Over the course of the next twelve months, their lives ... and the world around them ... will change irrevocably.Fire and Rain tells the story of four iconic albums of 1970 and the lives, times, and constantly intertwining personal ties of the remarkable artists who made them. Acclaimed journalist David Browne sets these stories against an increasingly chaotic backdrop of events that sent the world spinning throughout that tumultuous year: Kent State, the Apollo 13 debacle, ongoing bombings by radical left-wing groups, the diffusion of the antiwar movement, and much more.Featuring candid interviews with more than 100 luminaries, including some of the artists themselves, Browne's vivid narrative tells the incredible story of how ... over the course of twelve turbulent months ... the '60s effectively ended and the '70s began.

    A stunning exploration of madness, death, anxiety, and alienation, it remained on the Billboard charts for 724 weeks--the longest consecutive run for an LP ever--and has sold 30 million copies worldwide. It still sells some quarter million copies every year. Besides being perhaps rock's most fully realized and elegant concept album, The Dark Side of the Moon was among the most technically advanced records of its time, perfectly blending studio wizardry and fearless innovation. The rich story behind The Dark Side of the Moon is now skillfully illuminated by acclaimed journalist John Harris's exploration of the album's many secrets and the band's fractured history, including the mental collapse of group founder Syd Barrett. Drawing on original interviews with bassist and chief lyricist Roger Waters, guitarist Dave Gilmour, drummer Nick Mason, keyboardist Richard Wright, and the album's supporting cast, The Dark Side of the Moon is a must-have for the millions of devoted fans looking for the definitive story of one of the most timeless, compelling, and mysterious albums ever made.

    With her incredible wall-of-sound vocals, Joplin was the voice of a generation, and when she OD'd on heroin in October 1970, a generation's dreams crashed and burned with her. Alice Echols pushes past the legary Joplin-the red-hot mama of her own invention-as well as the familiar portrait of the screwed-up star victimized by the era she symbolized, to examine the roots of Joplin's muscianship and explore a generation's experiment with high-risk living and the terrible price it exacted.A deeply affecting biography of one of America's most brilliant and tormented stars, Scars of Sweet Paradise is also a vivid and incisive cultural history of an era that changed the world for us all.

    Includes 16 pages of photos."A refreshingly candid read...a Doors bio worth opening." --Entertainment WeeklyNo other band has ever sounded quite like the Doors, and no other frontman has ever transfixed an audience quite the way Jim Morrison did. Ray Manzarek, the band's co-founder and keyboard player, was there from the very start--and until the sad dissolution--of the Doors. In this heartfelt and colorfully detailed memoir, complete with 16 pages of photographs, he brings us an insider's view of the brief, brilliant history...from the beginning to the end."An engaging read." --Washington Post Book World

    Here is his revealing memoir of Lennon, including Lennon's virtual imprisonment in his apartment house, his obsession with food and sex, the Lennons's colossal shopping sprees, John and Yoko's fascination with the Occult, John's premonition of his violent death, and more. 24 pages of never-before-seen photographs. (Performing Arts)

    Now reformed, they are launching their Best Of... album in 2002. The book features exclusive interviews and photos and is written by personal friend and journalist Paul Mather, from London.

    In these pages, I’ve tried to do this.” —Bruce Springsteen, from the pages of Born to RunIn 2009, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed at the Super Bowl’s halftime show. The experience was so exhilarating that Bruce decided to write about it. That’s how this extraordinary autobiography began. Over the past seven years, Bruce Springsteen has privately devoted himself to writing the story of his life, bringing to these pages the same honesty, humor, and originality found in his songs. He describes growing up Catholic in Freehold, New Jersey, amid the poetry, danger, and darkness that fueled his imagination, leading up to the moment he refers to as “The Big Bang”: seeing Elvis Presley’s debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. He vividly recounts his relentless drive to become a musician, his early days as a bar band king in Asbury Park, and the rise of the E Street Band. With disarming candor, he also tells for the first time the story of the personal struggles that inspired his best work, and shows us why the song “Born to Run” reveals more than we previously realized. Born to Run will be revelatory for anyone who has ever enjoyed Bruce Springsteen, but this book is much more than a legendary rock star’s memoir. This is a book for workers and dreamers, parents and children, lovers and loners, artists, freaks, or anyone who has ever wanted to be baptized in the holy river of rock and roll. Rarely has a performer told his own story with such force and sweep. Like many of his songs (“Thunder Road,” “Badlands,” “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” “The River,” “Born in the U.S.A.,” “The Rising,” and “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” to name just a few), Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography is written with the lyricism of a singular songwriter and the wisdom of a man who has thought deeply about his experiences.

    The best and most complete biography about the influential Beatle.

    Drawn from over 180 interviews with friends, rivals, lovers, and collaborators, some of whom have never before spoken about their relationship with Bowie, this oral history weaves a hypnotic spell as it unfolds the story of a remarkable rise to stardom and an unparalleled artistic path. Tracing Bowie's life from the English suburbs to London to New York to Los Angeles, Berlin, and beyond, its collective voices describe a man profoundly shaped by his relationship with his schizophrenic half-brother Terry; an intuitive artist who could absorb influences through intense relationships and yet drop people cold when they were no longer of use; and a social creature equally comfortable partying with John Lennon and dining with Frank Sinatra. By turns insightful and deliciously gossipy, DAVID BOWIE is as intimate a portrait as may ever be drawn. It sparks with admiration and grievances, lust and envy, as the speakers bring you into studios and bedrooms they shared with Bowie, and onto stages and film sets, opening corners of his mind and experience that transform our understanding of both artist and art. Including illuminating, never-before-seen material from Bowie himself, drawn from a series of Jones's interviews with him across two decades, DAVID BOWIE is an epic, unforgettable cocktail-party conversation about a man whose enigmatic shapeshifting and irrepressible creativity produced one of the most sprawling, fascinating lives of our time.

    This Is Gonna Hurt is part photo, part journal - but all Nikki Sixx. It is a collection of compelling snapshots and stories that capture the rage, love, optimism, darkness,and determination that shape his work. Told with the raw authenticity that defined his New York Times bestseller The Heroine Diaries , This Is Gonna Hurt chronicles Sixx's experience, from his early years filled with toxic waste to his success with Motley Crue, his death from an OD and rebirth to his addictions to music, photography, and love. Love story, bad-ass rock tell-all, social commentary, family memoir, This Is Gonna Hurt offers the compelling insights of an artist and a man struggling to survive, connect, and find a happy ending-a search that fuels Sixx's being. 'I want to take you on the journey I am on, in real time', Sixx writes. If you don't deal with your demons, they will deal with you, and it's gonna hurt.

    His last album was his most critically lauded and commercially successful. He had fulfilled a lifelong dream by collaborating with his first and greatest musical hero, his brother Jimmie. His tumultuous marriage was over and he was in a new and healthy romantic relationship. Vaughan seemed poised for a new, limitless chapter of his life and career.Instead, it all came to a shocking and sudden end on August 27, 1990, when he was killed in a helicopter crash following a dynamic performance with Eric Clapton. Just 35 years old, he left behind a powerful musical legacy and an endless stream of What Ifs. In the ensuing 29 years, Vaughan’s legend and acclaim have only grown and he is now an undisputed international musical icon. Despite the cinematic scope of Vaughan’s life and death, there has never been a truly proper accounting of his story. Until now.Texas Flood provides the unadulterated truth about Stevie Ray Vaughan from those who knew him best: his brother Jimmie, his Double Trouble bandmates Tommy Shannon, Chris Layton and Reese Wynans, and many other close friends, family members, girlfriends, fellow musicians, managers and crew members.

    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.

    If you always assumed the musicians you listened to were the same people you saw onstage, you are in for a big surprise!"--Dusty Street, host of Classic Vinyl on Sirius XM Satellite RadioIf you were a fan of popular music in the 1960s and early '70s, you were a fan of the Wrecking Crew--whether you knew it or not.On hit record after hit record by everyone from the Byrds, the Beach Boys, and the Monkees to the Grass Roots, the 5th Dimension, Sonny & Cher, and Simon & Garfunkel, this collection of West Coast studio musicians from diverse backgrounds established themselves in Los Angeles, California as the driving sound of pop music--sometimes over the objection of actual band members forced to make way for Wrecking Crew members. Industry insider Kent Hartman tells the dramatic, definitive story of the musicians who forged a reputation throughout the business as the secret weapons behind the top recording stars.Mining invaluable interviews, the author follows the careers of such session masters as drummer Hal Blaine and keyboardist Larry Knechtel, as well as trailblazing bassist Carol Kaye--the only female in the bunch--who went on to play in thousands of recording sessions in this rock history. Readers will discover the Wrecking Crew members who would forge careers in their own right, including Glen Campbell and Leon Russell, and learn of the relationship between the Crew and such legends as Phil Spector and Jimmy Webb. Hartman also takes us inside the studio for the legendary sessions that gave us Pet Sounds, Bridge Over Troubled Water, and the rock classic "Layla," which Wrecking Crew drummer Jim Gordon cowrote with Eric Clapton for Derek and the Dominos. And the author recounts priceless scenes such as Mike Nesmith of the Monkees facing off with studio head Don Kirshner, Grass Roots lead guitarist (and future star of The Office) Creed Bratton getting fired from the group, and Michel Rubini unseating Frank Sinatra's pianist for the session in which the iconic singer improvised the hit-making ending to "Strangers in the Night."The Wrecking Crew tells the collective, behind-the-scenes stories of the artists who dominated Top 40 radio during the most exciting time in American popular culture.

    They haven't got a recording contract, and I wonder if you'd like to see him and listen to what he's got?""Certainly," I said, "I'm willing to listen to anything. Ask him to come and see me.""O.K., I will. His name's Brian Epstein..."All You Need Is Ears is the story of George Martin, the man who spotted the Beatles' talent, who recorded and produced them from the start, and who brought their musical ideas to life. In this witty and charming autobiography, he describes exactly what it was like to work in the studio with the Beatles--from the first audition (and his decision to scrap Pete Best on drums) to the wild experimentation of Sgt. Pepper (complete with sound effects, animal noises and full orchestras in evening dress at the direct request of Paul McCartney).This is a singular look at the most important musical group of all time, and how they made the music that changed the world: No other book can provide George Martin's inside look at their creative process, at the play of genius and practical improvisation that gave them their sound; it is an indispensable read for Beatle lovers and anyone interested in the music world.

    Fab is the definitive portrait of McCartney, a man of contradictions and a consummate musician far more ruthless, ambitious, and moody than his relaxed public image implies. Based on original research and more than two hundred new interviews, Fab also reveals for the first time the full story of his two marriages, romances, family feuds, phenomenal wealth, and complex relationships with his fellow ex-Beatles.