Book picks similar to
Rock and Roll Year by Year by Luke Crampton
music
reading-very-slowly
rock
789-musicians-and-music-history
Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!: The Beatles, Beatlemania, and the Music that Changed the World
Bob Spitz - 2007
It takes us from the famous first meeting between John and Paul, to the clubs of Liverpool and Germany when George and Ringo join the band, down Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields, to America and the height of the Beatles' success--when they were still teenagers.In Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!, Spitz recreates the thrills, tears and magic of his New York Times bestselling adult biography, but in a style and format that's accesible for young readers. This book includes photos, sidebars and graphic elements. It's a book about teens who changed the world.
That's Me in the Corner: Adventures of an ordinary boy in a celebrity world
Andrew Collins - 2007
This charmingly funny, self-deprecating resumé of an ordinary man’s career to date and current life in the celebrity bear pit is penned by the author of the Sunday Times-bestselling Where Did It All Go Right?
Stick It!: My Life of Sex, Drums, and Rock 'n' Roll
Carmine Appice - 2016
He was managed by the mob, hung with Hendrix, trashed thousands of hotel rooms, unwittingly paid for an unknown Led Zeppelin to support him on tour, taught John Bonham (as well as Fred Astaire) a thing or two about drumming, and took part in Zeppelin’s infamous deflowering of a groupie with a mud shark. After enrolling in Rod Stewart’s Sex Police, he hung out with Kojak, accidentally shared a house with Prince, became blood brothers with Ozzy Osbourne, and got fired by Sharon. He formed an all-blond hair metal band, jammed with John McEnroe and Steven Seagal, became a megastar in Japan, got married five times, slept with 4,500 groupies—and, along the way, became a rock legend by single-handedly reinventing hard rock and heavy metal drumming. Carmine Appice has enjoyed a jaw-dropping rock-and-roll life—and here he is telling his scarcely believable story. Cowritten with Ian Gittins, the coauthor with Nikki Sixx of the New York Times bestseller The Heroin Diaries, Stick It! is one of the most extraordinary and outrageous rock-and-roll biographies of our time.
The Real Frank Zappa Book
Frank Zappa - 1989
Along the way, Zappa offers his inimitable views on many things such as art, politics and beer.
Who Are You: The Life of Pete Townshend
Mark Wilkerson - 2006
Author Mark Wilkerson interviewed Townshend himself and several of Townshend's friends and associates for this biography.
Off the Record
Sue Welfare - 1999
Nick is single, trying to improve his job prospects, deeply gorgeous but totally poor. They meet, are attracted and...if only life were that simple. For Liz and Nick, things are about to get a lot more complicated. A heady brew of incompetent exes, good friends, and alcoholic artists manage to disrupt the course of true love. Set against the dubious delights of the art world and the machinations of the national papers, Liz doesn't know what's hit her and Nick finds himself embroiled in the consequences of one small economy with the truth which threatens to wreck everything. Will either of them realise what's going on and see the answer through the chaos? Will they finally live happily ever after? Warm, sharp and hilarious, this is a novel for anyone who's ever fallen in love, taken a chance or had their life turned upside down by a delayed train.
The Filthy Truth
Andrew Dice Clay - 2014
When he released his debut album, Dice, in 1989, the parental advisory label simply read “Warning: This album is offensive.” His material stretched the boundaries of decency and good taste to their breaking point, and in turn he became the biggest stand-up comic in the world.In The Filthy Truth, Dice chronicles his remarkable rise, fall, and triumphant return. Brooklyn-born Andrew Clay Silverstein started out at Pips Comedy Club in Sheepshead Bay and eventually made a name for himself a decade later with a breakout appearance on the Rodney Dangerfield HBO special Nothing Goes Right. With that single TV appearance he became the new king of comedy, and Dicemania was born. He was the first and only comedian to sell out over three hundred sports arenas across the country to an audience of more than twelve million people. He was also the first comedian to sell out Madison Square Garden two nights in a row.But Dice’s meteoric rise and spectacular fame brought on a furious backlash from the media and critics. Billboards for his album produced by Rick Rubin and for his movie The Adventures of Ford Fairlane were defaced and ripped down as fast as they were put up. By the mid-nineties, though still playing to packed audiences, the turmoil in his personal life, plus attacks from every activist group imaginable, led him to make the decision to step out of the spotlight and put the focus on raising his boys.The Diceman was knocked down, but not out. Taking inspiration from what Frank Sinatra once told him—“You work for your fans, not the media. The media gets their tickets for free”—Dice is now back with critically acclaimed roles in HBO’s Entourage and Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine, and is once again playing to sold-out audiences.Filled with no-holds-barred humor and honesty, The Filthy Truth sets the record straight and gives fans plenty of never-before-shared stories from his career and his friendships with Howard Stern, Sam Kinison, Mickey Rourke, Sylvester Stallone, Axl Rose, and countless others.
Rainbow in the Dark: The Autobiography
Ronnie James Dio - 2021
As Ronnie contemplates the achievement of a dream, he reflects on the key aspects that coalesced into this moment—the close gang of friends that gave him his start in music, playing parties, bars, frats, and clubs; the sudden transition that moved him to the microphone and changed his life forever; the luck that led to the birth of Rainbow and a productive but difficult collaboration with Ritchie Blackmore; the chance meeting that made him the second singer of Black Sabbath, taking them to new levels of success; the surprisingly tender story behind the birth of the Devil Horns, the lasting symbol of heavy metal; his marriage to Wendy, which stabilized his life, and the huge bet they placed together to launch the most successful endeavor of his career…his own band, Dio. Everything is described in great detail and in the frankest terms, from his fallout with Blackmore, to the drugs that derailed the resurrection of Black Sabbath, to the personality clashes that frayed each band. Written with longtime friend of thirty years and esteemed music writer, Mick Wall, who took up the mantle after Ronnie’s passing, Rainbow in the Dark is a frank, startling, often hilarious, sometimes sad testament to dedication and ambition, filled with moving coming-of-age tales, glorious stories of excess, and candid recollections of what really happened backstage, at the hotel, in the studio, and back home behind closed doors far away from the road. (Black and white photos throughout plus an 8-page 4-color photo insert.)
Midnight Riders: The Story of the Allman Brothers Band
Scott Freeman - 1995
This history includes the band's blues roots, their wild early days on the road and their recent resurgence.
Oasis' Definitely Maybe
Alex Niven - 2014
But this remarkable album was also a social document that came closer to narrating the collective hopes and dreams of a people than any other record of the last quarter century.In a Britain that had just undergone the most damaging period of social upheaval in a century under the Thatcher government, Noel Gallagher ventriloquized slogans of burning communitarian optimism through the mouth of his brother Liam and the playing of the other Oasis 'everymen': Paul McGuigan, Paul Arthurs and Tony McCarroll. On Definitely Maybe, Oasis communicated a timeworn message of idealism and hope against the odds, but one that had special resonance in a society where the widening gap between high and low demanded a newly superhuman kind of leaping.Alex Niven charts the astonishing rise of Oasis in the mid 1990s and celebrates the life-affirming, communal force of songs such as "Live Forever," "Supersonic," and "Cigarettes & Alcohol." In doing so, he seeks to reposition Oasis in relation to their Britpop peers and explore one of the most controversial pop-cultural narratives of the last thirty years.
The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise
Brix Smith Start - 2016
Best known for her work in The Fall at the time when they were perhaps the most powerful and influential anti-authoritarian postpunk band in the world -- This Nation's Saving Grace, The Wonderful and Frightening World Of ... -- Brix spent ten years in the band before a violent disintegration led to her exit and the end of her marriage with Mark E Smith.But Brix's story is much more than rock 'n' roll highs and lows in one of the most radically dysfunctional bands around. Growing up in the Hollywood Hills in the '60s in a dilapidated pink mansion her life has taken her from luxury to destitution, from the cover of the NME to waitressing in California, via the industrial wasteland of Manchester in the 1980s. What emerges is a story of constant reinvention, jubilant highs and depressive ebbs; a singular journey of a teenage American girl on a collision course with English radicalism on her way to mid-life success on TV and in fashion.Too bizarre, extreme and unlikely to exist in the pages of fiction, The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise could only exist in the pages of a memoir.
They Just Seem a Little Weird: How KISS, Cheap Trick, Aerosmith, and Starz Remade Rock and Roll
Doug Brod - 2020
But that all changed when into these dazed and confused mid-'70s strut-ted four flamboyant bands that reveled in revved-up anthems and flaunted a novel theatricality. In They Just Seem a Little Weird, veteran entertainment journalist Doug Brod offers an eye- and ear-opening look at a crucial moment in music history, when rock became fun again and a gig became a show. This is the story of friends and frenemies who rose, fell, and soared once more, often sharing stages, studios, producers, engineers, managers, agents, roadies, and fans-and who are still collaborating more than forty years on.In the tradition of David Browne's Fire and Rain and Sheila Weller's Girls Like Us, They Just Seem a Little Weird seamlessly interweaves the narratives of KISS, Cheap Trick, and Aerosmith with that of Starz, a criminally neglected band whose fate may have been sealed by a shocking act of violence. This is also the story of how these distinctly American groups-three of them now enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-laid the foundation for two seemingly opposed rock genres: the hair metal of Poison, Skid Row, and Mötley Crüe and the grunge of Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and the Melvins. Deeply researched, and featuring more than 130 new interviews, this book is nothing less than a secret history of classic rock.
The Three of Us: Understanding My Mother, Finding My Father, and Growing Up with Tammy and George
Georgette Jones - 2011
And when little Tamala Georgette Jones was born in 1970, she was considered country music's heir apparent. For the first four years of her life, Georgette had two adoring parents who showed her off at every opportunity, and between her parents, grandparents, older sisters, and cheering fans, Georgette's feet seldom hit the ground. But as in every fairy tale, dark forces were just around the corner. Her parents fought, and George drank. George and Tammy divorced when Georgette was four, and it would be years before she understood just what that meant. "The Three of Us "is an honest and heartfelt look into the life of a broken family living in the glare of the public spotlight. Like so many of her generation, Georgette had to make sense of loving two parents who couldn't love each other. With never-before-told stories about George and Tammy, it recounts Tammy's descent into prescription pill addiction, her dependence on her fifth husband, George Richey, and her untimely death at the age of fifty-five. Georgette opens up about her broken relationship with her father and what it took for them to come back together. Lastly, Georgette discusses the ups and downs of her adult life: failed marriages, illness, an arrest, and now, an unexpected but thrilling career as a musician. "The Three of Us "is a story of both extreme privilege and great trials, of larger-than-life people with larger-than-life problems. Rich in country music history, it contains twists and turns, highs and lows, but in the end, it stands as an intensely moving tale of love, loss, heartbreak, and what it means to be a family.
Rolling Stone Album Guide: All New Reviews (The Definitive Guide to the Best of Rock, Pop, Rap, Jazz, Blues, Country, Soul, Folk & Gospel)
Anthony DeCurtis - 1992
The definitive guide for the `90s.
Earth Song: Inside Michael Jackson's Magnum Opus
Joseph Vogel - 2011
In both subject and sound, it was like nothing else on the radio. It defied the cynicism and apathy of Generation X; it challenged the aesthetic expectations for a "pop song" (or even a "protest song"), fusing blues, opera, rock and gospel; and it demanded accountability in an era of corporate greed, globalization and environmental indifference. A massive hit globally (reaching #1 in over fifteen countries), it wasn't even offered as a single in the United States. Yet nearly two decades later, it stands as one of Jackson's greatest artistic achievements. In this groundbreaking monograph, author Joseph Vogel details the song's context and evolution from its inception in Vienna in 1988, to its release and reception in 1995, to Jackson's final live performance in Munich in 1999. Based on original research, including interviews with the song's key participants, Earth Song: Inside Michael Jackson's Magnum Opus offers a fascinating reassessment of this prophetic musical statement.