Composers and songwriters Books

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...

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...

Already one of the biggest pop stars in the world at 25 years old, Ariana Grande is simply unstoppable. From her early career on Broadway, to her star turns on Nickelodeon, to three Billboard #1 albums including 2018's Sweetener, Grande is a...

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...

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...

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!"...

"We're Going to See the Beatles!" presents the story of Beatlemania in America as experienced by their most devoted fans."We're Going to See the Beatles!" includes anecdotes from those who cheered the group as they arrived at Kennedy Airport in 1964, who...

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...

Manchester Beethoven studies presents ten original chapters by scholars with close ties to the University of Manchester. It throws new light on many aspects of Beethoven's life and works, with a special emphasis on early or little-known compositions such...

Joe Strummer was one of the twentieth century's iconic rock'n'roll rebels. As frontperson, spokesperson and chief lyricist for The Clash, he played a major role in politicising a generation through some of the most powerful protest songs of the era,...

This volume of spellbinding essays explores the tense relationship between Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann, providing new perspectives on their collaboration. Featuring chapters by leading scholars of Hitchcock's work, including Richard Allen,...

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...

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...

Picking Up the Flute sets to music a former professor's musings on retirement, marriage, literature, and the natural world. From his home in historic Bristol, Vermont to Ireland's Connemara coast, travel through John Elder's exquisite topography and...

A bullet train of a book, fast-paced, hilarious, rich with action. A harbinger of good things to come in mysterious ways.It all began at a cocktail party at Wallace Stegner's for the Stanford writing class of 1958. Ken Kesey and Ken Babbs became cronies,...

There's no ghost writer for this book. Its just me. - Brian MayWith these words, the author announces the first book ever to be published about the legendary rock band Queen by a member of the band. And certainly the first book of its kind in the world...

Curtis Mayfield was one of the seminal vocalists and most talented guitarists of his era, and his music played a vital role in the civil rights movement: People Get Ready was the black anthem of the time. In Traveling Soul , Todd Mayfield tells his...

In 1970 a scraggly, antiheroic man from North Carolina by way of Massachusetts began presenting a comforting yet biting new sound. Within a year, when young ears sought the latest in rock, there was Fire and Rain and You've Got a Friend, and a new...

Patti Smith on Patti Smith includes some of Smith's most iconic moments in the media, and some that have never appeared in print, each as insightful as they are unrehearsedFrom the moment Patti Smith burst onto the scene, chanting 'Jesus died...

John Lennon called himself a working class hero. George Harrison was a working class mystic. Born in Liverpool as the son of a bus conductor and a shop assistant, for the first six years of his life he lived in a house with no indoor bathroom. This book...

The philosophically rich David Bowie is an artist of wide and continuing influence. The theatrical antics of Bowie ushered in a new rock aesthetic, but there is much more to Bowie than mere spectacle. The visual belies the increasing depths of his...

'With my jingle in your brain, allow the Bridge to arch again'. How are we to understand Leonard Cohen's plea? Who speaks to whom in this oeuvre spanning six decades? Francis Mus considers the different guises or 'demons' that the Canadian...

Bob Dylan's cultural production in the second half of the twentieth century, his songs, but also his changing images and self-fashionings have informed and productively re/shaped certain images of America from outside and within. Refractions of Bob Dylan...

This book contains both English and Russian text. Robert Bremner has carefully compiled this collection of fascinating and candid interviews by Australia's most internationally performed classical composer, Julian Cochran, republished to delight a new...

The music's still playing, fifty years on...It is 1965, and John, Paul, George and Ringo have lost themselves. Beatlemania is at its peak and the boys are overwhelmed by screaming fans, more money than they can count, and fame beyond their...

The Beethoven Obsession tells the story of how the greatest piano music ever written acquired a unique Australian voice, played on a revolutionary grand piano that shook up the conservative music establishment.It is a...