His guitarist is trying to get them all killed. Fans are stealing his things. Mechanics are rebuking his lifestyle. Even his own fragile, uptight psyche is antagonizing him. But despite having every odd stacked against him, Project 86's frontman is living the dream and loving it. In It's All Downhill From Here, Andrew Schwab chronicles the highs and lows, the struggles and triumphs of this underground, independent rock band's rocky road to stardom. From a hostage situation on their first day on the road, to a drummer's crushed hand, a haunting female fan and an '80s rocker's halitosis problem, Schwab tells it like it is, with biting wit and rock star charm. This insider's look at the real life of a rock band not only reaffirms that everyone's human, but makes you hungry for a dream of your own to chase after.

    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.

    In Wicked Messenger, acclaimed cultural-political commentator Mike Marqusee advances the new thesis that Dylan did not drop politics from his songs but changed the manner of his critique to address the changing political and cultural climate and, more importantly, his own evolving aesthetic. Wicked Messenger is also a riveting political history of the United States in the 1960s. Tracing the development of the decade’s political and cultural dissent movements, Marqusee shows how their twists and turns were anticipated in the poetic aesthetic—anarchic, unaccountable, contradictory, punk— of Dylan's mid-sixties albums, as well as in his recent artistic ventures in Chronicles, Vol. I and Masked and Anonymous.Dylan’s anguished, self-obsessed, prickly artistic evolution, Marqusee asserts, was a deeply creative response to a deeply disturbing situation. "He can no longer tell the story straight," Marqusee concludes, "because any story told straight is a false one."

    As the only authorized biographer, Davies had full access to the Fab Four as well as their help and encouragement. He spent eighteen months with them when they were at the peak of their musical genius and at the pinnacle of their popularity, and he remained friends with each of the members as they went their separate ways. This updated edition addresses recent changes in the lives of the Beatles: Paul's marriage, George's death, and their new books and records.

    Numerous one-on-one conversations with Ozzy, Tony, Geezer, and Bill, as well as ten interviews with Ronnie James Dio, and additional interviews with supporting musicians such as Tony Martin, Ian Gillan, Glenn Hughes, Vinny Appice, and Neil Murray, make this full-colour retrospective a must for any fan. The drugs, drink, depression, and doom surrounding this band from the start have imbued songs like “The Wizard,” “Paranoid,” “Iron Man” “War Pigs,” “Children of the Grave” and “Heaven and Hell” with an almost supernatural importance among lovers of dark music. In the wider realm, full albums such as Master of Reality, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Sabotage, and Heaven and Hell show up with regularity on lists of greatest records of all time. Doom Let Loose explains how such classics came to be. It also deals with their tour history, documenting the places rocked, the bands who supported the Sabs, and most notably the trials and tribulations of the band and they tried to hold it together in the Satan-obsessed, drug-addled America of the Nixon era. Look for all manner of Sabbath photos and artefacts that make this examination of heavy metal’s fearsome foursome as feast for the eyes as well as the enquiring mind.

    Paul hired Michael as his security guard, beginning a thirty-year music business career in which he worked with such legendary names as Led Zeppelin, Bad Company, The Osmonds, Sheena Easton, Frank Sinatra, Bon Jovi, Cher, and Kiss. As tour manager, Michael was responsible for every aspect of their safety and their comfort, from making sure they were not mobbed on stage to making sure they got paid. To some of them he became close. He was best man at Jon Bon Jovi's wedding, and provided personal security for Cher at her Malibu home. He shared their wildest excesses, their highs and their lows; he saw their fears, and all too often, their loneliness and paranoia. Sometimes hilarious, frequently shocking, always perceptive, Star Man is the outrageous, uncompromising, and brutally honest story of one man's life with the biggest stars of rock.

    scene. Released in 1982, the Metal Massacre LP included the debut recordings of local groups such as Steeler, Malice, Ratt, and Metallica. In the wake of the album's unexpected success Slagel virtually stumbled into creating a proper record label, issuing the first releases by Bitch, Armored Saint, and Slayer the following year. For The Sake Of Heaviness is an inside look at how Brian built Metal Blade from a one-man operation in his mom's non-air-conditioned garage to the preeminent international home of heavy music that it is today. He shares his insights into signing and working with Amon Amarth, Anvil, As I Lay Dying, Behemoth, The Black Dahlia Murder, Cannibal Corpse, Cirith Ungol, Corrosion of Conformity, D.R.I., Fates Warning, Flotsam and Jetsam, Gwar, King Diamond, King's X, Lizzy Borden, Manowar, Mercyful Fate, Overkill, Raven, Sacred Reich, Six Feet Under, Trouble, Unearth, Voivod, Whitechapel, and others. Always hard at work on a diverse range of projects, Brian reveals the early advice he gave that helped guide Mötley Crüe's career; how he helped Metallica replace their bassist-twice; his detailed work on Thin Lizzy and Alice Cooper reissues; his behind-the-scenes role in the careers of Mother Love Bone, Alice in Chains, Faith No More, Goo Goo Dolls, and Lamb of God; and his unlikely ventures with kindred metal heads-from hockey star Ken Baumgartner, to celebrity chef Chris Santos, to The Howard Stern Show's Richard Christy, to comedians Jim Florentine, Don Jamieson and Jim Breuer. Throughout For The Sake Of Heaviness, Brian steps aside to present first-person insights and extended guest interviews featuring friends, colleagues, Metal Blade staffers, and a long list of artists, including Metallica's James Hetfield, Slayer's Kerry King, King Diamond, and many more. Brian highlights the ins and outs of his 35 year metal odyssey, from promoting small shows in California's San Fernando Valley in the early days, to forging a major partnership with Warner Bros. Records; from weathering the Parents Music Resource Center's attempts to regulate lyrical content, to squaring off with Time Warner over Gwar's envelope-pushing themes; from nearly going bankrupt after underestimating the impact of the rise of CDs, to surviving and thriving in today's rapidly changing music business environment. Featuring a Foreword by Metallica's Lars Ulrich, For The Sake Of Heaviness pulls back the curtain to reveal the definitive look at how Metal Blade began, what they've accomplished, and where they're going. With the help of co-writer Mark Eglinton, Brian Slagel invites the reader into a personal conversation about his life's passion, and the passion that drives Metal Blade-finding, exposing, and promoting the best heavy music on the planet.

    Traces the evolution of the Dave Matthews Band, and describes their experiences on the road.

    Rhythm guitarist with The Rolling Stones for over 30 years, he is also famous in his own right as a solo artist.

    This is the story of the first 10 years of the Nation's Music Station. When MuchMusic launched in 1984, it was truly the Wild (Canadian) West of television--live, gloriously unpredictable, seat-of-the-pants TV, delivered fresh daily. Much was the dream child of TV visionary Moses Znaimer, and John Martin, the maverick creator of The New Music. An entire generation of Canadians lived and breathed TV's new kid in town and because it was live and largely improvised, viewers and VJs both shared the experience and grew up together, embracing the new music that became the video soundtrack of our lives. The careers of Canadian legends like Glass Tiger, Colin James, the Parachute Club, Honeymoon Suite, Blue Rodeo, Corey Hart, Jane Siberry and Platinum Blonde were launched when Much brought them closer to their fans. Much also brought us international acts, and events like the Bon Jovi BBQ and Iggfest, with Iggy Pop improvising songs in the midst of his fans on the sidewalk on Queen Street. This was also an era in which music found its conscience with events like Live Aid and the Amnesty International Human Rights Now! tour. And Much covered them all. With stories of the bands, the VJs, the music, the videos, the style and the improvisational approach to daily broadcast life at Much, and told by the people who were there--the colourful cast of on-air VJs, the artists who found their way into the living rooms of the nation as never before, and the people behind the camera--"Is This Live?" delivers a full-on dose of pop culture from the 1980s and '90s, when the music scene in Canada changed forever."

    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.

    Here is his revealing memoir of Lennon, including Lennon's virtual imprisonment in his apartment house, his obsession with food and sex, the Lennons's colossal shopping sprees, John and Yoko's fascination with the Occult, John's premonition of his violent death, and more. 24 pages of never-before-seen photographs. (Performing Arts)

    Generations have grown up with Cilla's music, TV shows, and performances. But how much do we really know about 'the girl with the bright red hair and the jet black voice'? What's It All About? is Cilla's own story, told for the first time ever. It's the story of a woman who has worked ceaselessly to stay at the top for forty years despite setbacks and personal tragedy; a life of incredible highs and terrible lows. In this deeply personal autobiography she tells her unique story in intimate and vivid detail for the very first time. This is the real Cilla Black.

    The John Lennon depicted in these pages is a much more kaleidoscopic figure, sometimes almost a collision of different characters.He was, of course, funny, often very funny. But above everything, he had attitude—his impudent style somehow personifying the aspirations of his generation to question authority. He could, and would, say the unsayable. Though there were more glamorous rock stars in rock history, even within the Beatles, it was John Lennon’s attitude which caught, and then defined, his era in the most memorable way.

    One of Swinging London's most popular faces, he lived fast, died young and was immortalized for ever in the opening lines of 'A Day in the Life', a song that many critics regard as The Beatles' finest. But who was John Lennon's lucky man who made the grade and then blew his mind out in a car?Author Paul Howard has pieced together the extraordinary story of a young Irishman who epitomized the spirit of the times: racing car driver, Vogue model, friend of The Rolling Stones, style icon, son of a peer, heir to a Guinness fortune and the man who turned Paul McCartney on to LSD.I Read the News Today, Oh Boy is the story of a child born into Ireland's dwindling aristocracy, who spent his early years in an ancient castle in County Mayo, and who arrived in London just as it was becoming the most exciting city on the planet. The Beatles and the Stones were about to conquer America, Carnaby Street was setting the style template for the world and rich and poor were rubbing shoulders in the West End in a new spirit of classlessness. Among young people, there was a growing sense that they could change the world. And no one embodied the ephemeral promise of London's sixties better than Tara Browne.Includes a sixteen-page plate section of stunning colour photographs.