Showing titles in History & Criticism

When Miranda Sawyer interviewed Liam Gallagher in 1994, his gag wishing Damon Albarn would die of AIDS became front-page news all over the world. This fascinating pop history, exploring the moment British music suddenly meant everything, explains why. Picking out twenty key songs, delving into the surprising stories behind them and their unlikely creators, UNCOMMON PEOPLE takes us back to when Jarvis Cocker became a national hero, films like Trainspotting were international hits, rave became what everybody did - and it felt like the revolution was happening.

From 1965 to 1995, the Grateful Dead flourished as one of the most beloved, unusual, and accomplished musical entities to ever grace American culture. The creative synchronicity among Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, and Ron "Pigpen" McKernan exploded out of the early 60s roots and folk scene, providing the soundtrack for the Dionysian revels of the counterculture. Dennis McNally, the band's historian and publicist for more than 20 years, takes listeners back through the Dead's history.

Bloomsbury presents Too Late To Stop Now by Allan Jones, read by Matt Bates. More than 40 stories from the glory days of rock’n’roll, featuring Lou Reed, Elton John, Sting and The Clash. Allan Jones brings stories – many previously unpublished – from the golden days of music reporting...

The definitive story of the slackers and shoegazers who reinvented rock. Twenty years after his acclaimed postpunk best-seller, Rip It Up and Start Again, Simon Reynolds tells the tale of what happened next: the underground explosion of noisepop, shoegaze, slacker rock and grunge that...

The finest book on Britain's most popular rock 'n' roll band 'Read on … It's all true' Noel Gallagher Featuring an exclusive interview with Noel Gallagher and bespoke artwork by celebrated Oasis album designer Brian Cannon Think Oasis was just Britpop and brawls? Think again. John Robb was...

The must-read memoir from the visionary figure behind Manchester's legendary music scene, from The Haçienda to The Warehouse Project. Tales From the Dance Floor is an electrifying journey into the heart of Manchester’s music culture with its most influential promoter. Over the past three...

An intimate view into the life of Little Richard, the trailblazing artist who helped create rock 'n' roll out of the Black church traditions of the Jim Crow South—a rousing elegy for the Black church boy who harnessed his queerness to become one of the world’s great performers, even as he...

Time Must-Read Books of 2024 Independent Best Non-Fiction Books 2024 Mojo Books of the Year 2024 "A vibrant, multifaceted portrait of a music enigma" Guardian "A powerful portrait" Irish Independent "Displays a bracing rigour and an exhilarating curiosity about its subject, coming closer than...

No singer has been more mythologized and more misunderstood than jazz legend Billie Holiday, who helped to create much of the mystique herself with her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues - and this authentic biography sets the record straight. Donald Clarke was given unrivaled access to a treasure trove of interviews from the 1970s with those who knew Lady Day in all stages of her short, tragic life - from her childhood in the streets and good-time houses of Baltimore, through the early days of success in New York and the years of fame, to her tragic decline.

Musical Truth Volume 3 completes club and radio DJ-turned author/ researcher Mark Devlin’s trilogy of books, exposing the real nature of the corporate music industry and those that populate it.

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.

Beatleness explains how the band became a source of emotional, intellectual, aesthetic, and spiritual nurturance in fans’ lives, creating a relationship that was historically unique. Looking at that relationship against the backdrop of the sexual revolution, the Vietnam War, political assassinations, and other events of those tumultuous years, the audiobook critically examines the often-heard assertion that the Beatles changed everything.

A GUARDIAN AND INDEPENDENT BEST MUSIC BOOK OF 2017. ‘At last an expert classicist gets to grips with Bob Dylan’ Mary Beard ‘Thomas’s elegant, charming book offers something for everyone – not just the super-fans’ Independent When the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob...

Ted Gioia's History of Jazz has been universally hailed as a classic - acclaimed by jazz critics and fans around the world. Now Gioia brings his magnificent work completely up-to-date, drawing on the latest research and revisiting virtually every aspect of the music, past and present. Gioia tells the story of jazz as it had never been told before, in a book that brilliantly portrays the legendary jazz players, the breakthrough styles, and the world in which it evolved. Here are the giants of jazz and the great moments of jazz history.

Brought to you by Penguin. Every Valley is a glittering narrative history of intertwined lives that tells the story behind one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, Handel's Messiah. London - Dublin, 1741-42. An actress mired in scandal plans her escape from an abusive husband. A...

A Classic Pop Music Book of the Year FEATURING A FOREWORD BY BOB GELDOF The authoritative, official inside story of 40 years of Live Aid, from Band Aid to today. In 1985, with £100+ million in his back pocket from Live Aid – the greatest rock concert the world had ever seen – Bob Geldof...

The defining sounds of popular music - blues, rock 'n' roll, punk, hip-hop - were shaped and driven by rebel voices: whether that was Robert Johnson and Billie Holiday in the 1920-40s, or the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Joe Strummer in the 1960s and 70s. Truly ground- and...

 England's Dreaming is the ultimate book on punk, its progenitors, the Sex Pistols, and the moment they defined for music fans in England and the United States. Savage brings to life the sensational story of the meteoric rise and rapid implosion of the Pistols through layers of rich detail and exclusive interviews. This fully revised and updated edition of the book covers the legacy of punk 25 years later and provides an account of the Pistols' 1996 reunion as well as a completely new introduction.  

In Listen to This, Alex Ross, the music critic for The New Yorker, looks both backward and forward in time, capturing essential figures and ideas in classical-music history as well as giving an alternative view of recent pop music that emphasizes the power of the individual musical voice in...

Bloomsbury presents The Musical Human by Michael Spitzer, read by Daniel Levitin. A RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK 'Full of delightful nuggets' Guardian online 'Entertaining, informative and philosphical ... An essential read' All About History 'Extraordinary range ... All the world and more is here'...