“Eravamo anti-sistema in tutto e per tutto, nella musica e nell’arte. Volevamo distruggere qualsiasi cosa avesse regole prestabilite, tutto quel che c’era di asfissiante, tutte le certezze. Eravamo decisi a infrangere tutte le regole in tutti i modi possibili”. La Londra di Barry Miles è quella della cultura underground che nasce fra le macerie della Seconda guerra mondiale ed esplode nel corso degli anni Sessanta e Settanta, concentrandosi sul West End e su Soho, le zone in cui era conflu...

The Early Years is the authentic and compelling story of Pink Floyd, the group that gave alternative London its first real soundtrack and launched on the rock world a radical combination of music, light shows and pyrotechnic stage effects.Author Barry Miles saw the band play when they were still called The Pink Floyd Sound and he wrote the first ever article about them for a New York underground newspaper in 1966. He knew band members socially, witnessed the rapid ...

Au début des années 1960, Barry Miles était un étudiant en art ; à la fin il dirigeait le label Zapple des Beatles, vivant dans le légendaire Chelsea Hotel de New York. Voici le récit de ce qui s’est passé entre les deux.Durant cette décennie, Barry Miles organise avec Ginsberg et Burroughs la lecture qui marque l’avènement de la Beat Generation à Londres, cofonde la galerie Indica, véritable centre de commande de la contreculture et y lance le premier magazine underground d’Europe,...

Greenwich Village, 6 marzo 1970. Tre esplosioni in rapida sequenza sventrano l'elegante palazzo al numero 18 dell'Undicesima Strada Ovest; dalle fiamme escono, confuse ma illese, due ragazze seminude. Domato l'incendio, le forze dell'ordine trovano in cantina più di sessanta candelotti di dinamite, una bomba anticarro e tutto l'occorrente che sarebbe servito al gruppo terroristico Weather Underground per produrre altri ordigni. È l'atto di nascita degli anni Settanta e Barry Miles è a New ...

The Beat Hotel has been closed for nearly forty years. But for a brief period—from just after the publication of Howl in 1957 until the building was sold in 1963—it was home to Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Brion Gysin, Peter Orlovsky, Harold Norse, and a host of other luminaries of the Beat Generation. Now, Barry Miles—acclaimed author of many books on the Beats and a personal acquaintance of many of them—vividly excavates this remarkable period and restores i...

William Burroughs ha cinque anni quando, seduto con il fratello nella casa di famiglia, in un quartiere altoborghese di St. Louis, scoppia improvvisamente a piangere: «Era come la sensazione disperata e assoluta di essere vulnerabile». William ne è ancora ignaro, ma lo Spirito del Male è già penetrato in lui, entità ostile che lo perseguiterà per tutta la vita. Che studi medicina a Vienna o antropologia ad Harvard, che faccia il disinfestatore a Chicago o si rifugi tra le braccia dell'amic...

The Beats. a title that Jack Kerouac coined to define the exhausted exaltation of a generation, produced a body of works infected with a new energy. Their spontaneous, often-unedited style epitomised their own era and their famed close-knit literary community continues to inspire writers today.Barry Miles, friend and biographerof Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, was there , part of the Beat Vibe. here he gathers together some of the most influential as well as the...

Fifty years ago, Norman Mailer asserted, "William Burroughs is the only American novelist living today who may conceivably be possessed by genius." Few since have taken such literary risks, developed such individual political or spiritual ideas, or spanned such a wide range of media. Burroughs wrote novels, memoirs, technical manuals, and poetry. He painted, made collages, took thousands of photographs, produced hundreds of hours of experimental recordings, acted in movies, and recorded mo...

A revealing history of the Beatles' experimental record label, as told by the label's manager.In August 1968, the Beatles launched their greatest business enterprise, Apple Records, to international fanfare. The less well-known story is the introduction of their Zapple label about nine months later. If Apple represented artists with new, commercial opportunities, Zapple offered more cutting-edge freedom; its mission was to distribute experimental music and spoken wo...

The Early Years is the authentic and compelling story of Pink Floyd, the group that gave alternative London its first real soundtrack and launched on the rock world a radical combination of music, light shows and pyrotechnic stage effects.Author Barry Miles saw the band play when they were still called The Pink Floyd Sound and he wrote the first ever article about them for a New York underground newspaper in 1966. He knew band members socially, witnessed the rapid ...

With greatly expanded text, this is the most revealing and frank personal 30-year chronicle of the group ever written. Insider Barry Miles covers the Beatles story from childhood to the break-up of the group.

'Fear makes me a writer, fear and a lack of confidence'Charles Bukowski chronicled the seedy underside of the city in which he spent most of his life, Los Angeles. His heroes were the panhandlers and hustlers, the drunks and the hookers, his beat the racetracks and strip joints and his inspiration a series of dead-end jobs in warehouses, offices and factories. It was in the evenings that he would put on a classical record, open a beer and begin to type...Brought up by a vio...