Over three decades, his affliction has spawned immeasurable chaos, destruction and debauched good times. While his rivals have graced the covers of Spin and Rolling Stone, Shubaly's projects inevitably flame out in the eleventh hour. Is he finally ready to give up his lifelong dream for good?

    It demonstrates the artistic validity of Iron Maiden as much as their commercial impact.

    Mark Hodkinson's biography of Queen focuses on the band's formative years, and draws on interviews with over sixty friends and colleagues of Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon.

    "This isn't strictly speaking an instructional manual, but a work of comedic philosophy."Elvis Costello—songwriter, singer, author, and Fender Jazzmaster known to his admirers as "The Little Hands of Concrete"—spins his tale with wit, grit, and spit to spare.How to Play the Guitar and Y, Costello’s new entry into Audible’s Words + Music series, combines recitation, impersonation, and musical illustration to show you how to turn a three-chord trick into a four-chord caper and let your curiosity take you where it will.Part madcap musical method, part comic chronicle, How to Play the Guitar and Y is accompanied by the author throughout on a number of different instruments with his 10 wandering fingers.So gather round your favorite listening device to hear a storyteller and musician at his most captivating as he reminds you not to be afraid to fail and to never forget to play.

    If you don't know what you want, I'll do it for you."Few record producers possess the musical facility to back up such a bold promise, but in over forty-plus years behind the glass, Todd Rundgren has willed himself into becoming a not only a rock guitar virtuoso, an accomplished lead vocalist and vocal arranger and visionary keyboard player, not to mention a serviceable drummer. But arguably, Rundgren's greatest instrument of all is the recording studio itself. After learning his craft with Nazz, Rundgren engineered The Band's Stage Fright album and soon became the producer of a string of noteworthy albums for Sparks, Grand Funk, The New York Dolls, Badfinger, Hall & Oates, Meat Loaf, Patti Smith Group, Cheap Trick, The Psychedelic Furs and XTC. Meanwhile, Rundgren played almost every instrument on his solo albums such as Something/Anything?, A Wizard A True Star and Hermit Of Mink Hollow while collaborating on a series of albums by his band, Utopia. A Wizard A True Star: Todd Rundgren In The Studio by Paul Myers is a fascinating and authoritative trip through the land of flickering red lights inhabited by a studio wizard - and true star - who has rarely enjoyed a proper victory lap along the many trails that he has blazed. Researched and written with the participation and cooperation of Rundgren himself.

    So begins Preachin' the Blues, the biography of American blues signer and guitarist Eddie James "Son" House, Jr. (1902 - 1988). House pioneered an innovative style, incorporating strong repetitive rhythms with elements of southern gospel and spiritual vocals. A seminal figure in the history of the Delta blues, he was an important, direct influence on such figures as Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson. The landscape of Son House's life and the vicissitudes he endured make for an absorbing narrative, threaded through with a tension between House's religious beliefs and his spells of commitment to a lifestyle that implicitly rejected it. Drinking, womanizing, and singing the blues caused this tension that is palpable in his music, and becomes explicit in one of his finest performances, "Preachin' the Blues." Large parts of House's life are obscure, not least because his own accounts of them were inconsistent. Author Daniel Beaumont offers a chronology/topography of House's youth, taking into account evidence that conflicts sharply with the well-worn fable, and he illuminates the obscurity of House's two decades in Rochester, NY between his departure from Mississippi in the 1940s and his "rediscovery" by members of the Folk Revival Movement in 1964. Beaumont gives a detailed and perceptive account of House's primary musical legacy: his recordings for Paramount in 1930 and for the Library of Congress in 1941-42. In the course of his research Beaumont has unearthed not only connections among the many scattered facts and fictions but new information about a rumoured murder in Mississippi, and a charge of manslaughter on Long Island - incidents which bring tragic light upon House's lifelong struggles and self-imposed disappearance, and give trenchant meaning to the moving music of this early blues legend.

    In 1982, he retired to concentrate on painting, leaving the mythology he'd stoked himself to grow untamed over the years. John French is better qualified than anyone to talk about Beefheart, joining the Magic Band in 1966 at the age of 17 just before recording their Safe As Milk debut album, finding himself plunged into a tyrannical regime which would dominate his life for the next 14 years as he played a major role in eight subsequent albums, including translating the mindblowing avant-blues assault of 1969's Trout Mask Replica into readable music for the Magic Band from the Captain's piano poundings under torturous conditions he likens to a cult. French's remarkable memoir starts with a vivid description of the rarely-documented early 60s Lancaster garage-rock scene...

    For four years I lived for them. It's not a pretty story.'Bye, Bye Baby is the true tale of a passionate obsession with possibly the most untalented bunch of musicians in the history of rock and roll. Even in their heyday, Leslie, Eric, Woody, Alan, and Derek of the Bay City Rollers were hideously uncool among everyone but fourteen-year-old girls. Their tartan knickerbockers and striped socks were sneered at, while their feeble teenybopper music was ridiculed.And yet for Caroline Sullivan, a teenager in suburban New Jersey, these pasty-faced Scottish youths ruled her heart. Over four hot summers from 1975 to 1979, Sullivan and her band of lust-crazed friends, the Tacky Tartan Tarts, crisscrossed the United States in the Rollers' wake, staking out airports and hotels, tricking airline clerks and wheedling information out of bodyguards and PR companies-all in pursuit of that one big night.Bye Bye Baby is a confessional memoir that invites the reader into some of Sullivan's most excruciatingly embarrassing moments. More than just an uproarious tale of teenage passion and teen-adulation, it is also an inspired exploration of the intimate bonds that tie teenage girls.

    You can find his work being played with cherished delight by any budding pianist, and his music serves as a constant backdrop and mainstay for piano concertos worldwide. But what do we really know about Frédéric Chopin?A child prodigy, Frédéric Chopin was a transplant from Poland who took the artistic world of Paris by storm. He was never completely at ease in his surroundings, but he took the pain of an eternal outsider and used it as a transformative force not only in his life but in the lives of countless others to come. In this book, you will find the life and legacy of the composer and piano virtuoso Frédéric Chopin explored in full.

    Born in Texas and raised in Arizona, Buck eventually found his way to Bakersfield, California. Unlike the vast majority of country singers, songwriters, and musicians who made their fortunes working and living in Nashville, the often rebellious and always independent Owens chose to create his own brand of country music some 2 000 miles away from Music City - racking up a remarkable twenty-one number one hits along the way. In the process he helped give birth to a new country sound and did more than any other individual to establish Bakersfield as a country music center. In the latter half of the 1990s, Buck began working on his autobiography. Over the next few years, he talked into the microphone of a cassette tape machine for nearly one hundred hours, recording the story of his life. With his near-photographic memory, Buck recalled everything from his early days wearing hand-me-down clothes in Texas to his glory years as the biggest country star of the 1960s; from his legendary Carnegie Hall concert to his multiple failed marriages; from his hilarious exploits on the road to the tragic loss of his musical partner and best friend, Don Rich; from his days as the host of a local TV show in Tacoma, Washington, to his co-hosting the network television show Hee Haw; and from his comeback hit, "Streets of Bakersfield " to his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In these pages, Buck also shows his astute business acumen, having been among the first country artists to create his own music publishing company. He also tells of negotiating the return of all of his Capitol master recordings, his acquisition of numerous radio stations, and of his conceiving and building the Crystal Palace, one of the most venerated musical venues in the country. Buck 'Em! is the fascinating story of the life of country superstar Buck Owens - from the back roads of Texas to the streets of Bakersfield. Click here to watch a video extra on YouTube for Buck 'Em.

    Pete Van Wieren’s legacy began in 1976, when he and a young Skip Caray were hired to call Atlanta Braves games. During the next three decades, "the Professor" and Caray became the voices of a team known nationwide as America's Team courtesy of Ted Turner's SuperStation TBS. In this heartfelt autobiography, Van Wieren shares his memories of thrilling moments in Braves history, such as the 1995 season when the Braves won the world championship; the pitching mastery of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz; the heartbreak of the 1996 World Series loss to the Yankees; and Atlanta's unprecedented run of 14 consecutive division titles.

    The portrait that emerges is a life during a time of turmoil that is just reaching creative renewal, only to be cut short by an act of delusional violence.Rosen’s work reveals a very human side of this beloved cultural icon, giving the reader a compelling account of John’s solitary struggle to create a meaningful life in the glaring spotlight of fame. The addition of photos throughout the book places the reader in Lennon’s environs, adding a strong visual dimension.

    Add the mercurial Brian Jones (who'd been effectively run out of Cheltenham for theft, multiple impregnations and playing blues guitar) and the wryly opinionated Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts, and the potential was obvious. During the 1960s and 70s the Rolling Stones were the polarising figures in Britain, admired in some quarters for their flamboyance, creativity and salacious lifestyles, and reviled elsewhere for the same reasons. Confidently expected never to reach 30 they are now approaching their seventies and, in 2012, will have been together for 50 years. In The Rolling Stones, Christopher Sandford tells the human drama at the centre of the Rolling Stones story. Sandford has carried out interviews with those close to the Stones, family members (including Mick's parents), the group's fans and contemporaries - even examined their previously unreleased FBI files. Like no other book before The Rolling Stones will make sense of the rich brew of clever invention and opportunism, of talent, good fortune, insecurity, self-destructiveness, and of drugs, sex and other excess, that made the Stones who they are.

    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.

    As the group grew in fame and notoriety, incidents of bad behavior mounted alarmingly. Whether it's Geezer's lyrical journeys into the underworld or the gun-obsessed Ozzy Osbourne at home in Atrocity Cottage, this is Sabbath as you've never known them before. A real-life Spinal Tap, this is a warm, funny tribute to four mates from Birmingham who became the biggest heavy rock band in the world.