Fire And Rain: The James Taylor Story


Ian Halperin - 2000
    When he was seventeen years old, his demons led him to a Massachusetts mental institution where he confronted them the only way he knew how, by writing his first songs. Thirty years later, Taylor's songs are among the most popular in the annals of music, but the demons are still with him. But unlike many of his contemporaries who faced a similar struggle, Taylor managed to emerge as an inspirational figure. Fire and Rain traces this remarkable path, including his troubled marriage to pop star Carly Simon and the premature alcoholism-related death of his brother: Taylor's ten-month stay in the exclusive private psychiatric institution where he finished high school; His self-imposed exile to England where he submitted some of his music to the Beatles' Apple Records, which signed him to his first record contract in 1968. Paul McCartney mentored Taylor's early career; The story behind his second album, Sweet Baby James, which contained the song "Fire and Rain" about the hopelessness of mental illness and suicide; As Taylor's fame increased, so did his problems with heroin, alcohol, and mental illness. In the seventies, the singer nearly fell over the edge many times.

Shang-a-lang: Life as an International Pop Idol


Les McKeown - 2003
    It is a remarkable story of extremes, and a no-holds barred account of Rollermania.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Spy Rock Memories


Larry Livermore - 2013
    As he learned valuable lessons in self-sufficiency, taking responsibility, and how to avoid (for the most part but not always) getting punched in the face by irate hippies, Larry also found his place and made his home in the far-flung, disjointed and eccentric community he encountered in the anarchic realm that begins where Highway 101’s tattered tarmac dissolves into the dust of Spy Rock Road.

The Ultimate Fake Book: C Edition


Hal Leonard Corporation - 1983
    This fake book is a cornerstone for many musicians' libraries. With over 1200 songs in all styles of music, this fifth edition has been updated to include even more great songs and recent hits. From jazz standards to Broadway blockbusters and country classics to pop chart-toppers, this book has the songs you're looking for all in one convenient collection. It is comb-bound with locked tabs to ensure long-lasting durability. Songs include: All the Things You Are * Blue Skies * Body and Soul * Come Fly With Me * Endless Love * The Girl from Ipanema (Garota de Ipanema) * The House of the Rising Sun * Love and Marriage * Memory * Moon River * Mustang Sally * Night Moves * Over the Rainbow * Piano Man * Satin Doll * Shout * Smooth * Start Me Up * Strawberry Fields Forever * Tears in Heaven * Unforgettable * hundreds more!

All of Me


Anne Murray - 2009
    It is a candid retrospective of the extraordinary success achieved, and the prices that had to be paid.“After ‘Snowbird’ hit, I was swept up like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, and catapulted into a strange new universe … If I thought for a moment that I was really in control of events, I was deluded.” Anne MurrayAn unflinching self-portrait of Canada’s first great female recording artist, All of Me documents the life of Anne Murray, from her humble origins in the tragedy-plagued coal-mining town of Springhill, Nova Scotia, to her arrival on the world stage. Anne recounts her story: the battles with her record companies over singles and albums; the struggle with drug- and alcohol-ridden band members; the terrible guilt and loneliness of being away from her two young children; her divorce from the man who helped launch her career, Bill Langstroth; and the deaths of two of her closest confidantes. The result is a must-read autobiography by Canada’s beloved songbird.

I'm In the Band: Backstage Notes from the Chick in White Zombie


Sean Yseult - 2010
    The band became a multiplatinum, two-time Grammy nominee with the release of their 1992 album, La Sexorcisto. But while most people will remember their bizarre look and macabre lyrics, what many failed to realize was that their lanky, high-octane bass player was a woman.I’m In the Band combines eleven years of tour diaries, flyers, and personal photos and ephemera to chart White Zombie’s rise from the gritty music scene of New York’s Lower East Side in the eighties to arena headliners during the nineties. It also shares the unlikely story of a female musician who won the respect and adoration of male metal musicians and fans. From 1985 to 1996, Sean Yseult was the sole woman not only in White Zombie, but in the entire metal scene.With I’m In the Band, Yseult has created both a coffee table book and a striking visual memoir. Her personal memorabilia offers fans a unique vantage on the life of a mega-band during rock’s last golden age.

Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir


Ezra Pound - 1916
    An enlarged edition, including thirty pages of illustrations (sculpture and drawings) as well as Pound's later pieces on Gaudier, was brought out in 1970, and is now re-issued as an ND Paperbook. The memoir is valuable both for the history of modern art and for what it shows us of Pound himself, his ability to recognize genius in others and then to publicize it effectively. Would there today be a Salle Gaudier-Brzeska in the Musée de L'Art Moderne in Paris if Pound had not championed him? Gaudier's talent was impressive and his Vorticist aesthetic important as theory, but he was killed in World War I at the age of twenty-three, leaving only a small body of work. Pound knew Gaudier in London, where the young artist had come with his companion, the Polish-born Sophie Brzeska. whose name he added to his own. They were living in poverty when Pound bought Gaudier the stone from which the famous "hieratic head" of the poet was made. Pound arranged exhibitions and for the publication of Gaudier's manifestoes in Blast and The Egoist. And he wrote and sent packages to him in the trenches, where Gaudier––a sculptor to the last––carved a madonna and child from the butt of a captured German rifle, just two days before he died.

Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music


Phil Ramone - 2007
    Streisand. Dylan. Pavarotti. McCartney. Sting. Madonna. What do these musicians have in common besides their super-stardom? They have all worked with legendary music producer Phil Ramone. For almost five decades, Phil Ramone has been a force in the music industry. He has produced records and collaborated with almost every major talent in the business. There is a craft to making records, and Phil has spent his life mastering it. For the first time ever, he shares the secrets of his trade.Making Records is a fascinating look "behind the glass" of a recording studio. From Phil's exhilarating early days recording jazz and commercial jingles at A&R, to his first studio, and eventual legendary producer status, Phil allows you to sit in on the sessions that created some of the most memorable music of the 20th century -- including Frank Sinatra's Duets album, Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, Ray Charles's Genius Loves Company and Paul Simon's Still Crazy After All These Years. In addition to being a ringside seat for contemporary popular music history, Making Records is an unprecedented tutorial on the magic behind what music producers and engineers do. In these pages, Phil offers a rare peek inside the way music is made . . . illuminating the creative thought processes behind some of the most influential sessions in music history. This is a book about the art that is making records -- the way it began, the way it is now, and everything in between.

One Way or Another


Nikki McWatters - 2012
    With three friends she starts the Vulture Club for aspiring groupies – and so begins a festival of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll.As Nikki gets older, her conquests get bigger and the stakes get higher. From Australian Crawl to INXS, Pseudo Echo to Duran Duran, she is living her teenage dream – but is the groupie life all it’s cracked up to be?One Way or Another is an irresistible romp through a world of pub rock, big hair, wild nights and mornings after. With irrepressible humour and a bulging little black book, Nikki McWatters recalls an age when everything seemed possible – even if everything wasn’t such a good idea.

Original Rude Boy: From Borstal to The Specials


Neville Staple - 2009
    In 1979, Thatcher's Britain was a country crippled by strikes, joblessness, and economic gloom, divided by race and class—and skanking to a new beat: 2 Tone. The unruly offspring of white boy punk and rude boy ska, the Specials burst on to the scene. On stage they were electric, and at the heart of this energy was the vocal chemistry of the ethereal Terry Hall and Jamaican rude boy Neville Staple. In 1961, five-year-old Neville was sent to England to live with his father, a man for whom discipline bordered on child abuse. As he recounts here, growing up black in the Midlands of the 1960s and 1970s wasn't easy, and his youth was marked by scuffles with skins, compulsive womanizing, and a life of crime that led from shoplifting to burglary and eventually prison. But throughout there was music, and Nev reveals how he became part of the most important band of the 1980s. He remembers sound system battles; the legendary 2 Tone tour with the Selecter, Madness, and Dexy's, and their clashes with white nationalist thugs. He recalls the band's increasing tensions and eventual split; his subsequent foray into bubblegum pop with Fun Boy Three; and a newfound fame in America as godfather to Third Wave ska bands. Finally he reflects on the Specials' reunion and how even now, 30 years later, they can't help tearing themselves apart.

I Talk Too Much: My Autobiography


Francis Rossi - 2019
    . . This is Francis Rossi as you have never seen him before. Status Quo have sold over 100 million records worldwide, including 65 hit singles and 32 hit albums. The legendary band's career has mirrored the evolution of rock music. From the struggles of the flower-power '60s, the highs of the denim-clad '70s, the coke- and tequila-induced blur of the '80s, to fighting for musical integrity in the '90s and '00s and a fresh lease of life from new band members in recent years, Rossi has been there for the entirety of Quo's turbulent history.In I Talk Too Much, Rossi will reveal the truth behind one of the biggest rock bands of all time, as well as the personal highs and lows of a career spanning over 50 years. He lifts the lid on the man behind the music - from humble beginnings in Forest Hill and being labelled a has-been by the press in his twenties to opening Live Aid in 1985 - and why he's still going strong at seventy. Along the way he has fathered eight children with three mothers and beaten both alcoholism and cocaine addiction. Rossi comes clean about the time he almost left the band, what he really thinks about the music industry today and the complexities of his fifty-year friendship with Rick Parfitt.Painfully honest, riotously funny and frequently outrageous, I Talk Too Much covers the glory years, the dark days and the real stories behind the creation of some of the greatest rock music of all time.

Untitled


Blaine Hogan - 2011
    The blank page.It has so much power.Some days it's terrifying, sometimes thrilling, but mostly it's just plain old scary.It is the reason many people never finish that novel, or complete that project, or follow through with that one thing they used to dream about.Sadly, it is the reason many people never even begin.Blaine Hogan's manifesto, UNTITLED: Thoughts on the Creative Process is here to change all that.As an artist who has designed t-shirts, made light fixtures, created performance art in alleyways, performed on big and small stages all across the country, acted on network television, and is now a creative director at one of the largest churches in North America, Blaine walks you through the creative process of attacking the blank page, executing vision, finding the importance of contemplation, fighting the battle with resistance, and learning from your failures.Blank pages be gone!Read UNTITLED and get ready to fill those suckers with good and meaningful work.

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter)


Peachpit Press - 2013
    Scott doesn’t just show you which sliders do what (every Lightroom book will do that). Instead, by using the following three simple, yet brilliant, techniques that make it just an incredible learning tool, this book shows you how to create your own photography workflow using Lightroom: Throughout the book, Scott shares his own personal settings and studiotested techniques. Each year he trains thousands of Lightroom users at his live seminars and through that he’s learned what really works, what doesn’t, and he tells you flat out which techniques work best, which to avoid, and why. The entire book is laid out in a real workflow order with everything step by step, so you can begin using Lightroom like a pro from the start. What really sets this book apart is the last chapter. This is where Scott dramatically answers his #1 most-asked Lightroom question, which is: “Exactly what order am I supposed to do things in, and where does Photoshop fit in?” You’ll see Scott’s entire start-to-finish Lightroom 5 workflow and learn how to incorporate it into your own workflow. Plus, this book includes a downloadable collection of some of the hottest Lightroom Develop module presets to give you a bunch of amazing effects with just one click! Scott knows first-hand the challenges today’s digital photographers are facing, and what they want to learn next to make their workflow faster, easier, and more fun. He has incorporated all of that into this major update for Lightroom 5. It’s the first and only book to bring the whole process together in such a clear, concise, and visual way. Plus, the book includes a special chapter on integrating Adobe Photoshop seamlessly right into your workflow, and you’ll also learn some of Scott’s latest Photoshop portrait retouching techniques and special effects, which take this book to a whole new level. There is no faster, more straight-to-the-point, or more fun way to learn Lightroom than with this groundbreaking book.

The Beatles Lyrics: The Songs of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr


The Beatles - 1975
    A must-own souvenir for all Beatles fans and songwriters! The Beatles Lyrics is an amazing tribute to the most influential band in pop history. For the first time ever together in print, it publishes the lyrics to 192 songs by the Fab Four. Also includes a complete discography, lots of great full-page photos throughout the book, and a song title index.

Brothers: From Childhood To Oasis: The Real Story


Paul Gallagher - 1996
    Paul Gallagher, the elder brother of Noel and Liam, discusses their childhood, their father, their musical beginnings and their rise to fame, as well as considering their future.