Paul hired Michael as his security guard, beginning a thirty-year music business career in which he worked with such legendary names as Led Zeppelin, Bad Company, The Osmonds, Sheena Easton, Frank Sinatra, Bon Jovi, Cher, and Kiss. As tour manager, Michael was responsible for every aspect of their safety and their comfort, from making sure they were not mobbed on stage to making sure they got paid. To some of them he became close. He was best man at Jon Bon Jovi's wedding, and provided personal security for Cher at her Malibu home. He shared their wildest excesses, their highs and their lows; he saw their fears, and all too often, their loneliness and paranoia. Sometimes hilarious, frequently shocking, always perceptive, Star Man is the outrageous, uncompromising, and brutally honest story of one man's life with the biggest stars of rock.

    Illustrated with previously unseen photographs and drawing on over 300 hours of interviews with band members, producers, friends, former lovers and associates, this biography traces the artist's life from his Minneapolis roots through controversial stardom to his rejection of the Prince persona.

    After a little noticed debut and a follow-up that had failed to chart at all, Pye Records were threatening to annul the group’s contract. But with its unforgettable distorted guitar riff, 'You Really Got Me’ went on to reach No.1, entering the US Top Ten later the same year. Followed by a string of hits, it marked the breakthrough of one of Britain’s most innovative and influential bands, and a turning point in the fortunes of two brothers whose troubled story is as tumultuous and characterful as the music they produced: Ray and Dave Davies. Born into a deeply musical working-class family in London’s Muswell Hill, Ray and Dave grew up in a city recovering from the bombs and privations of the Second World War, and, more than any other musicians of the Sixties, they crafted the soundtrack that made it swing again. In songs such as ‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion’, ‘Sunny Afternoon’ – which toppled The Beatles to become the hit of Summer 1966 – ‘Waterloo Sunset’, ‘Days’ and ‘Lola’, they drew on music hall, folk and rhythm and blues to craft a peculiarly English pop idiom, inspiring generations of songwriters from David Bowie to Jarvis Cocker and Damon Albarn.Pocked by sibling rivalry, furious on-stage violence, walkouts, overdoses, a career-throttling ban from the US, gross self-indulgence, and the band's curious rebirth as Eighties stadium rockers, the story laid bare in God Save The Kinks is one of the greatest in British pop history.

    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.

    A golden Fender Stratocaster hidden away in an attic for 30 years. A sunburst Gibson Les Paul worth $100,000. Jimi Hendrix’s Strat burned by the guitarist during a concert—and then mysteriously lost for decades. The mint Fender Broadcaster forgotten under a bed in a neighbor’s house. The 1960s Rickenbacker bought for $50 at a garage sale! These days, classic vintage guitars can bring Ferrari and Porsche prices. Baby boomers who wish they’d been rock ’n’ roll stars have shot the market into the stratosphere for classic models. As with automobiles, finding that classic guitar stashed away beneath a bed, in a closet, hidden away in an attic, or in the dusty corner of a guitar shop is the Holy Grail.

    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.

    Revised and updated to cover the Clash's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the band members' post-Clash careers, The Clash: Return of the Last Gang in Town now includes the first full account of Joe Strummer's "Wilderness Years," his triumphant comeback with the Mescaleros, and his sudden and tragic early death. Extensively revised and updated from both its 1995 and 2001 incarnations, The Clash traces the band members' progress from dispiriting rehearsals in damp London basements to packed American stadiums. A fascinatingly detailed account of the first band to take punk's radical politics to the masses and survive for a decade against all the odds, it also offers an intriguing investigation into the gap between rock mythology and rock reality.

    

    

    Lloyd recounts the founding of Television, the band's rise alongside other bands and personalities in the 1970’s New York Music scene, and the legend-making of the unparalleled music venue CBGB. As the rock ‘n’ roll tales unfold, he accompanies them with insights into his approach to music and the electric guitar.Lloyd’s mid-career vignettes detail his solo years, including the backstory of critically praised records such as Alchemy and Field of Fire, his drug addiction and recovery, his 90s-era work, and touring adventures with artists such as Matthew Sweet, John Doe, and Robert Quine. Throughout the book is an undercurrent—Lloyd’s continually evolving spiritual-philosophical approach to life, emerging from the conscious digestion of the highs and the lows—both ends of the same stick.In Everything is Combustible, Richard Lloyd relates his life, both inner and outer, in the narrative style, digging beneath the events and revealing their meanings.Considered a foundational band of alternative rock, Television’s debut record, Marquee Moon, is widely viewed by critics and musicians as one of the greatest albums ever recorded. As one half of Television’s unique guitar sound, and a legendary solo artist in his own right, Richard Lloyd’s music has influenced a range of bands and artists from U2, Johnny Marr and Joy Division to R.E.M., Sonic Youth, Wilco and John Frusciante.

    In the summer of 1964, aged twenty, Ray Davies led The Kinks to fame with their number one hit ‘You Really Got Me’. Within months, they were challenging The Beatles and The Rolling Stones in the charts, swamped by fans and renowned for the rioting at their gigs. Over the next three decades, Davies wrote a string of enduring classics – ‘All Day and All of the Night’, ‘Sunny Afternoon’, ‘Waterloo Sunset’, ‘Lola’ – that secured his status as one of the handful of people to have redefined pop culture over the last fifty years.But Ray’s journey from working-class Muswell Hill to the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame was tumultuous in the extreme, featuring breakdowns, bitter lawsuits, spectacular punch-ups and a ban from entering the USA for almost four years. His relationship with his brother Dave, The Kinks’ lead guitarist, is surely the most ferocious and abusive in music history. Based on countless interviews conducted over several decades, this richly detailed and revelatory biography presents the most frank and intimate portrait yet of Ray Davies, and promises to be the definitive biography of this most fascinating and complicated life.

    This collection provides a complete picture of the man, his influence, and the impact of his life and death on his fans. Color photos. 72 b&w photos.

    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.

    . . Baby One More Time,” Britney Spears quickly became an international pop idol. At just 27 years of age, she has racked up five number-one albums, seven top-10 singles, and seven sold-out world tours. For all of her success, however, over the past decade Britney’s private life has been a difficult one. She has endured numerous failed relationships as well as a very public divorce and custody battle, all in the full glare of the international media. Drawing on exclusive interviews with those closest to her, this is an engrossing portrait of fascinating superstar.

    Dubbed the 'man in black', guitarist Ritchie Blackmore found fame with Seventies rock giants Deep Purple, then walked away from them to create Rainbow, only to abandon them and form another band in 1997 - Blackmore's Night.