Love Goes to Buildings on Fire by Will Hermes - Five Years in New York that Changed Music Forever'A must-read for any music fan' (Boston Globe)Crime was everywhere, the government was broke and the city's infrastructure was collapsing, but between 1974 and 1978 virtually all forms of music were being recreated in New York City: disco and salsa, the loft jazz scene and the Minimalist classical composers, hip hop and punk.Bruce Springsteen and Patti ...

'The only Lou Reed bio you need to read' The Washington PostOne of Pitchfork's ten best music books of 2023 | A Kirkus Reviews best nonfiction book of 2023'A monumental work filled with first-person accounts of the master's life and a dizzying array of never-before heard details' Michael Imperioli, author of The Perfume Burned His EyesThe m...

Often described as aloof, Kim Gordon opens up as never before in Girl in a Band. Telling the story of her family, her life in visual art, her move to New York City, the men in her life, her marriage, her relationship with her daughter, her music, and her band, Girl in a Band is a rich and beautifully written memoir. Gordon takes us back to the lost New York of the 1980s and '90s that gave rise to Sonic Youth, and the Alternative revolution in popular music the band helped usher in-paving t...

‘I was saying things in songs that female singers didn’t really say back then. I wasn’t submissive or begging him to come back, I was kicking his ass, kicking him out, kicking my own ass too. My Blondie character was an inflatable doll but with a dark, provocative, aggressive side. I was playing it up, yet I was very serious.’BRAVE, BEAUTIFUL AND BORN TO BE PUNKDEBBIE HARRY is a musician, actor, activist and the iconic face of New York City...

**“In this authoritative, unsparing history of the biggest rock group of the 1970s, Spitz delivers inside details and analysis with his well-known gift for storytelling.” —PEOPLEFrom the author of the iconic, bestselling history of The Beatles, the definitive account of arguably the greatest rock band of all time.**Rock star. Whatever that term means to you, chances are it owes a debt to Led Zeppelin. No one before or since has lived the dream quite like Jimmy Page...

Newly updated to include his critically acclaimed post-millennial work, this look at Tom Waits - both the reality and the myriad myths - reveals the man behind the curtain. A tale of how a self-taught, drunken hipster in roach-killers and a dirty beret has influenced a generation of musicians with his sound, warmth, and willingness to take chances, this biography shows how he has moved between sideshow barker and evocative troubadour with ease, recording almost 20 albums that range from ca...

A GUARDIAN AND CHOICE BOOK OF THE YEAR'A walk on the wild side with the alt-rock pioneer' GQ'DeCurtis is well placed to trace Reed's five-decade career, drawing on insider knowledge but skilfully balancing it with detailed research and fascinating interviews' Mojo MagazineAs lead singer and songwriter for the Velvet Underground and a renowned solo artist, Lou Reed invented alterna...

Jim Morrison's electrifying live performances, and appetite for sexual and psychedelic experience enflamed the spirit of a generation. In Jim Morrison, critically acclaimed journalist Stephen Davis brings together insights gleaned from dozens of original interviews, long-lost recordings, and Morrison's own unpublished journals to create a vivid portrait of a misunderstood genius.Each page brims with new details on every phase of Morrison's life, from his troubled youth in ...

The autobiography of Richard Hell, icon of an indelible era of rock and roll and "rueful, battle-scarred, darkly witty observer of his own life and times" ( The New York Times).From an early age, Richard Hell dreamed of running away. He arrived penniless in New York City at seventeen; ten years later he was a pivotal voice of the age of punk, cofounding such seminal bands as Television, The Heartbreakers, and Richard Hell and the Voidoids—whose song "Blank ...

The essential playlist of great writing about the music that rocked America, with fifty landmark pieces on Otis Redding, Janis Joplin, Lez Zepplin, and other rock n’ roll legendsJonathan Lethem and Kevin Dettmar's Shake It Up invites the reader into the tumult and excitement of the rock revolution through fifty landmark pieces by a supergroup of writers on rock in all its variety, from heavy metal to disco, punk to hip-hop. Stanley Booth describes a record...

In Eminent Hipsters, musician and songwriter Donald Fagen, best known as the co-founder of the rock band Steely Dan, presents an autobiographical portrait that touches on everything from the cultural figures that mattered the most to him as a teenager, to his years in the late 1960s at Bard College, to a hilarious account of a recent tour he made with Boz Scaggs and Michael McDonald.Fagen begins by introducing the 'eminent hipsters' that spoke to him as he was growing up (...

'Highly entertaining' Empire'A must read' Independent'Remarkable' Judy Belushi Pisano'This book is on a mission from God' DBC PierreThe Blues Brothers hit cinemas on 20th June, 1980. Today, it 's recognised as one of the most significant films of the twentieth century. Its spotlighting of some of the world's most legendary rhythm and blues artists - Aretha Franklin...