Book picks similar to
Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock 'n' Roll by Rick Coleman
music
biography
history
nonfiction
Rolling with the Stones
Bill Wyman - 2002
The Rolling Stones, commonly referred to as the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band, epitomize everything that's excessive, lavish, exciting, and powerful about rock music. Now, founding member and bass player Bill Wyman presents an honest and humorous account that serves as a backstage pass to the band's history, from drug busts, to tax exile, to solo careers. Straight from Wyman's huge personal archive, Rolling with the Stones features previously unreleased letters, photographs, memorabilia, and personal journals. With over 2000 photographs, more than 45 beautifully designed tour spreads, song lists from every show, and biographies on each band member, there is no need for any other Stones book to be written.
Girl in a Band
Kim Gordon - 2015
Telling the story of her family, growing up in California in the '60s and '70s, her life in visual art, her move to New York City, the men in her life, her marriage, her relationship with her daughter, her music, and her band, Girl in a Band is a rich and beautifully written memoir.Gordon takes us back to the lost New York of the 1980s and '90s that gave rise to Sonic Youth, and the Alternative revolution in popular music. The band helped build a vocabulary of music—paving the way for Nirvana, Hole, Smashing Pumpkins and many other acts. But at its core, Girl in a Band examines the route from girl to woman in uncharted territory, music, art career, what partnership means—and what happens when that identity dissolves.Evocative and edgy, filled with the sights and sounds of a changing world and a transformative life, Girl in a Band is the fascinating chronicle of a remarkable journey and an extraordinary artist.
Faithfull
Marianne Faithfull - 1994
She recalls her love and life with Mick Jagger, how Bob Dylan wooed her, the Rolling Stones courted her and finally, how drugs trapped her into a world where nothing else mattered but the next fix. She also reveals the contradictions of life as a "star", first as the pop confection she was packaged as, and later as the hard-edged artist who co-authored "Sister Morphine" and shocked the world with "Broken English".
Guitar Man: A Six-String Odyssey, or, You Love that Guitar More than You Love Me
Will Hodgkinson - 2006
It is portable, it has history, and it will always be hip. But why has the guitar become such a classic? Will Hodgkinson, a wannabe guitar player, whose only experience was an afternoon's bashing on a friend's guitar at the age of sixteen, set out to find out. Along the way he hoped to teach himself a few chords too. His goal was to get good enough to play before a live audience in just six months--even if it threatened to drive his wife and family to the point of insanity. His trip becomes an odyssey: He chats with British folk legend Bert Jansch, ex-Smith's guitarist Johnny Marr, and reclusive folk guitar legend Davey Graham, as well as Sufjan Stevens, PJ Harvey, and Cat Power's chanteuse Chan Marshall. He travels to America and with a hurricane brewing visits Roger McGuinn from the Byrds. He travels to the Deep South, looking for the spirit of Robert Johnson, and drops in on T-Model Ford, an old bluesman living in Mississippi. Gloriously readable and highly amusing, Guitar Man is classic obsessional nonfiction for a nation of guitar freaks.
Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana
Michael Azerrad - 1993
A final chapter details the last year of Kurt Cobain's life.From their early days in rural Aberdeen, Washington, to their domination of the world music scene in the early 90's, Come As You Are tells the Nirvana story as no other book does, candidly and first-hand: the allegations of heroin use; the soul-crushing pressures of sudden success; the burden of their unasked-for role as spokesman for a generation; and the tragic spiral that culminated in Kurt Cobain's death in April 1994.With close analyses of every song on each of the band's three major albums, a comprehensive discography and more than one hundred rare and never before-seen photographs, posters and original lyric sheets, Come As You Are is by far the most intimate look ever at one of rock's most influential and significant groups.
The Speed of Sound: Breaking the Barriers Between Music and Technology: A Memoir
Thomas Dolby - 2016
A pioneer of New Wave and Electronica, Thomas combined a love for invention with a passion for music, and the result was a new sound that defined an era of revolutionary music. But as record company politics overshadow the joy of performing, Thomas finds a surprising second act.Starting out in a rat-infested London bedsit, a teenage Thomas Dolby stacks boxes by day at the grocery and tinkers with a homemade synthesizer at night while catching the Police at a local dive bar, swinging by the pub to see the unknown Elvis Costello and starting the weekend with a Clash show at a small night club. London on the eve of the 1980s is a hotbed for music and culture, and a new sound is beginning to take shape, merging technology with the musical energy of punk rock. Thomas plays keyboards in other bands' shows, and with a bit of luck finds his own style, quickly establishing himself on the scene and recording break out hits that take radio, MTV and dance clubs by storm. The world is now his oyster, and sold out arenas, world tours, even a friendship with Michael Jackson become the fabric of his life.But as the record industry flounders and disillusionment sets in, Thomas turns his attention to Hollywood. Scoring films and computer games eventually leads him to Silicon Valley and a software startup that turns up the volume on the digital music revolution. His company barely survives the dotcom bubble but finally even the mavericks at Apple, Microsoft, Netscape and Nokia see the light. By 2005, two-thirds of the world's mobile phones embed his Beatnik software. Life at the zenith of a tech empire proves to be just as full of big personalities, battling egos and roller-coaster success as his days spent at the top of the charts.THE SPEED OF SOUND is the story of an extraordinary man living an extraordinary life, a single-handed quest to make peace between art and the digital world.
Got a Revolution!: The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson Airplane
Jeff Tamarkin - 2003
Their smash hits "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit" virtually invented the era's signature pulsating psychedelic music and, during one of the most tumultuous times in American history, came to personify the decade's radical counterculture. In this groundbreaking biography of the band, veteran music writer and historian Jeff Tamarkin produces a portrait of the band like none that has come before it. Having worked closely with Jefferson Airplane for more than a decade, Tamarkin had unprecedented access to the band members, their families, friends, lovers, crew members, fellow musicians, cultural luminaries, even the highest-ranking politicians of the time. More than just a definitive history, Got a Revolution! is a rock legend unto itself. Jann Wenner, editor-in-chief and publisher of Rolling Stone, wrote, "The classic [Jefferson] Airplane lineup were both architects and messengers of a psychedelic age, a liberation of mind and body that profoundly changed American art, politics, and spirituality. It was a renaissance that could only have been born in San Francisco, and the Airplane, more than any other band in town, spread the good news nationwide."
Ted Templeman: A Platinum Producer’s Life in Music
Ted Templeman - 2020
Along the way, Ted details his late ’60s stint as an unlikely star with the sunshine pop outfit Harpers Bizarre and his grind-it-out days as a Warner Bros. tape listener, including the life-altering moment that launched his career as a producer: his discovery of the Doobie Brothers. Ted Templeman: A Platinum Producer’s Life in Music takes us into the studio sessions of No. 1 hits like “Black Water” by the Doobie Brothers and “Jump” by Van Halen, as Ted recounts memories and the behind-the-scene dramas that engulfed both massively successful acts. Throughout, Ted also reveals the inner workings of his professional and personal relationships with some of the most talented and successful recording artists in history, including Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith, Eric Clapton, Lowell George, Sammy Hagar, Linda Ronstadt, David Lee Roth, and Carly Simon.
Divided Soul: The Life Of Marvin Gaye
David Ritz - 1985
With a cast of characters that includes Diana Ross, Berry Gordy, Smokey Robinson, and Stevie Wonder, this intimate biography is a definitive and enduring look at the man who embodied the very essence of the word soul.
Get in the Van: On the Road With Black Flag
Henry Rollins - 1994
Rollins's observations range from the wry to the raucous in this blistering account of a six-year career with the band - a time marked by crazed fans, vicious cops, near-starvation, substance abuse, and mind numbing all-night drives. Rollins decided to revise this edition by adding a wealth of new photographs, a new foreword, and an afterword to include some "where-are-they-now" information on the people featured in the book. This new edition includes 40 previously unpublished black-and-white photographs from Rollins's private collection and show flyers by artist Raymond Pettibon. Called "a soul-frying experience not to be undertaken by lightweights" by Wired magazine, Get in the Van perfectly embodies what one critic called the "secular gospel" of one of punk and post-punk's most respected and controversial figures.
Sing Backwards and Weep: A Memoir
Mark Lanegan - 2020
What's not to love?"-Nick Cave, author of The Sick Bag Song and The Death of Bunny MunroWhen Mark Lanegan first arrived in Seattle in the mid-1980s, he was just "an arrogant, self-loathing redneck waster seeking transformation through rock 'n' roll." Little did he know that within less than a decade, he would rise to fame as the front man of the Screaming Trees, then fall from grace as a low-level crack dealer and a homeless heroin addict, all the while watching some of his closest friends rocket to the forefront of popular music.In Sing Backwards and Weep, Lanegan takes readers back to the sinister, needle-ridden streets of Seattle, to an alternative music scene that was simultaneously bursting with creativity and dripping with drugs. He tracks the tumultuous rise and fall of the Screaming Trees, from a brawling, acid-rock bar band to world-famous festival favorites that scored a hit #5 single on Billboard's Alternative charts and landed a notorious performance on David Letterman, where Lanegan appeared sporting a fresh black eye from a brawl the night before. This book also dives into Lanegan's personal struggles with addiction, culminating in homelessness, petty crime, and the tragic deaths of his closest friends. From the back of the van to the front of the bar, from the hotel room to the emergency room, onstage, backstage, and everywhere in between, Sing Backwards and Weep reveals the abrasive underlining beneath one of the most romanticized decades in rock history-from a survivor who lived to tell the tale. Gritty, gripping, and unflinchingly raw, Sing Backwards and Weep is a book about more than just an extraordinary singer who watched his dreams catch fire and incinerate the ground beneath his feet. Instead, it's about a man who learned how to drag himself from the wreckage, dust off the ashes, and keep living and creating.
Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and "Inventor of Jazz" (Updated)
Alan Lomax - 1950
Now back in print and updated with a new afterword by Lawrence Gushee, Mister Jelly Roll will enchant a new generation of readers with the fascinating story of one of the world's most influential composers of jazz. Jelly Roll's voice spins out his life in something close to song, each sentence rich with the sound and atmosphere of the period in which Morton, and jazz, exploded on the American and international scene. This edition includes scores of Jelly Roll's own arrangements, a discography and an updated bibliography, a chronology of his compositions, a new genealogical tree of Jelly Roll's forebears, and Alan Lomax's preface from the hard-to-find 1993 edition of this classic work. Lawrence Gushee's afterword provides new factual information and reasserts the importance of this work of African American biography to the study of jazz and American culture.
Michelle Obama: A Life
New Word City - 2011
The direct descendent of slaves, she graduated from Princeton University and the Harvard Law School, and she seemed primed for a life of prestige and wealth. Then she left that path for a life of public service and marriage to Barack Obama. Here’s her inspiring story.
Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years
Julie Andrews Edwards - 2019
In Home, the number one New York Times international bestseller, Julie Andrews recounted her difficult childhood and her emergence as an acclaimed singer and performer on the stage. With this second memoir, Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years, Andrews picks up the story with her arrival in Hollywood and her phenomenal rise to fame in her earliest films--Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. Andrews describes her years in the film industry -- from the incredible highs to the challenging lows. Not only does she discuss her work in now-classic films and her collaborations with giants of cinema and television, she also unveils her personal story of adjusting to a new and often daunting world, dealing with the demands of unimaginable success, being a new mother, the end of her first marriage, embracing two stepchildren, adopting two more children, and falling in love with the brilliant and mercurial Blake Edwards. The pair worked together in numerous films, including Victor/Victoria, the gender-bending comedy that garnered multiple Oscar nominations. Cowritten with her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, and told with Andrews's trademark charm and candor, Home Work takes us on a rare and intimate journey into an extraordinary life that is funny, heartrending, and inspiring.
Zelda Fitzgerald: The Biography
University Press Biographies - 2017
The chafing restrictions of a typical upbringing in upper-class, small town Alabama simply did not apply to Zelda, who was described as an unusual child and permitted to roam the streets with little supervision. Zelda refused to blossom into a typical 'Southern belle' on anyone's terms but her own and while still in high school enjoyed the status of a local celebrity for her shocking behavior. Everybody in town knew the name Zelda Sayre. Queen of the Montgomery social scene, Zelda had a different beau ready and willing to show her a good time for every day of the week. Before meeting F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda's life was a constant pursuit of pleasure. With little thought for the future and no responsibilities to speak of, Zelda committed herself fully to the mantra that accompanied her photo in her high school graduation book: "Why should all life be work, when we all can borrow. Let's think only of today, and not worry about tomorrow." But for now Zelda was still in rehearsal for her real life to begin, a life she was sure would be absolutely extraordinary. Zelda Sayre married F. Scott Fitzgerald on the 3rd of April 1920 and left sleepy Montgomery behind in order to dive headfirst into the shimmering, glamourous life of a New York socialite. With the publication of Scott's first novel, This Side of Paradise, Zelda found herself thrust into the limelight as the very epitome of the Flapper lifestyle. Concerned chiefly with fashion, wild parties and flouting social expectations, Zelda and Scott became icons of the Jazz Age, the personification of beauty and success. What Zelda and Scott shared was a romantic sense of self-importance that assured them that their life of carefree leisure and excess was the only life really worth living. Deeply in love, the Fitzgeralds were like to sides of the same coin, each reflecting the very best and worst of each other. While the world fell in love with the image of the Fitzgeralds they saw on the cover of magazines, behind the scenes the Fitzgerald's marriage could not withstand the tension of their creative arrangement. Zelda was Scott's muse and he mercilessly mined the events of their life for material for his books. Scott claimed Zelda's memories, things she said, experiences she had and even passages from her diary as his possessions and used them to form the basis of his fictional works. Zelda had a child but the domestic sphere offered no comfort or purpose for her. The Flapper lifestyle was not simply a phase she lived through, it formed the very basis of her character and once the parties grew dull, the Fitzgeralds' drinking became destructive and Zelda's beauty began to fade, the world held little allure for her. Zelda sought reprieve in work and tried to build a career as a ballet dancer. When that didn't work out she turned to writing but was forbidden by Scott from using her own life as material. Convinced that she would never leave her mark on the world as deeply or expressively as Scott had, Zelda retreated into herself and withdrew from the people she knew in happier times. The later years of Zelda's life were marred by her detachment from reality as, diagnosed with schizophrenia, Zelda spent the last eighteen years of her life living in and out of psychiatric hospitals. As Scott's life unraveled due to alcohol abuse, Zelda looked back on the years they had spent together, young and wild and beautiful, as the best of her life. She may have been right but she was wrong about one thing, Zelda did leave her mark on the world and it was a deep and expressive mark that no one could have left but her. Zelda Fitzgerald: The Biography