Rock Art

From the author's first glimpse of a magical recording studio in the mid-1960s up through a busy career that continues to the present day, this rollicking story can only be told by those that were there. As the young tape operator on sessions for the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and Joe Cocker at the famed Olympic Sound Studios in London, Phill learned the ropes from experienced engineers and producers such as Glyn Johns and Eddie Kramer.

No period in the history of rock music offered such an abrupt shift in prevailing tastes as the 1990s. While just a short while before, radio and MTV were clamoring for hair metal bands, suddenly alt-rockers such as Jane’s Addiction, Nine Inch Nails, Faith No More, Primus, Smashing Pumpkins, and of course, Nirvana, brought a sea change not just in what the most popular bands sounded like, but also in fashion, politics, and seemingly all aspects of pop culture.

At its heart, Under A Rock is a love story. The codependent bond between Chris Stein and Debbie Harry carried Blondie through their many tribulations: terribly misogynistic music scenes, greasy record execs, bitter band mates, gruelling schedules, and hard drug abuse abound, and Chris lays it all bare with blunt sincerity and humour. Ultimately, Chris and Debbie broke up, but their bond never dissipated; they remain closest of friends, and continue to tour and promote their various projects together to this day.

As an only child reeling from the demolition of her parents’ toxic marriage, the New York City underground music scene offers a young Ali a different family of misfits and talented outsiders to belong to. She becomes the bass player for edgy band Speedball Baby, a decision that will take her around the world—from onstage at the legendary CBGBs to the red-light district of Amsterdam. She’s often the only girl in a broken-down tour van, being strip-searched at the Croatian border, chased by lunatics, and navigating the seedy underbelly of a male-dominated music scene.

Nick has been fantastically involved throughout the production of this download, so that it has become something far more than simply an author reading his work. For once, we can genuinely say this illustrated audiobook comes complete with bells and whistles, not to mention some Arctic winds, Venetian canals, telephones, aeroplanes, and a squealing pig or two!

Seattle band, The Gits and their charismatic front person Mia Zapata were on the verge of international rock stardom but on July 7, 1993, days before their third United States tour, Mia Zapata, The Gits twenty-seven-year-old singer-songwriter, was brutally assaulted and murdered by a stranger. Zapata's death sent chilling ripples through progressive communities throughout the United States. She became a cause-celebre for women's rights activists outraged by the brutal killing and lack of law enforcement support.

Jonathan Taplin’s extraordinary journey has put him at the crest of every major cultural wave in the past half century. His is a lifetime marked not only by good timing but by impeccable instincts - from the folk scene of Woodstock, to Hollywood’s rebellious film movement and beyond, Taplin is not just a witness but a lifelong producer, the right-hand man to some of the greatest talents of both pop culture and the underground. The Magic Years is both a rock memoir and a work of cultural criticism from a key player who watched a nation turn from idealism to nihilism.

The Best and the Worst Concert Ever: Why The Warning is Awesome, is an essay about a concert that was, as the title says, the best, and yet the worst concert ever. From writer James J. Caterino. the author of Cool Stuff, Reviews and Essays, True Stories, True Stories 2, Escape to Nowhere, and much more.

The idea for Britain’s first female rock band, The Liverbirds, started one evening in 1962, when Mary McGlory, then age 16, saw The Beatles play live at The Cavern Club in Liverpool, the nightclub famously known as the “cradle of British pop music.” Then and there, she decided she was going to be just like them—and be the first girl to do it.

However you found your way into indie rock, once you were a listener, it felt like being part of a secret club of people who had discovered something special, something secret, something superior. In Such Great Heights, music journalist Chris DeVille brilliantly captures this cultural moment, from the early aughts and the height of indie rock, until the 2010s as streaming upends the industry and changes music forever.

Welcome to the ultimate backstage pass to the afterlife, where the music never stops and the encores are eternal. In this collection of spectral true tales, we'll journey from smoke-filled recording studios to haunted hotel rooms, chasing the ghosts of rock & roll royalty who refuse to let a little thing like death keep them from the spotlight. These aren't your grandmother's ghost stories—unless, of course, your gran was a groupie for The Doors.

Bob Gruen is one of the most well-known and connected photographers in rock and roll. For almost 50 years, he has documented the music scene in pictures that have captured the world's attention. Right Place, Right Time is Gruen's first written account of his winding, adventure-filled journey.

Burning Man is the premier countercultural event of modern times, growing over 25 years from a strange San Francisco beach party into an experimental city of 50,000 colorful souls in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, which burns brightly for a week before dissolving into dusty memories and changed lives. Longtime newspaper journalist Steven T. Jones embedded himself in this blossoming culture starting in 2004, a dispiriting year for American politics but the beginning of Burning Man’s renaissance, when it exploded outward in unexpected ways. The result is the most in-depth book ever written ...

In 1983, backstage at the Lyceum in London, Tracey Thorn and Lindy Morrison first met. Tracey's music career with the Marine Girls had just begun, while Lindy, drummer for The Go-Betweens, was ten years her senior. They became confidantes, comrades and best friends, a relationship cemented by activism and agitprop theatre, lesbian punk bands and rock 'n' roll love affairs. Morrison came to be a kind of mentor to Thorn, a strong female role model in a male dominated industry. They both faced a chauvinist music media wanting them to behave to type.

Yes, this book is designed entirely to share those secrets that will inspire you to write that great song that you know you can! And once the creativity really starts flowing, we'll create great habits and write even more, each and every day. Get down to writing the music and the lyrics you know that you can because writer's block is a fantasy. You just need inspiration.

The Police have sold more than 50 million albums, made Rolling Stone's Greatest Artists of All Time list, and finished a triumphant world reunion tour in 2008. Now British journalist Chris Campion draws on extensive research and new interviews to trace the inside saga of this iconic group, including the unorthodox business strategies employed by manager Miles Copeland that took them to the top and the intense rivalry that drove Sting, Andy Summers, and Stewart Copeland to split at the height of their success in the 1980s.

Along Comes the Association is the story of how Russ Giguere and his fellow band members in the legendary and influential pop group The Association came together to create unparalleled music, unique to the time and place, and never again to be repeated.

Of all the musical developments of rock in the 1960s, one in particular fundamentally changed the music's structure and listening experience: the incorporation of extended improvisation into live performances. While many bands—including Cream, Pink Floyd, and the Velvet Underground—stretched out their songs with improvisations, no band was more identified with the practice than the Grateful Dead. In Get Shown the Light Michael Kaler examines how the Dead's dedication to improvisation stemmed from their belief that playing in this manner enabled them to touch upon transcendence.

Learn about the early lives and exciting careers of the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Bob Marley, Bruce Springsteen, and Bono. The Rock Box! celebrates the musicians who have made us sing along to their songs for decades.

The '80s were about big ideas writ large - new money, new style, gender fluidity, gay pride, attritional politics, the 'special relationship', nuclear fear, AIDS, cocaine, ecstasy, tabloid royalty, the rise of urban pop and ultimately geopolitical chaos. Using a big narrative approach, Dylan Jones' history of the decade in pop frames the decade through some of its most important and popular hits, choosing records that either epitomised their time or ushered in a new cultural shift.