The Way I See It


Patti Davis - 1992
    The daughter of Ronald and Nancy Reagan offers an insider's view of growing up Reagan, describing her father's emotional abandonment of her, her mother's cruelty, and the family's bitter rivalries, uncontrollable rage, and dark secrets.

Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana


Michael Azerrad - 1993
    A final chapter details the last year of Kurt Cobain's life.From their early days in rural Aberdeen, Washington, to their domination of the world music scene in the early 90's, Come As You Are tells the Nirvana story as no other book does, candidly and first-hand: the allegations of heroin use; the soul-crushing pressures of sudden success; the burden of their unasked-for role as spokesman for a generation; and the tragic spiral that culminated in Kurt Cobain's death in April 1994.With close analyses of every song on each of the band's three major albums, a comprehensive discography and more than one hundred rare and never before-seen photographs, posters and original lyric sheets, Come As You Are is by far the most intimate look ever at one of rock's most influential and significant groups.

Time Between: My Life as a Byrd, Burrito Brother, and Beyond


Chris Hillman - 2020
    He went on to record and perform in various configurations, including as a member of Stephen Stills’s Manassas and as a co-founder of The Souther-Hillman-Furay Band. In the 1980s he formed The Desert Rose Band, scoring eight Top 10 Billboard country hits. He’s released a number of solo efforts, including 2017’s highly acclaimed Bidin’ My Time—the final album produced by the late Tom Petty. In Time Between, Hillman shares his quintessentially Southern Californian experience, from an idyllic, rural 1950s childhood; to achieving worldwide fame thanks to hits such as “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Turn! Turn! Turn!” and “Eight Miles High”; to becoming the first musician to move to Laurel Canyon. Featuring behind-the-scenes insights on his time in The Byrds, his productive but sometimes complicated relationship with Gram Parsons, his role in launching the careers of Buffalo Springfield and Emmylou Harris, and the ups and downs of life in various bands, music is only part of his story. Within the pages of Time Between, Hillman reveals the details of his personal life with candor and vulnerability, writing honestly about the shocking tragedy that struck his family when he was a teenager, his subsequent struggles with anger, and how his spiritual journey led him to a place of deep faith that allowed him to extend forgiveness and experience wholeness. Chris Hillman is much more than a rock star. He is truly a founding father of American music and a man who has faced down the challenges of life to discover what really matters.

The Gospel According to Luke


Steve Lukather - 2018
    The dominant pop-culture sound of the late-1970s and '80s was not in fact the smash and sneer of punk, but a slick, polished amalgam of rock and R&B that was first staked out on Boz Scaggs' Silk Degrees. That album was shaped in large part by the founding members of Toto, who were emerging as the most in-demand elite session muso-crew in LA, and further developed on the band's self-titled three-million-selling debut smash of 1978. A string of hits followed for the band going into the '80s and beyond. Running parallel to this, as stellar session players, Lukather and band-mates David Paich, Jeff Porcaro and Steve Porcaro were also the creative linchpins on some of the most successful, influential and enduring records of the era. In The Gospel According to Luke, Lukather tells the Toto story: how a group of high school friends formed the band in 1977 and went on to sell more than 40 million records worldwide. He also lifts the lid on what really went on behind the closed studio doors and shows the unique creative processes of some of the most legendary names in music: from Quincy Jones, Paul McCartney, Stevie Nicks and Elton John to Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, Don Henley, Roger Waters and Aretha Franklin. And yet, Lukather's extraordinary tale encompasses the dark side of the American Dream.Engaging, incisive and often hilarious, The Gospel According to Luke is no ordinary rock memoir. It is the real thing . . .

Decoded


Jay-Z - 2009
    . . . Heartfelt, passionate and slick.”— Kirkus, starred review

Raw: My Journey into the Wu-Tang


Lamont U-God Hawkins - 2018
    Remarkably, none of the founding members have told their story—until now. Here, for the first time, the quiet one speaks. Lamont “U-God” Hawkins was born in Brownsville, New York, in 1970. Raised by a single mother and forced to reckon with the hostile conditions of project life, U-God learned from an early age how to survive. And surviving in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s was no easy task—especially as a young black boy living in some of the city’s most ignored and destitute districts. But, along the way, he met and befriended those who would eventually form the Clan’s core: RZA, GZA, Method Man, Raekwon, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Inspectah Deck, Ghostface Killah, and Masta Killa. Brought up by the streets, and bonding over their love of hip-hop, they sought to pursue the impossible: music as their ticket out of the ghetto.U-God’s unforgettable first-person account of his journey,from the streets of Brooklyn to some of the biggest stages around the world, is not only thoroughly affecting, unfiltered, and explosive but also captures, in vivid detail, the making of one of the greatest acts in American music history.

Mozart: The Man Revealed


John Suchet - 2017
    Austrian-born to a tyrannical father who worked him fiercely; unhappily married to a spendthrift woman; a child-like character ill at ease amid the aristocratic splendor of the Viennese court; a musical genius who died young thus depriving the world of future glories.Yet only that last point is actually true. In this comprehensive biography, John Suchet examines the many myths and misunderstandings surrounding the world's best-loved composer. From his early days as a child prodigy performing for the imperial royal family in Vienna to the last months of his short life, driven to exhaustion by a punitive workload, one thing remained constant: his happy disposition.Through trials and tribulations, grand successes and disheartening setbacks, Suchet shows us the real Mozart—blessed with an abundance of talent yet sometimes struggling to earn a living. His mischievous nature and earthy sense of humor, his ease and confidence in his own incredible abilities; these were traits that never left him. His music has brought comfort to countless generations; his life, though brief, is no less fascinating.

So What!: The Good, the Mad, and the Ugly


Metallica - 2004
    pictures of the band past , and present as well as concert images

All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists


Terry Gross - 2004
    . ."Now available in paperback--a selection of revealing interviews from the award-winning National Public Radio showOriginating from WHYY-FM in Philadelphia and heard on more than 450 NPR stations, Fresh Air with Terry Gross has become a daily habit with millions of listeners nationwide--a must for anyone hoping to keep up with what's happening in the arts. Over the last twenty years, Terry's guests have included our most significant writers, actors, musicians, comics, and visual artists.For her first collection, Terry has chosen more than three dozen timeless interviews that prove to be as lively on the page as they were on the radio. Her questions--probing yet sensitive--encourage revelations from figures as diverse as John Updike, Isabella Rossellini, Conan OBrien, Samuel L. Jackson, Johnny Cash, and Nicolas Cage. And in her introduction, the generally self-effacing host of Fresh Air does something she wouldnt dream of doing on the air--she reveals a thing or two about herself.

The History of Western Art


Peter Whitfield - 2011
    What is art? Why do we value images of saints, kings, goddesses, battles, landscapes or cities from eras of history utterly remote from ourselves? This history of art shows how painters, sculptors and architects have expressed the belief-systems of their age; religious, political and aesthetic.

I'm the Man: The Story of That Guy from Anthrax


Scott Ian - 2014
    Through various lineup shifts, label snafus, rock 'n' roll mayhem, and unforeseen circumstances galore, Scott Ian has approached life and music with a smile, viewing the band with deadly seriousness while recognizing the ridiculousness of the entertainment industry. Always performing with abundant energy that revealed his passion for his craft, Ian has never let the gravity of being a rock star go to his shaven, goateed head.Ian tells his life story with a clear-eyed honesty that spares no one, least of all himself, starting with his upbringing as a nerdy Jewish boy in Queens and evolving through his first musical epiphany when he saw KISS live on television and realized what he wanted to do with his life. He chronicles his adolescence growing up in a dysfunctional home where the records blasting on his stereo failed to drown out the sound of his parents shouting at one another. He sets down the details of his fateful escape into the turbulent world of heavy metal. And of course he lays bare the complete history of Anthrax—from the band's formation to their present-day reinvigoration—as they wrote and recorded thrash classics like Spreading the Disease, Among the Living, and the top-twenty-charting State of Euphoria.Along the way, Ian recounts harrowing, hysterical tales from his long tour of duty in the world of hard rock. He witnesses the rise of Metallica, for which he had a front row seat. He parties with the late Dimebag Darrell while touring with Pantera and gets wild with Black Label Society frontman and longtime Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Zakk Wylde. He escapes detection while interviewing Ozzy for "The Rock Show" while dressed as Gene Simmons and avoids arrest after getting detained on suspicion of drugs while riding the tube in England with the late Metallica bassist Cliff Burton.In addition, I'm the Man addresses the trials and tribulations of Ian's life and loves. He admits his foibles and reveals the mistakes made along the way to becoming a fully-functioning adult. He celebrates finally finding peace and a true sense of family with his wife, singer/songwriter Pearl Aday, and examines how his world changed after the birth of their first son.I'm the Man is a blistering hard rock memoir, one that is astonishing in its candor and deftly told by the man who's kept the institution of Anthrax alive for more than thirty years.

Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter


Michelle Mercer - 2004
    Throughout Shorter's extraordinary fifty-year career, his compositions have helped define the sounds of each distinct era in the history of jazz.Filled with musical analysis by Mercer, enlivened by Shorter's vivid recollections, and enriched by more than seventy-five original interviews with his friends and associates, this book is at once an invaluable history of music from bebop to pop, an intimate and moving biography, and a story of a man's struggle toward the full realization of his gifts and of himself.

Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington


Terry Teachout - 2013
    The grandson of a slave, he dropped out of high school to become one of the world’s most famous musicians, a showman of incomparable suavity who was as comfortable in Carnegie Hall as in the nightclubs where he honed his style. He wrote some fifteen hundred compositions, many of which, like "Mood Indigo" and "Sophisticated Lady," remain beloved standards, and he sought inspiration in an endless string of transient lovers, concealing his inner self behind a smiling mask of flowery language and ironic charm.   As the biographer of Louis Armstrong, Terry Teachout is uniquely qualified to tell the story of the public and private lives of Duke Ellington. Duke peels away countless layers of Ellington’s evasion and public deception to tell the unvarnished truth about the creative genius who inspired Miles Davis to say, "All the musicians should get together one certain day and get down on their knees and thank Duke."

Kate Remembered


A. Scott Berg - 2003
    She also remained one of the most private of all the public figures of her time.In 1983 - at the age of seventy-five, her career cresting - the four-time Academy Award winner opened the door to biographer A. Scott Berg - then thirty-three - and began a special friendship, one that endured to the end of her illustrious life.From the start, Scott Berg felt that Katharine Hepburn intended his role to be not just that of a friend but also of a chronicler, a confidant who might record for posterity her thoughts and feelings. Over the next twenty years, Kate used their many hours together to reveal all that came to mind, often reflecting on the people and episodes of her past, occasionally on the meaning of life.Here are the stories from those countless intimate conversations, and much more. In addition to recording heretofore untold biographical details of her entire phenomenal career and her famous relationships with such men as Spencer Tracy and Howard Hughes, Kate Remembered also tells the amusing, often emotional story of one of the most touching friendships in her final years. Scott Berg provides his own memories of Katharine Hepburn offstage - quiet dinners in her town house in New York City, winter swims (she swam, he watched) in the Long Island Sound at Fenwick, her home in Connecticut, weekend visits with family members and dear friends...even some unusual appearances by the likes of Michael Jackson and Warren Beatty. Finally, Kate Remembered discusses the legendary actress's moving farewell, during which her mighty personality surrendered at last to her failing body - all the while remaining true to her courageous character.Kate Remembered is a book about love and friendship, family and career, Hollywood and Broadway - all punctuated by unforgettable lessons from an extraordinary life.

Mother American Night: My Life and Crazy Times


John Perry Barlow - 2018
    Referred to by more than one publication as "The Most Interesting Man in the World," Barlow has throughout his life maintained close relationships with such diverse cultural figures as Bob Weir, Jerry Garcia, Timothy Leary, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and Steve Jobs. During his long and varied career, Barlow has written the lyrics to 30 songs by the Grateful Dead while also running his family's cattle ranch. Despite being a freely self-confessed acidhead, he served as a campaign manager for Dick Cheney during his run for Congress in 1978--the same year he hosted 18-year-old JFK Jr. at his ranch for some summer seasoning. When he was 42, Barlow became a renowned internet guru who began vigorously defending the right for all to use it freely by co-founding the Electronic Freedom Foundation in 1990.A brilliant thinker and writer, he has over the course of the past half century somehow managed to be at the cutting edge of popular culture. And as impressive as his accomplishments have been, Barlow's dramatic personal life reads like the story of a generation writ large. Blessed with an incredible sense of humor and a unique voice that comes right off the page, Barlow is a born storyteller in the tradition of Mark Twain and Will Rogers.