"It’s a welcome surprise to read this careful look by a music historian at Graceland, Paul Simon’s 1986 masterpiece: By bringing both its beauty and its uglier aspects into the light, Kahn, far from ruining the album’s strange magic, lets readers appreciate its intricacies and paradoxes all the more." —The New York Times (Editors' Choice)In 1984, Paul Simon was at a professional and personal crossroads. His new marriage was failing and hi...

Few albums in the canon of popular music have had the influence, resonance, and endurance of John Coltrane's 1965 classic A Love Supreme-a record that proved jazz was a fitting medium for spiritual exploration and for the expression of the sublime.Bringing the same fresh and engaging approach that characterized his critically acclaimed Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece, Ashley Kahn tells the story of the genesis, creation, an...

The intimate and long-awaited autobiography of a legendary Carlos Santana, tracing youth in Mexico and early days as a promising guitarist through his influential collaborations with fellow Latin stars.In 1967 in San Francisco, just a few weeks after the Summer of Love, a young Mexican guitarist took the stage at the Fillmore Auditorium and played a blistering solo that announced the arrival of a prodigious musical talent. Two years later—after he played a historic...

"A jazz-lover's delight."—Ray Olson, BooklistNoted jazz author Ashley Kahn brings to life the behind-the-scenes story of Impulse Records, one of the most significant record labels in the history of popular music. “Kahn mingles engaging stories of corporate politics with insider accounts of music-making and anecdotal takes on particular albums. His history of Impulse is also the story of the genesis of an American art form and the evolution of the record in...

• 2022 ASCAP Foundation Special Recognition Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Book Award in Pop MusicGeorge Harrison on George Harrison is an authoritative, chronologically arranged anthology of Harrison's most revealing and illuminating interviews, personal correspondence, and writings, spanning the years 1962 to 2001.This compendium of his words and ideas proves that point repeatedly, revealing his passion for music, his focus on spirituality, and his responsibil...

"It’s a welcome surprise to read this careful look by a music historian at Graceland, Paul Simon’s 1986 masterpiece: By bringing both its beauty and its uglier aspects into the light, Kahn, far from ruining the album’s strange magic, lets readers appreciate its intricacies and paradoxes all the more." —The New York Times (Editors' Choice)In 1984, Paul Simon was at a professional and personal crossroads. His new marriage was failing and hi...

The long-awaited reissue of Alice Coltrane’s original spiritual teachings and reflections, which provide powerful insight into her transcendent music, cherished by millions across the globe.ALICE COLTRANE (1937–2007) was a composer, master of various musical instruments, improviser, spiritual leader, and wife of John Coltrane. Throughout her adult life, she worked within and combined a broad range of musical genres, including gospel, R&B, ...

The intimate and long-awaited autobiography of a legendary Carlos Santana, tracing youth in Mexico and early days as a promising guitarist through his influential collaborations with fellow Latin stars.In 1967 in San Francisco, just a few weeks after the Summer of Love, a young Mexican guitarist took the stage at the Fillmore Auditorium and played a blistering solo that announced the arrival of a prodigious musical talent. Two years later—after he played a historic...

From the acclaimed, award-winning author of Reading Like a Writer and Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris, 1932 comes an utterly original novel inspired by the strange friendship between Charles Dickens and Hans Christian Andersen and set during the summer when Dickens's family life exploded.In the summer of 1857, when British newspapers warned of an approaching comet about to destroy the earth, an unusual-looking stranger arrived at Charles Dicke...

An in-depth biography of Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page by the acclaimed biographer of Bob Marley and Joe Strummer, based upon the author's extensive research and interviewsThe original enigmatic rock star, Jimmy Page is a mass of contradictions. A towering presence in the guitar world and one of the most revered rock guitarists of all time, in private he is reclusive and mysterious, retiring and given to esoteric interests. Over the decades he has exchanged few...

For many, the name Jimi Hendrix conjures up a larger-than-life image of the man who set fire to guitars, women’s hearts, and the status quo. In this groundbreaking account, music journalist Charles R. Cross takes a far deeper look. Beyond Hendrix’s legendary onstage and offstage magnetism and his excessive lifestyle was a man who struggled to accept his role as an idol and privately craved the kind of normal family life he never had.Based on more than three hundred interviews and n...

Winner of the American Book Award (2023)Longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award (2023)The long-awaited first full biography of legendary jazz saxophonist and composer Sonny Rollins.Sonny Rollins has long been considered an enigma. Known as the “Saxophone Colossus,” he is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest jazz improvisers of all time, winning Grammys, the Austrian Cross of Honor, Sweden’s Polar M...