Book picks similar to
Sondheim & Co by Craig Zadan


theatre
non-fiction
biography
musical-theatre

The New York Dolls: Too Much Too Soon


Nina Antonia - 1998
    The Dolls, peddling trans-gender posturing and incendiary rock 'n' roll, were dumped by the record business after making just two albums. But their influence lives on...

Life on Two Legs


Norman J. Sheffield - 2013
    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.

Wicked: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Broadway Musical


Stephen Schwartz - 2010
    Each Complete Book and Lyrics is approved by the writers and attractively designed with color photo inserts from the Broadway production. All titles include introduction and foreword by renowned Broadway musical experts. Long before Dorothy dropped in, two other girls meet in the Land of Oz. One, born with emerald green skin, is smart, fiery, and misunderstood. The other is beautiful, ambitious, and very popular. The story of how these two unlikely friends end up as the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch makes for the most spellbinding new musical in years.

Unnaturally Green: One girl's journey along a yellow brick road less traveled


Felicia Ricci - 2011
    UNNATURALLY GREEN is the humorous account of the entire journey, from her pit-stain-filled audition to the bittersweet closing night. Author Felicia Ricci wears her heart on her sleeve as she tackles the role of Elphaba, WICKED's green-skinned heroine. She leaps countless hurdles, both professional and personal: conquering the "Songs of Death," weathering a trans-continental "Week I Didn't Poop," enduring the artistic limbo of understudying, and -- worst of all! -- meeting the man of her dreams. And all the while learning, time and again, what it means to be "green." Hop into the mind of an over-sharer as she discovers Broadway's Man Behind the Curtain -- and the thrill and terror of personal growth.

The Way I Was


Marvin Hamlisch - 1992
    One of the most gifted popular composers of our time, Marvin Hamlisch has written an unforgettable book--outrageously funny, witty, tender, and moving--about the remarkable career that brought him three Academy Awards and international fame by the age of thirty.

Every Night's A Saturday Night: The Rock 'n' Roll Life of Legendary Sax Man Bobby Keys


Bobby Keys - 2012
    In his early teens, Keys bribed his way into Buddy Holly's garage band rehearsals. He took up the saxophone because it was the only instrument left unclaimed in the school band, and he convinced his grandfather to sign his guardianship over to Crickets drummer J.I. Allison so that he could go on tour as a teenager.Keys spent years on the road during the early days of rock 'n' roll with hitmakers like Bobby Vee and the various acts on Dick Clark's Caravan of Stars Tour, followed by decades as top touring and session sax man for the likes of Mad Dogs and Englishmen, George Harrison, John Lennon, and onto his gig with The Rolling Stone from 1970 onward. Every Night's a Saturday Night finds Keys setting down the many tales of an over-the-top rock 'n' roll life in his own inimitable voice.Augmented by exclusive contributions with famous friends like Keith Richards, Joe Crocker, and Jim Keltner, Every Night's a Saturday Night paints a unique picture of the coming-of-age of rock 'n' roll.

Van Halen: A Visual History, 1978-1984


Neil Zlozower - 2007
    Nobody rockedor partiedharder. Photographer Neil Zlozower first met the band in 1978, worked with them again on Van Halen II, and soon became their friend, hanging out in L.A. and hitting the road on tour with them. Van Halen collects more than 250 backstage, candid, and full rock-out photos of the all-powerful, spandexed, high-kicking, guitar blazing, stadium-shaking, original Van Halen lineup. Accompanying Zlozower's amazing photos are an introduction about his wild ride with VH, a foreword by David Lee Roth, and testimony from the rock pantheon paying homage to the band, including members of Led Zeppelin, Guns N' Roses, Def Leppard, Judas Priest, KISS, Motley Cre, and more. Turn it up!

The Play Goes On


Neil Simon - 1999
    Simon's same willingness to open his heart to the reader permeates The Play Goes On. This second act takes the reader from the mid-1970s to the present, a period in which Simon wrote some of his most popular and critically acclaimed plays, including the Brighton Beach trilogy and Lost in Yonkers, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. Simon experienced enormous professional success during this time, but in his personal life he struggled to find that same sense of happiness and satisfaction. After the death of his first wife, he and his two young daughters left New York for Hollywood. There he remarried, and when that foundered he remarried again. Told with his characteristic humor and unflinching sense of irony, The Play Goes On is rich with stories of how Simon's art came to imitate his life. Simon's forty-plus plays make up a body of work that is a long-running memoir in its own right, yet here, in a deeper and more personal book than his first volume, Simon offers a revealing look at an artist in crisis but still able and willing to laugh at himself.

Before The Legend: The Rise Of Bob Marley


Christopher John Farley - 2006
    Before the Legend: The Rise of Bob Marley goes beyond the myth of Marley to bring you the private side of a man few people ever really knew. Drawing from original interviews with the people closest to Marley – including his widow, Rita, his mother, Cedella, his band mate and childhood friend, Bunny Wailer, his producer Chris Blackwell, and many others – Legend paints an entirely fresh picture of one of the most enduring musical artists of our times.

Independence


Lee Blessing - 1985
    Her oldest daughter, Kess, is a university professor in Minneapolis, but she has come home at the request of her sister, Jo who is concerned for Evelyn's mental health. Kess, a professed lesbian, wants to cut her family ties once and for all; Jo, an incurable romantic and longtime virgin, has now become pregnant; while Sherry, salty-tongued and amoral, wants only to finish high school so she can leave home for good. In the end, there is no accommodation possible but, instead, only a kind of arbitrary independence for each of the protagonists, as they come to realize that each must find her own heaven or hell in her own way.

Auntie Mame


Jerome Lawrence - 1960
    Besides being the source for one of America's most popular musicals, AUNTIE MAME set a standard for Broadway comedy that's been sought after ever since. "Auntie Mame was a handsome, sparkling, scatterbrained and warm-hearted lady who brightened the American landscape from 1928 to the immediate past by her whimsical gaiety, her slightly madcap adventures and her devotion to her young nephew, who grew up to be Patrick Dennis. Through fortunes that rose and fell and a pleasant but brief marriage to a likable Southerner, who had the bad luck to tumble down from the Matterhorn, Auntie Mame's chief concern was that nephew, whom she raised [the play's] central figure is a woman of spirit, innate kindness and undefeatable courage " NY Post.

Keith Richards: In His Own Words


Keith Richards - 1994
    Rhythm guitarist with The Rolling Stones for over 30 years, he is also famous in his own right as a solo artist.

POPism: The Warhol Sixties


Andy Warhol - 1980
    In the detached, back-fence gossip style he was famous for, Warhol tells all—the ultimate inside story of a decade of cultural revolution.

Lyrics


Sting - 1991
    From the first Police album, Outlandos D'Amour, through Sacred Love, here are the collected lyrics written by Sting, along with his commentary.

A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599


James Shapiro - 2005
     James Shapiro illuminates both Shakespeare’s staggering achievement and what Elizabethans experienced in the course of 1599, bringing together the news and the intrigue of the times with a wonderful evocation of how Shakespeare worked as an actor, businessman, and playwright. The result is an exceptionally immediate and gripping account of an inspiring moment in history.