Music Books

George 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. Though known as the "Quiet...

Prince on Prince gets behind the controversies to tell the Prince story in his own words.Prince is among the most respected and influential entertainers of the twentieth century, breaking sexual, racial, and creative barriers throughout his almost forty...

Cash on Cash offers unprecedented insight into one of the most significant American cultural figures of the twentieth century.As an interviewee, Cash was an exemplary communicator to an astonishingly broad spectrum of people: always open and articulate,...

The life and career of Haitian American musician Jean Beauvoir, a member of the legendary New York City punk band the PlasmaticsJean Beauvoir joined the Plasmatics in 1979, playing bass and keyboards for the most notorious band to emerge out of the New...

The life of rock's most durable troubadour in his own wordsNeil Young on Neil Young: Interviews and Encounters is a revealing anthology of Young's most significant, fascinating, and entertaining discussions, declarations, and dreams, chronicling fifty...

By the mid-1980s, singer-songwriter John Hiatt had been dropped from three record labels, burned through two marriages, and had fallen deep into alcoholism.It took a stint in rehab and a new family to inspire him, then a producer and an A&R man to...

The Beatles Finally Let It Be includes the January 1969 rehearsals and recording sessions; the unreleased "Get Back" albums; "Let It Be" and "Let It Be...Naked;" along with American; British and Canadian perspectives. This volume also includes a detailed...

Ulrich thinks he got the ultimate fan trip-to play, record, and tour with his favourite band, Dead Can Dance. His memoir details the early days, from signing with 4AD, recording their first album, then heading off on tour with the Cocteau Twins. There...

BTS (aka Bangtan Sonyeondan) has become one of K-POP's most well-known singing groups. The seven-member Korean boy band formed in 2013 and has slowly grown to worldwide fame through their music. Despite slow beginnings, the K-POP group now has millions...

Everything You Could Possibly Need to Know about Korean Pop Music! K-POP is popping up everywhere! Korea's infectious and high-energy pop music and entertainment scene is a relatively young phenomenon in the West, and it is rapidly gaining traction...

Fierce and funny, this memoir in essay and song is full of wonderful tales of art and protest. Leon Rosselson's Where Are the Elephants? is a rare behind-the-scenes look at the life and times of one of England's foremost songwriters. This clear-eyed...

First published in 1982 as part of the Crass record album Christ: The Album, Penny Rimbaud's The Last of the Hippies is a fiery anarchist polemic centered on the story of his friend, Phil Russell (aka Wally Hope), who was murdered by the State while...

Lou Gramm rose from humble, working-class roots in Rochester, New York, to become one of rock's most popular and distinctive voices in the 1970s and '80s, singing and cowriting more than a dozen hits with the band Foreigner. Songs such as Cold As...

Few music groups have been able to sustain a fan base as passionate and dedicated as that of Pearl Jam, and this entertaining guide rewards those fans with everything they need to know about the band in a one-of-a-kind format. Packed with history,...

Part generational memoir and part cultural history of the sixties, Beatleness allows the reader to experience-again or for the first time-what it was like to grow up with the Beatles and shows the impact of "Beatleness" as an ever-evolving stimulus in...

Murder Ballads Old & New: A Dark and Bloody Record is an exploration of an age-old topic - our human need to document the horrors of the world around us. The murder ballad, here expanded to include songs about traumatic loss in modern variants and...

Expand your aural and sensory experiences with Extreme Music. An exploration of tomorrow's sounds (and silences) today. is the culmination of decades of research into the sounds (and silences) that comprise the outer limits and conceptual expressions...

Think punk was only a boys club? Read about the women who were the punk revolution!Women have been kicking against the pricks of music patriarchy since Sister Rosetta Tharpe first played the guitar riffs that built rock-n-roll. The explosion of punk sent...

In his acclaimed book Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-Listening, and Other Moodsong, author Joseph Lanza explored the forbidden beauty and social importance of an otherwise shunned musical category. Now, in Easy-Listening Acid Trip, he...

In the early 1990s, Swedish death metal revolutionized the international music scene. Suddenly, the mild-mannered Scandinavian country found itself at the forefront of a new movement with worldwide impact thanks to bands such as Entombed, Dismember, and...

Francoise Hardy is best known in Europe for originating the famed "Y-Y" sound in pop music which began a cultural scene in the early 1960s. Her teenage success grew as she became a much-photographed fashion model and actress. Adored for her shy beauty...

Harley Flanagan provides a fascinating memoir: a homeless child prodigy and family friend of Andy Warhol and Allen Ginsberg, at a young age he became close to many stars of the early punk rock scene like Joe Strummer of The Clash and was taught to play...

Famous for its revolutionary aspects in musical, political, sexual identity and consumerist ideas, punk rock also has its lesser-known gangster ethos as well, explained here by players in the various punk gangs.The Los Angeles, Orange County, and South...

Out of the Basement tells the story of underground music (and mainstream rock that sometimes rose out of it) in post-industrial Rockford, Illinois. This is a bracing, candid, democratic, and cutting edge portrayal of a rust belt city full of...

In this exhaustive anthology, David Ensminger delves underground to explore the oft overlooked community of badass women who shaped the punk scene. There's a common thread of women being excluded and gatekept from the hardcore music scene, but...

"The definitive account of one of hardcore punk's most enigmatic figures." -Lucky Lehrer, Circle Jerks drummer In 1983, Circle Jerks bassist Roger Rogerson stole the band's van and dropped off the face of the earth. Thirteen years later, he came back,...

Klezmer is Yiddish music, the music of the Jews of Europe and America, a music of laughter and tears, of weddings and festivals, of dancing and prayer. Born in the Middle Ages, it came of age in the shtetl (the Eastern European Jewish country town),...

John Fahey hovers ghostlike in the sound of almost every acoustic guitarist who came after him, from Leo Kottke to Jimmy Page. In essence, John Fahey is to the solo acoustic guitar what Jimi Hendrix was to the electric: the man whom all subsequent...

Maceo Parker's signature style became the lynchpin of James Brown's band when he and his brother Melvin joined the Hardest Working Man in Show Business in 1964. That style helped define Brown's brand of funk, and the phrase "Maceo, I want you to blow!"...

Is there such a thing as a Hip Hop 'theology'? Drawing on interviews from those in the Hip Hop community, and a critical engagement with the theological and ecclesiological ruminations of over 8,500 songs, Hodge aims to paint a picture of what a Hip Hop...

A Gothic Horror novel about severe mental distress and punk rock. The novel is written in the form of a diary kept by a psychiatrist, Dr. Rodney H. Dweller, concerning his patient, Nathaniel Snoxell, brought to him in 1979 because of several attempted...

Few music groups have been able to sustain a fan base over half a century that is as significant and devoted as those of the Beatles, and this entertaining guide to all things Fab Four rewards those fans with everything they need to know about the band...

Steve Adelman's humorous and engaging memoir reflects on his years as the director and owner of some of the world's most popular nightclubs, including the Roxy, Limelight, Tunnel, and Palladium in the heyday of clubs in New York City during the 1980s and...

Get inside the head of one of the most beloved musicians of our time, a longtime country music phenomenon turned titan of industry and cultural icon: Dolly PartonThis collection of quotes has been carefully curated from Parton's numerous public...

Get inside the head of one of the most influential musicians of our time, a pop music phenomenon turned titan of industry and cultural icon: Taylor Swift.This collection of quotes has been carefully curated from Swift's numerous public statements -...

"I was in the car the first time music seemed strange: the instruments less distinct, the vocals less crisp." John Cotter was thirty years old when he first began to notice a ringing in his ears. Soon the ringing became a roar inside his head. Next came...

Like a long, funny letter from an old friend, an album of drawings by the legendary singer and activist for social justice, Joan Baez.Since retiring from active performing, Baez has focused her formidable talents on painting and drawing. This collection...

Winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama"To watch this show is to enter, by some urgent, bawdy magic, an ecstatic and infinitely more colorful version of the famous surreal lithograph by M. C. Escher: the hand that lifts from the page, becoming almost...

The powerful Broadway hit about an outsider yearning to connect.Winner of the 2017 Tony Award for Best Musical'Dear Evan Hansen lodges in your head long after you've seen it or heard it or read it. It feels like a pure expression from young...

"This brave new musical, haunting and electrifying by turns, restores the mystery, the thrill to that shattering transformation that stirs in all our souls."-Charles Isherwood, The New York Times"The staggering purity of this show will touch all open...

"A landmark musical, one of those few shows that enter the permanent lore of the theatre by altering the vocabulary of dramatic possibilities." Time"There's never been a franker, more sophisticated work written for the musical stage." San Francisco...

Part civic history and part memoir from this veteran scene-builder and co-founder of the acclaimed Wavelength concert series, Any Night of the Week charts the evolution of Toronto's diverse independent music scene in the latter half of the nineteenth...

This man and music asks two central questions: what can literature contribute to the art of composition, and how can music influence the writer? Anthony Burgess, famed novelist, journalist, and composer, answers these questions and many more. As a person...

A tour diary of life on the road with one of Minnesota's greatest bands-with nearly 100 never-before-seen photographs"Don't bore us, get to the chorus" is Bill Sullivan's motto, which will come as no surprise to anyone who opens Lemon Jail. A raucous...

In this classic work of American music writing, renowned critic Albert Murray argues beautifully and authoritatively that "the blues as such are synonymous with low spirits. Not only is its express purpose to make people feel good, which is to say in...

Throughout the 1990s, Prince feuded with his record label, Warner Bros., over his rights as an independent recording artist--and made some of the most brilliant music of his career. During that time, Jim Walsh covered Prince for the St. Paul Pioneer...

A must-have for any guitar lover!This book introduces the reader to 250 guitars of all types from the early acoustic archtop designs of the Gibson L-5 in the last 1920s, through the National resonators of the 1930s, the hollow body electric Gibsons of...

Multi-hit songwriter Clay Mills breaks down the mystery of melody writing to give your songs an edge with the PRA method. Learn how to write inspiring songs without waiting for inspiration. Highlighting personal stories, easy-to-understand method...