It includes a dozen rare images, most never before seen.

    Zimmer, with the full cooperation of the band, traces each of the performers from their early musical roots to their first song together in L.A.'s storied Laurel Canyon, from their addition of Neil Young to Woodstock, from their stormy years of creative conflicts through their reunions and reconciliations. A new chapter delves into Crosby's recovery from drug addiction, CSN's ongoing solo and group projects, and the making of the new CSNY album.

    Welcome to Weezer’s weird world, steered by brainchild Rivers Cuomo — perhaps the world’s most unlikely rock star. Exhaustively researched, Rivers’ Edge documents the rise of the band from Cuomo’s beginnings as a failure on Hollywood’s hair metal scene to his reinvention of himself as the undeniable ruler of Weezer. Luerssen uncovers what really happened during Weezer’s strange hiatus and subsequent re-emergence in 2000, which was one of the most successful comebacks in music history. Through key interviews with friends, associates, members of Weezer, and bandmates in their solo projects, Rivers’ Edge is a must-own for any Weezer fan.

    Even its cover—the instantly recognizable image of Paul Simonon smashing his bass guitar—has attained iconic status, inspiring countless imitations and even being voted the best rock ’n’ roll photograph ever by Q magazine.Now the breakthrough album from the foremost band of the punk era gets the close critical eye it deserves. Marcus Gray examines London Calling from every vantage imaginable, from the recording sessions and the state of the world it was recorded in to the album’s long afterlife, bringing new levels of understanding to one of punk rock’s greatest achievements. Leaving no detail unexplored, he provides a song-by-song breakdown covering when each was written and where, what inspired each song, and what in turn each song inspired, making this book a must-read for Clash fans.

    Compiled and written by 'New Musical Express' editors Roy Carr and Tony Tyler, with over 200 illustrations, a complete diary, selected quotes and all possible recording details.

    Somewhere in the midst of all this, he also managed to weld rock to country, the Beatles to Springsteen, and bluegrass to punk, establishing himself among the most thoroughly original and politically astute musicians of his generation. Granted unrestricted access to Steve and his family and friends, Lauren St John has given us a sometimes shocking, often moving, and completely unvarnished biography of one of America's most talismanic sons.

    He was a soldier. He was a flag-waver for the Labour Party. He is Billy Bragg, best known as a passionate political songwriter and urbane folk singer, but equally admired for his offbeat love songs. Billy Bragg is a British institution who never went out of fashion (he was never in fashion in the first place). In America he was chosen as the spiritual heir to legendary protest singer Woody Guthrie, beating rival claims from the likes of Bob Dylan and Neil Young. In the UK he surfaced on current affairs TV programmes during the 2001 election dressed as a Roman legionary advocating tactical voting to keep the Tories out. Billy Bragg is a one-off and Still Suitable for Miners is his official story, a portrait of a peerless entertainer and a fearless campaigner growing up in Britain in the years after rock 'n' roll. The book includes childhood photos and previously unseen images from Billy's personal archive.

    But the town of Woodstock, New York, the original planned venue of the concert, is located over 60 miles from the site to which the fabled half a million flocked. Long before the landmark music festival usurped the name, Woodstock-the tiny Catskills town where Bob Dylan holed up after his infamous 1966 motorcycle accident-was already a key location in the '60s rock landscape. In Small Town Talk, Barney Hoskyns re-creates Woodstock's community of brilliant dysfunctional musicians, scheming dealers, and opportunistic hippie capitalists drawn to the area by Dylan and his sidekicks from the Band. Central to the book's narrative is the broodingly powerful presence of Albert Grossman, manager of Dylan, the Band, Janis Joplin, Paul Butterfield, and Todd Rundgren-and the Big Daddy of a personal fiefdom in Bearsville that encompassed studios, restaurants, and his own record label. Intertwined in the story are the Woodstock experiences and associations of artists as diverse as Van Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Tim Hardin, Karen Dalton, and Bobby Charles (whose immortal song-portrait of Woodstock gives the book its title). Drawing on numerous first-hand interviews with the remaining key players in the scene-and on the period when he lived there himself in the 1990s-Hoskyns has produced an East Coast companion to his bestselling L.A. canyon classic Hotel California. This is a richly absorbing study of a vital music scene in a revolutionary time and place.

    Now, at last, the man himself tells us the story of life in the crossfire hurricane.

    Included are accounts of Ferry's affair with supermodel Jerry Hall and its public end when she left him for Mick Jagger, the band's various splits and regroupings, and the recent reunion in 2001 for a sold-out greatest hits tour. Years of research and interviews with all the major participants, including Ferry himself, have resulted in a definitive history of a band that changed popular music forever.

    On a personal level, too, he seemed to take pleasure in insulting everyone who crossed his path. How did this Jewish boy from Long Island, an adolescent doo-wop singer, rise to the status of Godfather of Punk? And how did he maintain that status for decades?Dirty Blvd.—the first new biography of Reed since his death in 2013—digs deep to answer those questions. And along the way it shows us the tender side of his prickly personality.Born in Brooklyn, Reed was the son of an accountant and a former beauty queen, but he took the road less traveled, trading literary promise for an entry-level job as a budget-label songwriter and founding the Velvet Underground under the aegis of Andy Warhol. The cult of personality surrounding his transformation from downtown agent provocateur to Phantom of Rock and finally to patron saint of the avant-garde was legendary, but there was more to his artistic evolution than his abrasive public persona. The lives of many American rock stars have had no second act, but Reed’s did.Dirty Blvd. not only covers the highlights of Reed’s career but also explores lesser-known facets of his work, such as his first recordings with doo-wop group the Jades, his key literary influences and the impact of Judaism upon his work, and his engagement with the LGBT movement. Drawing from new interviews with many of his artistic collaborators, friends, and romantic partners, as well as from archival material, concert footage, and unreleased bootlegs of live performances, author Aidan Levy paints an intimate portrait of the notoriously uncompromising rock poet who wrote “Heroin,” “Sweet Jane,” “Walk on the Wild Side,” and “Street Hassle”—songs that transcended their genre and established Lou Reed as one of the most influential and enigmatic American artists of the past half-century.

    

    The drum kit just about fit into the room, the lead guitarist was playing a homemade guitar, the bassist could barely play at all and nobody wanted to sing. Over thirty years later, Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr are still together, bound by intense loyalty, passionate idealism and a relentless belief in the power of rock and roll to change the world.In a epic journey that has taken them from the clubs of Dublin to the stadiums of the world, U2 have sold over 130 million albums, been number one all over the world, revolutionized live performance, spearheaded political campaigns and made music that defines the age we live in.From the anarchic days of their Seventies punk origins through their Eighties ascent to superstardom with the epic rock of 'The Joshua Tree', the dark post-modern ironies of 'Achtung Baby' in the Nineties and their 21st-Century resurgence as rock's biggest and boldest band, this is a tale of faith, love, drama, family, birth, death, survival, conflict, crises, creativity . . . and a lot of laughter.Told with wit, insight and astonishing candour by the band themselves and manager Paul McGuinness, with pictures from their own archives, 'U2 by U2' allows unprecedented access into the inner life of the greatest rock band of our times.

    In the more than 40 years since the days of DJ Kool Herc and "Rapper's Delight," hip hop and rap have become a billion-dollar worldwide phenomenon. Yet there is no definitive history of the genre-until now. Based on Chuck's long-running show on Rapstation.com, this massive compendium details the most iconic moments and influential songs in the genre's recorded history, from Kurtis Blow's "Christmas Rappin'" to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill to Kendrick Lamar's ground-breaking verse on "Control." Also included are key events in hip hop history, from Grandmaster Flash's first scratch through Tupac's holographic appearance at Coachella. Throughout, Chuck offers his insider's perspective on the chart toppers and show stoppers as he lived it. Illustrating the pages are more than 100 portraits from the talented artists specializing in hip hop.

    In 1984, at the age of twenty, Duff McKagan left his native Seattle—partly to pursue music but mainly to get away from a host of heroin overdoses then decimating his closest group of friends in the local punk scene. In L.A. only a few weeks and still living in his car, he answered a want ad for a bass player placed by someone who identified himself only as “Slash.” Soon after, the most dangerous band in the world was born. Guns N’ Roses went on to sell more than 100 million albums worldwide. In It's So Easy, Duff recounts GN’R’s unlikely trajectory to a string of multiplatinum albums, sold-out stadium concerts, and global acclaim. But that kind of glory can take its toll, and it did—ultimately—on Duff, as well as on the band itself. As GN’R began to splinter, Duff felt that he himself was done, too. But his near death as a direct result of alcoholism proved to be his watershed, the turning point that led to his unique path to sobriety and the unexpected choices he has made for himself since. In a voice that is as honest as it is indelibly his own, Duff—one of rock’s smartest and most articulate personalities—takes readers on his harrowing journey through the dark heart of one of the most notorious bands in rock-and-roll history and out the other side.