Dark Star: The Roy Orbison Story


Ellis Amburn - 1990
    Rock stars from Elvis to Bruce Springsteen have been profoundly affected by his work. This insightful book examines the power of Orbison's music--from his pioneer days to his fantastic comeback--and the events that lead to his untimely death.

Let Fury Have the Hour: The Punk Rock Politics of Joe Strummer


Antonino D'Ambrosio - 2004
    The quintessential Rude Boy, punker, rebel musician, artist and activist, Strummer wrote some of the most important and influential music of the last century including "Guns of Brixton," "The Washington Bullets," "Spanish Bombs," "White Man in Hammersmith Palace," "London's Burning," "Lost in the Supermarket," and "Garageland." Effectively melding raw creativity with radical politics, Strummer transformed punk rock from its early associations with reactionary, right wing and nihilistic politics into a social movement. From Rock Against Racism to the Anti-Nazi League Festival to supporting the H-Block protests, Strummer and The Clash led the charge for human rights. Let Fury Have the Hour collects articles, interviews, essays and reviews that chronicle Strummer's life both as a musician and a political activist. Included in this collection are essays and interviews by Antonino D'Ambrosio, alongside contributions from Peter Silverton, Barry Miles, Anya Philips, Sylvia Simmons, Vic Garbarini, Caroline Coons, Todd Martens, Joel Schalit and others. This book also includes original lyrics, photography, art, posters, and flyers, and offers the first serious examination of the life of this extraordinary man.

Sound Man


Glyn Johns - 2014
    A memoir of a remarkable rock-and-roll career from Glyn Johns, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame producer and sound engineer whose resumé includes work with the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Who, the Clash, and many more.

Somebody to Love: The Life, Death and Legacy of Freddie Mercury


Matt Richards - 2016
    Including interviews from Freddie Mercury's closest friends in the last years of his life, along with personal photographs, Somebody to Love is an authoritative biography of the great man.Here are previously unknown and startling facts about the singer and his life, moving detail on his lifelong search for love and personal fulfilment, and of course his tragic contraction of a then killer disease in the mid-1980s. Woven throughout Freddie's life is the shocking story of how the HIV virus came to hold the world in its grip, was cruelly labelled 'The Gay Plague' and the unwitting few who indirectly infected thousands of men, women and children - Freddie Mercury himself being one of the most famous. The death of this vibrant and spectacularly talented rock star, shook the world of medicine as well as the world of music. Somebody to Love finally puts the record straight and pays detailed tribute to the man himself.

Salad Days


Charles Romalotti - 2000
    Now in its fifth printing, this is a sma...see site for more info.

His to Claim


Opal Carew - 2014
    A rock musician by night and head of a billion dollar empire by day, Rafe could have any woman he wanted. But I was just the shy secretary he never noticed. For years I obsessed over him, until I finally realized I had to walk away. I needed to leave my secure life behind to discover who I really was.I never expected Rafe to follow me.Now I’m on the road with his band, Savage Kiss, and all my secret fantasies are coming true. But I fear I’ve made a huge mistake, because if I get any more attached to a man I can never truly have, my heart will be broken beyond all repair. First published as a six-part erotic serial, His to Claim is the intoxicating tale of a woman torn between a tattooed, bad boy rock musician and the life she's always know. Now available for the first time as a complete book, this edition features sizzling new bonus material.

Poisoned Heart: I Married Dee Dee Ramone (the Ramones Years): A Punk Love Story


Vera Ramone King - 2009
    Waking up the neighbors and setting the U.S. music scene on fire in the 1970s and through the '80s, The Ramones' story is tragic and raw, sentiments that could also describe the band's songwriter, bass player, and unsung genius, Dee Dee. A wild ride into the heart and soul of New York City, Poisoned Heart is Vera Ramones King's last testament to her former husband, who shocked the world when he died in 2002 of a drug overdose despite having been clean for years. Dee Dee defined the punk-rock lifestyle. He was a rash, often violent, heroin addict, and no one better understood his twisted mentality, or insanity, than faithful wife Vera. But Vera, herself a less destructive Nancy to Dee Dee's Sid, also came to know the Dee Dee that music fans worldwide held near and dear: a generous, loving man who had a soft-spot for bums, who grew up in the tough streets of Queens, who never stopped working, writing, and performing, who often treated his wife like a Punk Rock Princess, and whose greatest joy was the look on his fans' faces as he played them a song. For true fans of The Ramones, those who remember the 1970s as a time of music innovation and inspired creativity, groupies, wannabes, and true music-lovers everywhere, Poisoned Heart is destined to become a literary--and rock--classic.

My Rock 'n' Roll Friend


Tracey Thorn - 2021
    Tracey's music career was just beginning, while Lindy, drummer for The Go-Betweens, was ten years her senior. They became confidantes, comrades and best friends, a relationship cemented by gossip and feminism, books and gigs and rock 'n' roll love affairs.Morrison - a headstrong heroine blazing her way through a male-dominated industry - came to be a kind of mentor to Thorn. They shared the joy and the struggle of being women in a band, trying to outwit and face down a chauvinist music media.In My Rock 'n' Roll Friend Thorn takes stock of thirty-seven years of friendship, teasing out the details of connection and affection between two women who seem to be either complete opposites or mirror images of each other. This important book asks what people see, who does the looking, and ultimately who writes women out of - and back into - history.

The Act You've Known for All These Years: A Year in the Life of Sgt. Pepper and Friends


Clinton Heylin - 2007
    Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles was released, an LP which changed the face of popular culture and continues to top public and critical polls of the greatest albums ever made. The Act You’ve Known for All These Years reconstructs the life and times of Sgt. Pepper, the cultural backstory of the band and rock's turbulent early adulthood. Weaving the activities of the Beatles in with those of their contemporaries and rivals — notably Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys and Pink Floyd — heralded music critic Clinton Heylin reveals the inspirations and explodes the myths behind this talismanic, iconic album — and "the summer of love" itself. In addition, the book surveys what happened next, telling the history of the LP’s "afterlife" from 1967 to the present day. Featuring interviews both with those who were there at the time and those who followed in the Beatles’ wake, The Act You’ve Known for All These Years is the definitive book on the defining LP of the pop era.

Let It Bleed: The Rolling Stones, Altamont, and the End of the Sixties


Ethan A. Russell - 2009
    Intimate, never-before-seen photographs and personal stories from the infamous 1969 'Let It Bleed Tour' that culminated in the concert at Altamont and the end of the innocence of rock and roll.

Flames and Flowers


NOT A BOOK - 2021
    Flames and Flowers is a friends-to-lovers / forbidden love / MMF romance novella.It is meant to be read at the end of the players series, after Lovely Madness (Players #4).

A&R


Bill Flanagan - 2000
    Now the big time calls, and Jim accepts an offer to become head of A&R at industry giant WorldWide Records, founded and still run by the legendary maverick Wild Bill DeGaul. Little by little, though, it dawns on Jim that he has walked into a vipers' nest, and he must choose between picking up a dagger in a bloody palace coup against DeGaul or standing by him and losing everything.         Never before in fiction has the music business been so thoroughly nailed, but A&R is as much Julius Caesar as it is The Player: for all its great wit and dead-on insider texture, it's as wise about human nature as it is about one very dysfunctional industry.

Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements


Bob Mehr - 2016
    With full participation from reclusive singer and chief songwriter Paul Westerberg, bassist Tommy Stinson, guitarist Slim Dunlap, and the family of late band co-founder Bob Stinson, author Bob Mehr is able to tell the real story of this highly influential group, capturing their chaotic, tragic journey from the basements of Minneapolis to rock legend. Drawing on years of research and access to the band's archives at Twin/Tone Records and Warner Bros. Mehr also discovers previously unrevealed details from those in the group's inner circle, including family, managers, musical friends and collaborators.

Runnin' Down a Dream: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers


Tom Petty - 2007
    He has sold more than 50 million albums worldwide. His music has been the soundtrack to the lives of millions of people who grew up in the '70s, '80s and '90s. This celebratory, personal volume includes hundreds of photographsmany never-before-publishedas well as a selection of memorabilia from Petty's personal archives, all of which help to illustrate the songwriter's own description of his amazing life and career. Publication of this book coincides with the theatrical release of a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers film documentary by Peter Bogdanovich and a four disc DVD/CD set. The fall of 2007 belongs to Tom Petty.

I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution


Craig Marks - 2011
    It was such a radical idea that almost no one thought it would actually succeed, much less become a force in the worlds of music, television, film, fashion, sports, and even politics. But it did work. MTV became more than anyone had ever imagined.I Want My MTV tells the story of the first decade of MTV, the golden era when MTV's programming was all videos, all the time, and kids watched religiously to see their favorite bands, learn about new music, and have something to talk about at parties. From its start in 1981 with a small cache of videos by mostly unknown British new wave acts to the launch of the reality-television craze with The Real World in 1992, MTV grew into a tastemaker, a career maker, and a mammoth business. Featuring interviews with nearly four hundred artists, directors, VJs, and television and music executives, I Want My MTV is a testament to the channel that changed popular culture forever.