Book picks similar to
It Just Occurred to Me . . .: The Reminiscences Thoughts of Chairman Humph by Humphrey Lyttelton
music
biography
non-fiction
humour
Old Never Stop! The Wilfrid Brambell Story: An unofficial telling of Wilfrid Brambell's life story
Phillip Glass - 2016
Many people have told his story incorrectly, and many rumors have surfaced about his life. After years of research we can present this telling of his life story, setting the record straight and giving you a warm, funny and even tragic insight in to the man behind Albert Steptoe.
Stick It!: My Life of Sex, Drums, and Rock 'n' Roll
Carmine Appice - 2016
He was managed by the mob, hung with Hendrix, trashed thousands of hotel rooms, unwittingly paid for an unknown Led Zeppelin to support him on tour, taught John Bonham (as well as Fred Astaire) a thing or two about drumming, and took part in Zeppelin’s infamous deflowering of a groupie with a mud shark. After enrolling in Rod Stewart’s Sex Police, he hung out with Kojak, accidentally shared a house with Prince, became blood brothers with Ozzy Osbourne, and got fired by Sharon. He formed an all-blond hair metal band, jammed with John McEnroe and Steven Seagal, became a megastar in Japan, got married five times, slept with 4,500 groupies—and, along the way, became a rock legend by single-handedly reinventing hard rock and heavy metal drumming. Carmine Appice has enjoyed a jaw-dropping rock-and-roll life—and here he is telling his scarcely believable story. Cowritten with Ian Gittins, the coauthor with Nikki Sixx of the New York Times bestseller The Heroin Diaries, Stick It! is one of the most extraordinary and outrageous rock-and-roll biographies of our time.
Second Innings: My Sporting Life
Andrew Flintoff - 2015
The complex and troubled relationship with discipline, alcohol and authority during his exhilarating cricket career. The search for an authentic voice as a player, free from the blandness and conformity of modern professionalism. Is Flintoff the last of his kind, in any sport?Through all his highs and lows, triumphs and reversals, this book reveals a central tension. There is 'Fred' - performer, extrovert, centre of attention. Then there is 'Andrew' - reflective, withdrawn and uncertain. Two people contained in one extraordinary life. And sometimes, inevitably, keeping the two in balance proves too much.We are taken backstage, seeing the mischief and adventure that has defined Andrew Flintoff's story. Above all, we observe the enduring power of fun, friendship and loyalty - the pillars of Flintoff's career. At ease with his faults as well as his gifts, Andrew Flintoff has sought one thing, even more than success: to be himself.
One Day at a Time: A Memoir
Susan Lewis - 2011
The struggle to understand took a lifetime.In 1960s Bristol, Susan's family was like any other with its joys and frustrations, and fierce loyalties. Then tragedy struck and left a legacy that was to last a lifetime.Susan was only nine when her mother died. A year later she was sent away to school. She didn't want to go, and didn't understand why she had to. In her struggle to cope with an uncertain world - a world where nothing seemed to make sense any more - she pushed away the one person she loved best, her father. It wasn't until adulthood beckoned that she realised that, in order to turn their relationship around, she had to learn to love - and trust - again.
Adventures in Retirement: A hilarious journey into the unknown world of excess time, limited responsibilities and an uncertain future.
Lawrence Doyle - 2017
Along the way, readers join the author in discovering: • The scary side of fishing; • Why it’s wrong when board games become blood sports; • The unexpected connection between cooking classes and true romance; • How the author's cat convinced him to take up yoga (and why that was a terrible idea); • Golfing for the ball challenged; • The thrill of jumping out of an airplane without risking your life; • The eternal appeal of Elly May Clampett; and, • How to do nothing without feeling guilty about it.
You Can Drum But You Can't Hide
Simon Wolstencroft - 2014
You'd expect a drummer to have better timing. Yes, he parted ways before The Patrol became the Stone Roses. Yes, he turned down The Smiths because he didn't like Morrissey's voice. Right place, right time, wrong choices. Timing is everything.But the beat goes on and while Simon Wolstencroft can see what might have been, cultivating bitterness bears no fruit. And 'Funky Si' has tasted the nectar. Spending an unlikely 11 years in The Fall and hooking up with his old mate Ian Brown during his solo days, 'You Can Drum But You Can't Hide' reflects on a life driven by a passion for playing. Taking you from the warehouses of Manchester and the beaches of Rio de Janeiro to the high rises of Tokyo, this book hands you a backstage pass to an evocative age that restored pride to the city of Manchester. With humour and detail, Si recounts a fascinating tale of drumming and drugs, friendships and fall outs, but, above all, a love of music.
Diary of a Crap Housewife
Jessica Rowe - 2019
The idea of crap lies in the real-life messes, hiccups, disasters and bad meals that many of us dish up and deal with every day. This mum is tired of the photos of perfectly packed school lunches, posts about gourmet family dinners eaten together over the table, and tales of neat, tidy and obedient children with smoothly brushed hair. It's time to reset the bar. Make expectations realistic. Strive to be kind, loving, smart and funny. Perfection is not required.
Still Got It, Never Lost It
Louie Spence - 2011
'Still Got It, Never Lost It!' is the autobiography from Louie Spence, star of Pineapple Dance Studios and Louie Spence's Showbusiness.
New Brunswick, New Jersey, Goodbye: Bands, Dirty Basements, and the Search for Self
Ronen Kauffman - 2007
More than just an engaging personal account, it's a story about personal growth, coming of age, and the real power of punk and hardcore. Gain an insider's look at a truly influential underground movement.
Slayer 66 2/3: The Jeff & Dave Years. A Metal Band Biography.
D.X. FerrisEster Segarra - 2013
This full-length, exhaustively researched account of the thrash kings' career recaps and reevaluates the years guitar hero Jeff Hanneman and drum legend Dave Lombardo were in the group. Over the course of 59 chapters, 400 footnotes and three appendices, it profiles the members and presents dramatic scenes from 32 years in the Abyss: A fresh look at the group's early days. Reign in Blood tours. A European invasion. The Palladium riot. The seat cushion chaos concert. Newly unearthed details from Lombardo's turbulent history with the band. Historical artwork and photos never seen in public before. The entire diabolical discography. Hanneman’s hard times. The Big Four’s big year. Lombardo’s final exit. The top 11 Hanneman tributes. The mosh memorial service. Untold stories. Updates. And relevant digressions, including a contrasting look at other contemporaries and cutting-edge extreme bands. Over decades, Slayer experience triumph and loss, but never defeat, whether it's at the hands of rivals, peers, America's most infamous church, or the United States government itself. In addition to extensive archival material, this book features original content from the band, key affiliates, and firsthand witnesses, including Metal Blade CEO Brian Slagel, former tour manager Doug Goodman, engineer Bill Metoyer, former Metal Blade exec William "DJ Will" Howell, and cover artist Albert Cuellar (who went on to work with Tim Burton, Sublime, and Sir Mix-A-Lot). It also includes Jeff Hanneman's original diagram for the Live Undead picture disc (spoiler: it's a stick-figure sketch). Slayer fans will never see — or hear — the thrash metal champions the same way. 33 photos and 11 illustrations include lost artwork by Hell Awaits artist Albert Cuellar and stunning exclusive pictures by Harald Oimoen (of Murder in the Front Row renown). Written by D.X. Ferris, an Ohio Society of Professional Journalists Reporter of the Year and author of "Slayer's Reign in Blood," which is book no. 57 in Bloomsbury Academic's prestigious 33 1/3 series. The bargain-priced e-book edition features extensive interactive content, and can be read on any smart phone, tablet, computer, or portable communications device (with free Kindle software).
Built for Speed
John McGuinness - 2017
The smells, the noise and the speed were all there for me to experience. It was like a massive injection in my head and it just blew my mind. I knew within seconds that I was going to be a TT racer. I didn’t know how or what I was going to have to do to achieve this, and my dad wasn’t going to be keen. Everyone around me was aware of the dangers, but from that moment I knew I had to do it.’
John McGuinness is one of the all-time giants of road racing, with a huge host of victories to his name. But his easy humour and down-to-earth attitude off the bike have always kept people guessing: what’s the truth about the man inside the helmet, that has kept him at the top of such a sport for over 20 years?His autobiography tells the whole story, from his humble beginnings in Morecambe and getting his first bike at the age of 3, to working as a bricklayer and cockle fisherman before deciding to follow his dream, and finally to his many victories in the most dangerous sporting event on the planet. He tells of what it takes to be a champion in such an exacting sport, and to keep winning even though all logic tells you to stop – and when so many of your fellow racers are paying the ultimate price for doing it. This thrilling autobiography gets into the head of the man who stares death in the face, and doesn’t even flinch.
It's Always Summer Somewhere: A Matter of Life and Cricket
Felix White - 2021
His passion for the game is at the fore on the BBC 's number one cricket podcast and 5Live show, Tailenders, which he co-presents with Greg James and Jimmy Anderson. It's Always Summer Somewhere is his funny, heartbreaking and endlessly engaging love letter to the game.Felix takes us through his life growing up in South West London and describes how his story is forever punctuated and given meaning by cricket. Through his own exploits as a slow left arm spinner of 'lovely loopy stuff', to the tragic illness of his mother, life with The Maccabees and his cricket redemption, Felix touches on both the comedic and the tragic in equal measure. Throughout, there's the ever-present roller coaster of following the England cricket team. The exploits of Tufnell (another bowler of 'lovely loopy stuff'), Atherton, Hussain et al, are given extra import through the eyes of a cricket-obsessed youth. Felix meets them at each signposted moment to find out what was really behind those moments that gave cricket fans everywhere sporting memories that would last forever, sending the book into an exploration of grief, transgenerational displacement and how the people we've known and things we've loved culminate and take expression in our lives. It's Always Summer Somewhere is an incredibly honest detail of a life lived with cricket. It offers a sense of genuine empathy and understanding not just with cricket fans, but sports and music fans across the world, in articulating our reasons for pouring so much meaning into something that we simply cannot control.Culminating in the heart-stopping World Cup Final in 2019, the book finally answers that question fans have so often asked...what is it about this game?
If I Don't Write it Nobody Else Will
Eric Sykes - 2005
You can't explain it, and you shouldn't try. It's an arrogant assumption to say you 'decide' to become a comedian. The audience decides for you.' Eric Sykes, December 2001From his early days writing scripts for Bill Fraser and Frankie Howerd through decades of British radio and television comedy – ‘Educating Archie’, ‘Sykes And A …’, ‘Curry and Chips’, ‘The Plank’ – to his present day ventures into film and theatre, starring in ‘The Others’ with Nicole Kidman and appearing in Peter Hall's recent production of ‘As You Like It’, Eric Sykes has carved himself an enduring place as one of Britain's greatest writers and performers.In his much anticipated autobiography, Sykes reveals his extraordinary life working alongside a generation of legendary comedians and entertainers, despite being dogged by deafness and eventually virtual blindness. His hearing problems began in the early days of his career in the 1950s, around the time he wrote, directed and performed in the spoof pantomime ‘Pantomania’ for the BBC. Undeterred however, Sykes learned to lip-read, going on to write and appear in a number of BBC productions including ‘Opening Night’ and Val Parnell's ‘Saturday Spectacular’, the first of two shows he made with Peter Sellers, a great life-long friend. From 1959 until her death in 1980, Syke's starred with Hattie Jacques in one of Britain's best loved sitcoms ‘Sykes and A …’ Throughout the two decade run of this show he continued to work alongside a host of stars including Charlie Drake, Tommy Cooper, Tony Hancock, Spike Milligan, Johnny Speight, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson.Eric Sykes’s comedy has always sported an essential core of warm humanity and this, along with his genuine creative genius, continues to prove an unforgettably winning combination.
Bob Marley: A Life from Beginning to End (Biographies of Musicians)
Hourly History - 2021
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!