusive fans, and the often perilous reality of being an ageing artist and drug addict. She created mesmerizing and unique projects that inspired a generation of artists, including Henry Rollins, Morrissey, Siousxie Sioux and the Banshees and Iggy Pop. Drawing on the archives at the Andy Warhol Museum and at Nico's record labels, various private collections, and rarely seen footage, and featuring exclusive new interviews from those who knew her best, including Iggy Pop and Danny Fields, and those inspired by her legacy.

    The name alone evokes fashion and perfume, emancipation and allure. In this revealing, intimate biography, Axel Madsen brings to life Gabrielle Coco Chanel, who was born an illegitimate pauper and rose to become the reigning queen of fashion who revolutionized women's styles forever.Madsen traces Chanel's extrordinary life, from her beginnings as an orphan, to the first small boutique she opened in 1910, using her lover's financial backing, to the founding of the House of Chanel where she altered the look of fashion entirely, inventing sportswear, the little black dress, costume jewelry, and the perfume that Marilyn Monroe said was all she wore to bed. Although loved by many men, Coco remained wed only to her business, and when she died in 1971, at the age of eighty-eight, she was wealthy, an international celebrity, and utterly alone.Lavishly illustrated with photographs of Coco Chanel and her celebrated circle of friends and lovers, Chanel: A Woman of Her Own is the story of the magnificent woman whose legend lives on.

    It is also an engrossing chronicle of the author's own development, both artistic and personal. As Davis's collaborator on Miles: The Autobiography,Troupe--one of the major poets to emerge from the 1960s--had exceptional access to the musician. This memoir goes beyond the life portrayed in the autobiography to describe in detail the processes of Davis's spectacular creativity and the joys and difficulties his passionate, contradictory temperament posed to the men's friendship. It shows how Miles Davis, both as a black man and an artist, influenced not only Quincy Troupe but whole generations. Troupe has written that Miles Davis was "irascible, contemptuous, brutally honest, ill-tempered when things didn't go his way, complex, fair-minded, humble, kind and a son-of-a-bitch." The author's love and appreciation for Davis make him a keen, though not uncritical, observer. He captures and conveys the power of the musician's presence, the mesmerizing force of his personality, and the restless energy that lay at the root of his creativity. He also shows Davis's lighter side: cooking, prowling the streets of Manhattan, painting, riding his horse at his Malibu home. Troupe discusses Davis's musical output, situating his albums in the context of the times--both political and musical--out of which they emerged. Miles and Me is an unparalleled look at the act of creation and the forces behind it, at how the innovations of one person can inspire both those he knows and loves and the world at large.

    In Brother Ray, he tells his story in an inimitable and unsparing voice, from the chronicle of his musical development to his heroin addiction to his tangled romantic life. Overcoming poverty, blindness, the loss of his parents, and the pervasive racism of the era, Ray Charles was acclaimed worldwide as a genius by the age of thirty-two. By combining the influences of gospel, jazz, blues, and country music, he invented, almost single-handedly, what became known as soul. And throughout a career spanning more than a half century, Ray Charles remained in complete control of his life and his music, allowing nobody to tell him what he could and couldn't do.As the Chicago Sun-Times put it, Brother Ray is "candid, explicit, sometimes embarrassing, often hilarious, always warm, touching and deeply human-just like his music."

    What emerges in Stuart Nicholson's groundbreaking biography is a remarkable story of a poor black girl's determination to realize the American Dream in the face of racial and sexual prejudice. She succeeded, and is now the definition of "jazz singer" to millions, one of the greatest of all jazz musicians. In this fullest account ever of her life, Nicholson draws on fresh research and interviews with Ella's friends and colleagues. Supplemented by Phil Schaap's authoritative discography, Ella Fitzgerald is a rich and revealing portrait of one of the most popular American singers in history.

    In With Billie, we hear the voices of those people who knew Billie best: piano players and dancers, pimps and junkies, lovers and narcs, producers and critics, each recalling intimate stories of the Billie they knew. What emerges is a portrait of a complex, contradictory, enthralling woman, a woman who — contrary to myth — knew what she wanted and what really mattered to her. Julia Blackburn has pieced together an oral history of this jazz great, creating a unique and fascinating view of an astonishing woman.

    With the rigorous research of a scholar and the eloquent prose of a novelist, Judith Chernaik takes us into Schumann's nineteenth-century Romantic milieu, where he wore many "masks" that gave voice to each corner of his soul. The son of a book publisher, he infused his pieces with literary ideas. He was passionately original but worshipped the past: Bach and Beethoven, Shake­speare and Byron. He believed in artistic freedom but struggled with constraints of form. His courtship and marriage to the brilliant pianist Clara Wieck--against her father's wishes--is one of the great musical love stories of all time. Chernaik freshly explores his troubled relations with fellow composers Mendelssohn and Chopin, and the full medi­cal diary--long withheld--from the Endenich asylum where he spent his final years enables her to look anew at the mystery of his early death. By turns tragic and transcendent, Schumann shows how this extraordinary artist turned his tumultuous life into music that speaks directly--and timelessly--to the heart.

    He died at the age of thirty-two, and in his lifetime he never had a pop hit. Yet since his death, J Dilla has become a demigod: revered by jazz musicians and rap icons from Robert Glasper to Kendrick Lamar; memorialized in symphonies and taught at universities. And at the core of this adulation is innovation: a new kind of musical time-feel that he created on a drum machine, but one that changed the way “traditional” musicians play.In Dilla Time, Dan Charnas chronicles the life of James DeWitt Yancey, from his gifted childhood in Detroit, to his rise as a Grammy-nominated hip-hop producer, to the rare blood disease that caused his premature death; and follows the people who kept him and his ideas alive. He also rewinds the histories of American rhythms: from the birth of soul in Dilla’s own “Motown,” to funk, techno, and disco. Here, music is a story of Black culture in America and of what happens when human and machine times are synthesized into something new. Dilla Time is a different kind of book about music, a visual experience with graphics that build those concepts step by step for fans and novices alike, teaching us to “see” and feel rhythm in a unique and enjoyable way.Dilla’s beats, startling some people with their seeming “sloppiness,” were actually the work of a perfectionist almost spiritually devoted to his music. This is the story of the man and his machines, his family, friends, partners, and celebrity collaborators. Culled from more than 150 interviews about one of the most important and influential musical figures of the past hundred years, Dilla Time is a book as delightfully detail-oriented and unique as J Dilla’s music itself.

    "Elvis by the Presleys" is a uniquely fascinating treasure and serves as the essential companion to a major television special on CBS and, from Sony BMG, a longer-form documentary DVD and its related CD. Culled from hours of new family interviews conducted for the television special and DVD (much of it appearing exclusively in this book), enhanced with Elvis quotes, and illustrated with private family photographs and images of personal memorabilia from the archives of Graceland/Elvis Presley Enterprises, "Elvis by the Presleys" is an extraordinary document about an extraordinary figure. In all, the book is the compelling result of a historic gathering of voices of those who not only witnessed from the wings Elvis Presley's public life, but also knew the superstar out of the spotlight. His former wife Priscilla Presley, their daughter Lisa Marie Presley, his cousin Patsy Presley Geranen, Priscilla's parents, and members of the combined and extended families sensitively and candidly share their intimate perspective on the real person, while at the same time celebrating one of America's greatest stars. As Priscilla Presley puts it in" Elvis by the Presleys," "Who can think of Elvis without thinking of Graceland?" Here Graceland is seen as a teeming family retreat, where the kitchen was the center of operations; where tag football games were played in the yard; where folks drove golf carts up and down the hills; and where Elvis spent many of his happiest times. "Elvis by the Presleys" reveals life at Graceland like never before. We witness the arc of his love affair with Priscilla; Elvis as a father to his adored Lisa Marie; his obsessions and passions; and the strength of his musical legacy, which continues unabated to this day. There are Christmas cards here, too; contracts and invoices; selections from Lisa Marie's childhood scrapbook; and even a picture of the champagne bottle (signed) from Elvis and Priscilla's wedding. Here, now, is the tumultuous story of the life of a lovely yet complex man; a portrait of the career of a brilliantly accomplished yet often frustrated artist; an insider's tale of enduring love, related with warmth and unguarded candor . . . and a story told the way only a family can tell it. 2-hour CBS special airs May 2005 4-hour Sony BMG documentary DVDand its companion CD in stores May 2005 The DVD is a longer-form presentation of the footage edited for the special. Both the special and the DVD are comprised of the family interviews, private home movies, performance footage and interviews, and photography -- some of the material rare, some never before available to the public. The CD of Elvis's music features Elvis classics, hidden treasures, rarities and family favorites.