He was truly imbued with the angry-young-man spirit that would characterize his persona both on and off stage. Through it all, Johnny kept the band focused and moving forward, ultimately securing their place in music history by inventing punk rock. The Ramones were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002—two years later, Johnny died of cancer, having outlived two other founding members. Revealing, inspiring, and told on his own terms, this highly designed memoir also features Johnny’s assessment of the Ramones’ albums; a number of eccentric Top Ten lists; rare historical artifacts; and scores of personal and professional photos, many of which have never before been published.Praise for Commando:“Amazing book . . . dense and throbbing with character—enough to bring this departed New York icon barking back to life.” —New York Daily News "Johnny's delightful, sadly posthumous autobiography, Commando, is just like its author—as punk as it gets." —Wall Street Journal “Ramone memoir reveals charming, grumpy punk icon.” —Reuters“There's no grand confessional to end Commando, just a nod of gratitude toward family, friends, and fans. Its characteristic succinctness rings genuine.” —Austin Chronicle

    Enjoy or die..." --John LydonPunk has been romanticized and embalmed in various media. An English class revolt that became a worldwide fashion statement, punk's idols were the Sex Pistols, and its sneering hero was Johnny Rotten.Seventeen years later, John Lydon looks back at himself, the Sex Pistols, and the "no future" disaffection of the time. Much more than just a music book, Rotten is an oral history of punk: angry, witty, honest, poignant, crackling with energy. Malcolm McLaren, Sid Vicious, Chrissie Hynde, Billy Idol, London and England in the late 1970s, the Pistols' creation and collapse...all are here, in perhaps the best book ever written about music and youth culture, by one of its most notorious figures.

    Interviewees include band members Gregg Allman, Dickey Betts, Jaimoe, Butch Trucks, Warren Haynes, Derek Trucks, Oteil Burbridge, Chuck Leavell, Jack Pearson, Jimmy Herring, David Goldflies, and the late Allen Woody; plus Eric Clapton, Tom Dowd, Phil Walden, Billy Gibbons, Dr. John, and many other band friends and associates. One Way Out is the most complete exploration of the Allman Brothers music yet written, tracking the band's career from its 1969 formation through its historic 40th-anniversary star-studded Beacon run, right on up to today. Filled with musical and cultural insights that only these insiders can provide, it includes the most in-depth look at the acrimonious 2000 parting with founding guitarist Dickey Betts; an intense discussion of Betts and Duane Allman's revolutionary guitar styles; and thorough behind-the-scenes information on the recording of At Fillmore East, Layla, Eat a Peach, and other classic albums. You will not find this information anywhere else. The book also includes a highly opinionated discography with short reviews of over 50 albums, plus a bonus list of essential Southern rock albums.

    Photos.

    Instead he leads us through the story of music as it happened, idea by idea, so that each musical innovation – harmony, notation, sung theatre, the orchestra, dance music, recording, broadcasting – strikes us with its original force. He focuses on what changed when and why, picking out the discoveries that revolutionised man-made sound and bringing to life musical visionaries from the little-known Pérotin to the colossus of Wagner. Along the way, he also gives refreshingly clear descriptions of what music is and how it works: what scales are all about, why some chords sound discordant and what all post-war pop songs have in common.The story of music is the story of our urge to invent, connect, rebel – and entertain. Howard Goodall’s beautifully clear and compelling account is both a hymn to human endeavour and a groundbreaking map of our musical journey.

    Almost forty years later, front man Gram Parsons, is still spoken of with almost messianic reverence. Patron saint of alt-country, emblazoned with a shining cross, dead at 26. Overshadowed by Parsons, this album remains an anomaly in the country rock genre, a map in miniature of a moment in music, and warrants discussion as more than part of the Gram Parsons legacy.

    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.

    Here a personal friend of the band looks at the rise of Nirvana and their effect on American youth culture.

    Eliot's. Now Charles Cross has cracked the code in the definitive biography Heavier Than Heaven, an all-access pass to Cobain's heart and mind. It reveals many secrets, thanks to 400-plus interviews, and even quotes Cobain's diaries and suicide notes and reveals an unreleased Nirvana masterpiece. At last we know how he created, how lies helped him die, how his family and love life entwined his art--plus, what the heck "Smells Like Teen Spirit" really means. (It was graffiti by Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna after a double date with Dave Grohl, Cobain, and the "over-bored and self-assured" Tobi Vail, who wore Teen Spirit perfume; Hanna wrote it to taunt the emotionally clingy Cobain for wearing Vail's scent after sex--a violation of the no-strings-attached dating ethos of the Olympia, Washington, "outcast teen" underground. Cobain's stomach-churning passion for Vail erupted in six or so hit tunes like "Aneurysm" and "Drain You.") Cross uncovers plenty of news, mostly grim and gripping. As a teen, Cobain said he had "suicide genes," and his clan was peculiarly defiant: one of his suicidal relatives stabbed his own belly in front of his family, then ripped apart the wound in the hospital. Cobain was contradictory: a sweet, popular teen athlete and sinister berserker, a kid who rescued injured pigeons and laughingly killed a cat, a talented yet astoundingly morbid visual artist. He grew up to be a millionaire who slept in cars (and stole one), a fiercely loyal man who ruthlessly screwed his oldest, best friends. In fact, his essence was contradictions barely contained. Cross, the coauthor of Nevermind: Nirvana, the definitive book about the making of the classic album, puts numerous Cobain-generated myths to rest. (Cobain never lived under a bridge--that Aberdeen bridge immortalized in the 12th song on Nevermind was a tidal slough, so nobody could sleep under it.) He gives the fullest account yet of what it was like to be, or love, Kurt Cobain. Heavier Than Heaven outshines the also indispensable Come As You Are. It's the deepest book about pop's darkest falling star. --Tim Appelo

    The unauthorized behind-the-scenes story of the making and marketing of one of rock's original supergroups, viewed from the perspective of an executive from Kiss's business management team.

    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.

    The first English book about Slayer explores the creation of the most universally respected metal album and its long road to the stores, through original interviews with the entire band, producer Rick Rubin, engineer Andy Wallace, cover artist Larry Carroll, and Def Jam insiders from Russell Simmons to M.C. Serch. From Tori Amos to Pantera's Phil Anselmo, dozens of fans and artists discuss the record's ongoing impact and Slayer's status in the small fraternity of rock's greatest groups.

    The House That Trane Built tells the story of the label, balancing tales of individual passion, artistic vision, and commercial motivation. Weaving together research, dynamic album covers, session photographs, and nearly one hundred interviews with executives, journalists, producers, and musicians from Ray Charles and Alice Coltrane to Quincy Jones, Pharoah Sanders, McCoy Tyner, and others--this is the riveting tale of an era-shaping jazz label in the age of rock. The thirty-eight Album Profiles--a veritable book within a book--offer a consumer's guide to the best and most timeless titles on Impulse.