This is the definitive biography of the legendary guitarist whom Muddy Waters and B. B. King held in high esteem and who created the prototype for Clapton, Hendrix, Page, and those who followed. Bloomfield was a member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, which inspired a generation of white blues players; he played with Bob Dylan in the mid-1960s, when his guitar was a central component of Dylan's new rock sound on "Like a Rolling Stone." He then founded the Electric Flag, recorded Sup...

Ed Ward covers the first half of the history of rock & roll in this sweeping and definitive narrative—from the 1920s, when the music of rambling medicine shows mingled with the songs of vaudeville and minstrel acts to create the very early sounds of country and rhythm and blues, to the rise of the first independent record labels post-World War II, and concluding in December 1963, just as an immense change in the airwaves took hold and the Beatles prepared for their first American tour.

From rock and roll historian Ed Ward comes a comprehensive, authoritative, and enthralling cultural history of one of rock's most exciting eras.It's February 1964 and The Beatles just landed in New York City, where the NYPD, swarms of fans, and a crowd of two hundred journalists await their first American press conference. It begins with the question on everyone's mind: "Are you going to get a haircut in America?" and ends with a reporter tugging Paul McCartney's h...

For the first time, Slipknot and Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor speaks directly to his fans and shares his worldview about life as a sinner. And Taylor knows how to sin. As a small-town hero in the early '90s, he threw himself into a fierce-drinking, drug-abusing, hard-loving, live-for-the moment life. Soon Taylor's music exploded, and he found himself rich, wanted, and on the road. His new and ever-more extreme lifestyle had an unexpected effect, however; for the first time, he began to...

Grunge, also known as the 'Seattle sound', is the sludgy fusion of punk rock and heavy metal that emerged from the Pacific Northwest in the early part of the 1980s. But it was the unexpected, seemingly overnight success of Nirvana's single 'Smells Like Teen Spirit,' in the fall of 1991, that made grunge a household word and launched an American music movement on par with punk and hip-hop.Twenty years later, Mark Yarm captures that era in the words of those at the forefront of the m...

Until his death aged thirty-three in 1982, Lester Bangs wrote wired, rock 'n' roll pieces on Iggy Pop, The Clash, John Lennon, Kraftwerk, Lou Reed. As a rock critic, he had an eagle-eye for distinguishing the pre-packaged imitation from the real thing; written in a conversational, wisecracking, erotically charged style, his hallucinatory hagiographies and excoriating take-downs reveal an iconoclast unafraid to tell it like it is. To his journalism he brought the talent of a great a renegad...

Revered former Metal Maniacs editor Jeff Wagner analyzes the heady side of metal in this exhaustive narrative history of a relentlessly ambitious musical subculture. Beginning with the hugely influential mid-1970s efforts of Rush and King Crimson, Wagner unfurls a huge tapestry of sounds and styles, including Queensryche, Fates Warning, and Dream Theater; extreme prog pioneers Voivod and Celtic Frost; Norways post-black metal avant garde acts Ulver and Arcturus; and the 1990s glob...

SECRETS OF THE WALL REVEALED! Imagine dusting off a beloved album, comfortable as an old pair of jeans, and one day discovering that it goes much deeper down the rabbit hole than you ever envisioned. The thematic intention of every note…The nuance behind every veiled reference…Until you finally recognize that hidden deep inside is a distinctly powerful message you never knew was there. It's like discovering buried treasure within the walls of your own backyard.

Alan Cross is the preeminent chronicler of popular music.Here he provides a history of alt-rock pioneers The Ramones.This look at the band -- "Four Leather Jackets, Two Chords and an Attitude" -- is adapted from the audiobook of the same name.

The First Time I Heard David Bowie is Part III in an ongoing series where musicians and writers tell their stories of first hearing the music of an iconic artist or band. In this third volume (following the opening installments, which covered Joy Division / New Order and Cocteau Twins), forty different musicians and writers remember their initial experiences hearing the influential rock chameleon David Bowie, whose musical legacy now spans nearly five decades.Contributors to the Da...

Alan Cross is the preeminent chronicler of popular music.Here he provides a history of Michael Stipe and R.E.M.This look at the band -- "Radio Free Athens" -- is adapted from the audiobook of the same name.

For his 2007 critically acclaimed 33 1/3 series title, Let's Talk About Love, Carl Wilson went on a quest to find his inner Céline Dion fan and explore how we define ourselves by what we call good and bad, what we love and what we hate.At once among the most widely beloved and most reviled and lampooned pop stars of the past few decades, Céline Dion's critics call her mawkish and overblown while millions of fans around the world adore her “huge pipes” and even bigger feeli...