Evoking a period when fear and frivolity, sputniks and hula-hoops simultaneously girdled the globe, Ken Emerson—author of the acclaimed Doo-Dah!: Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture—describes the world that made these songwriters, the world they in turn made in their music, and the impact on their careers, partnerships, and marriages when the Beatles, Dylan, and drugs ripped those worlds asunder. The stories behind their songs make the “golden oldies” we take for granted sound brand new and more moving and eloquent than we ever suspected.

    The creator of such classics as La Mer and Clair de Lune, of Pelleas et Melisande and his magnificent, delicate piano works, he is the modernist everybody loves, the man who drove French music into entirely new regions of beauty and excitement at a time when old traditions--and the overbearing influence of Wagner--threatened to stifle it. As a central figure at the birth of modernism, Debussy's influence on French culture was profound. Yet at the same time his own life was complicated and often troubled by struggles over money, women, and ill-health. Walsh's engagingly original approach is to enrich a lively account of this life with brilliant analyses of Debussy's music: from his first daring breaks with the rules as a Conservatoire student to his mature achievements as the greatest French composer of his time. The Washington Post called Stephen Walsh's Stravinsky "one of the best books ever written about a composer." Debussy is a worthy successor.

    Critics and sales figures told a similar story: six albums between 1984 and 1988 made number one or number two in the UK charts. Twenty-five years after their break-up, the band remain as adored and discussed as ever. To this day, there is a collective understanding that The Smiths were one of the greatest of all British bands. The Smiths - Morrissey, Johnny Marr, Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce - were four working-class youths who came together, by fate or chance, in Manchester in the early 1980s. Their sound was both traditional and radically different, a music that spoke to a generation, and defied the dark social-economic mood of the Thatcher years. By early 1984, barely a year after their first headlining gig, they were the hottest - certainly the hippest - name in modern music. In the years that followed the group produced an extraordinary body of work: seventeen classic singles, seven albums, and [some] seventy songs composed by the team of Morrissey and Marr. Yet for all their brilliance and adoration - their famously energetic live shows routinely interrupted by stage invasions - The Smiths were continually plagued by their own reticence to play the game, and by the time of 1987's Strangeways Here We Come, they had split. The Smiths have never played together again - their enormous contribution to pop culture forever condensed into a prolific and prosperous halcyon period, their legacy intact and untarnished. Thirty years after their formation, twenty-five since they broke up, The Smiths' firmament remains as bright as ever. It's time their tale was told. Tony Fletcher's A Light That Never Goes Out is a meticulous and evocative group biography - part celebration, part paean - moving from Manchester in the nineteenth-century to the present day to tell the complete story of The Smiths. Penned by a contemporary and life-long fan, and the product of extensive research, dozens of interviews, and unprecedented access, it will serve to confirm The Smiths as one of the greatest, most important and influential rock groups of all time.

    Written in a lively anecdotal style, entries include character descriptions, historical background, and much more.

     Shortlisted for the ABIA Biography Book of the Year 2021 A deeply beautiful, profound and poetic biography of the formative years of the dark prince of Australian rock 'n' roll, Boy on Fire is Nick Cave's creation story. This is a portrait of the artist as, first, a boy, and then a young man. It charts his family, friends, influences, milieu and, most of all, his music, revealing how Nick Cave shaped himself into the extraordinary artist he has become.As well as a powerfully compelling biography of a singular, uncompromising artist, Boy on Fire is a fascinating social and cultural biography, a vivid and evocative rendering of the people, time and places that went into the making of Nick Cave - from the fast-running dark river and ghost gums of Wangaratta and the punk scene that hit staid 1970s Melbourne like an atom bomb, right through to the torn wallpaper, sticky carpet and manic energy of nights at St Kilda's Crystal Ballroom.Boy on Fire is a stunning biographical achievement.PRAISE FOR BOY ON FIRE:'Mordue's exploration of Cave's protean and dynamic artistic universe, and the boy at its heart - malanderer, badlander and fabulator - is rich, sensitive, rollicking and, yes, tender' The Australian'Boy On Fire is a beautiful book, evocative and sensual, yet with an even-handed and at times critical treatment of its subject' Sydney Review of Books'All the relevant voices have their say, creating a wonderfully alive picture of this tumultuous time in modern Australian music ... on the page they glint with vitality and humour ... written with mercurial flair.' Books+Publishing

    The event was surrounded by enigma and intrigue, allegations of poisoning and sexual scandal.

    Gift notes to flyleaf and very light shelfwear to jacket, tight and unmarked.

    For a century, the lock of hair was a treasured Hiller family relic, until it somehow found its way to the town of Gilleleje, in Nazi-occupied Denmark. There, it was given to a local doctor, Kay Fremming, who was deeply involved in the effort to help save hundreds of hunted and frightened Jews.After Fremming's death, his daughter assumed ownership of the lock, and eventually consigned it for sale at Sotheby's, where two American Beethoven enthusiasts, Ira Brilliant and Che Guevara, purchased it in 1994. Subsequently, they and others instituted a series of complex forensic tests in the hope of finding the probable causes of the composer's chronically bad health, his deafness, and the final demise that Ferdinand Hiller had witnessed all those years ago. The results, revealed for the first time here, are the most compelling explanation yet offered for why one of the foremost musicians the world has ever known was forced to spend much of his life in silence.In Beethoven's Hair, Russell Martin has created a rich historical treasure hunt, a tale of false leads, amazing breakthroughs, and incredible revelations. This unique and fascinating book is a moving testament to the power of music, the lure of relics, the heroism of the Resistance movement, and the brilliance of molecular science.

    Julian Cope, eccentric and visionary rock musician, hip archaeologist and one time frontman of Teardrop Explodes, follows the runaway underground success of his book 'Krautrocksampler' with 'Japrocksampler', a cult deconstruction of Japanese rock music.

    It was the first Brian Eno album tobe composed almost completely in the confines of a recording studio,over a scant few months in the summer of 1975. The album was a proofof concept for Eno's budding ideas of "the studio as musicalinstrument," and a signpost for a bold new way of thinking aboutmusic.In this book, Geeta Dayal unravels Another Green World's abundantmysteries, venturing into its dense thickets of sound. How was analbum this cohesive and refined formed in such a seemingly ad hoc way?How were electronics and layers of synthetic treatments used to createan album so redolent of the natural world? How did a deck of cardsfigure into all of this? Here, through interviews and archivalresearch, she unearths the strange story of how Another Green Worldformed the link to Eno's future -- foreshadowing his metamorphosisfrom unlikely glam rocker to sonic painter and producer.

    Based on several years' worth of exclusive interviews and unprecedented access to all three bands' personal archives, 'England's Hidden Reverse' is the first, definitive, biography of Nurse With Wound, Coil and Current 93.

    This facsimile edition brings Charles Lamb's critically acclaimed and revered "Elia" essays back into print.

    With unprecedented access to the archives at the Beethoven House in Bonn, Jan Caeyers expertly weaves together a deeply human and complex picture of Beethoven—his troubled youth, his unpredictable mood swings, his desires, relationships, and conflicts with family and friends, the mysteries surrounding his affair with the “immortal beloved,” and the dramatic tale of his deafness. Caeyers also offers new insights into Beethoven’s music, showing how it transformed from the work of a skilled craftsman to that of a consummate artist. Demonstrating an impressive command of the vast scholarship on this iconic composer, Caeyers brings Beethoven’s world alive with elegant prose, memorable musical descriptions, and a vivid depiction of Bonn and Vienna, where Beethoven produced and performed his works. Caeyers explores how Beethoven’s career was impacted by the historical and philosophical shifts taking place in the music world and how, in turn, his trajectory changed the music industry. Equal parts an absorbing cultural history and a lively biography, Beethoven, A Life reveals a complex portrait of the musical genius that defined a style of music and went on to become one of the great pillars of Western art music.

    The ultimate cult band and the ultimate art rock experience, the VU's music and style have served as a blueprint for everyone from David Bowie to The Jesus And Mary Chain. Yet for all their enduring importance, they were unsuccessful in their day, selling minute numbers of records, their monochrome look and photo-realist lyrics at odds with the garish colours and peace fantasies of the hippy era. It was only when David Bowie started to champion the band in the early 70s, after they had split up, that the VU's reputation started to spread. In White Light/White Heat, noted rock writer and historian Richie Unterberger analyses the band's career and influence in forensic detail, drawing on many new interviews with band members and associates, previously undiscovered archive sources and a vast knowledge of the music of the times. The result is a comprehensive, articulate, immensely detailed history, the most thorough work on the band yet published.

    Their band was widely recognized as the best and most forward-thinking in rock, a rarefied status granting them the time, money, and space to make a masterpiece. But Radiohead didn't want to make another rock record. Instead, they set out to create the future.For more than a year, they battled writer's block, intra-band disagreements, and crippling self-doubt. In the end, however, they produced an album that was not only a complete departure from their prior guitar-based rock sound, it was the sound of a new era-and it embodied widespread changes catalyzed by emerging technologies just beginning to take hold of the culture. What they created was Kid A.Upon its release in 2000, Radiohead's fourth album divided critics. Some called it an instant classic; others, such as the UK music magazine Melody Maker, deemed it "tubby, ostentatious, self-congratulatory... whiny old rubbish." But two decades later, Kid A sounds like nothing less than an overture for the chaos and confusion of the twenty-first century.Acclaimed rock critic Steven Hyden digs deep into the songs, history, legacy, and mystique of Kid A, outlining the album's pervasive influence and impact on culture in time for its twentieth anniversary in 2020. Deploying a mix of criticism, journalism, and personal memoir, Hyden skillfully revisits this enigmatic, alluring LP and investigates the many ways in which Kid A shaped and foreshadowed our world.