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A DAILY TELEGRAPH and IRISH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR The must-read music book of the year, now with a brand new chapter covering the death of Taylor Hawkins and his massive Wembley memorial concert. In Bodies, author Ian Winwood explores the music industry's many failures, from addiction and mental health issues to its ongoing exploitation of artists. Much more than a touchline reporter, Winwood also tells the story of his own mental health collapse, following the shocking death of his father, in which extinction-level behaviour was given perfect cover by a reckless industry. 'This is such a shrewd, funny, psychologically perceptive, frank, well-written, jawdropping book . Absolutely buy and read the hell out of this.' DAVID STUBBS 'Winwood makes a compelling argument and overturns some long-held notions about "rock and roll excess" by deftly tying together a vast amount of information . . . and liberally lacing it with dark, self-deprecating humour.' ALEXIS PETRIDIS EditBuild
A group biography of '90s punk rock told through the prism of Green Day, The Offspring, NOFX, Rancid, Bad Religion, Social Distortion, and more Two decades after the Sex Pistols and the Ramones birthed punk music into the world, their artistic heirs burst onto the scene and changed the genre forever. While the punk originators remained underground favorites and were slow burns commercially, their heirs shattered commercial expectations for the genre. In 1994, Green Day and The Offspring each released their third albums, and the results were astounding. Green Day's Dookie went on to sell more than 15 million copies and The Offspring's Smash remains the all-time bestselling album released on a...
As they embark upon the fourth decade of the career, Metallica's legacy is as unique as it is remarkable: having sold over 100 million albums their status as the biggest Metal band of all time is indisputable. Following the acclaimed first volume, which chronicled the band's rise to international stardom, the authors now explore the challenges and tensions that ensued for the band. From the phenomenal, breakthrough, success of 1991's 'Black' album to the band's reinvention with the 'Load/Reload' albums; bassist Jason Newsted's shock exit in 2001 and the group's subsequent meltdown, as laid bare in the unvarnished fly-on-the-wall documentary Some Kind Of Monster, to the divisive 'St. Anger' and 'Lulu' sets (recorded with Rick Rubin and in collaboration with Lou Reed respectively), they brilliantly capture this unique bands epic, louder than life saga.
“Total F*cking Godhead brings Chris Cornell, the voice of a generation, alive on the page. Impressively researched and compulsively readable, Godhead pulls no punches in recounting Cornell’s remarkable life and prolific career. It’s an inspired chronicle of an impassioned soul. Read it!” —Greg Renoff, author of Van Halen Rising With input from those who knew and worked with him—together with his own words—Total F*cking Godhead recounts the rise of Chris Cornell and his immortal band Soundgarden as they emerged from the 1980s post-punk underground to dominate popular culture in the ’90s alongside Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, and Nirvana. “From his days as a struggling Seattle...
'The game changing guitar legend gets the biography he deserves ... Diligently researched, perceptive and well-written.' 8/10, Classic Rock'An affectionate and unflinching portrait of metal guitar's Mount Everest.' MojoArriving in California as a young boy in the early 1960s, Edward Van Halen and his brother Alex were ripe for the coming musical revolution. The sons of a Dutch, saxophone-playing father, the brothers discovered the Beatles, Cream and others.From the moment their hugely influential 1978 debut landed, Van Halen set a high bar for the rock 'n' roll lifestyle, creating an entirely new style of post-'60s hard rock and becoming the quintessential Californian band of the 1980s. But there was also an undercurrent of tragedy to their story, as Eddie's struggles played out in public, from his difficult relationship with the band's original singer, Dave Lee Roth, to substance abuse, divorce and his long-running battle with cancer.With unique insights, Paul Brannigan's Eruption reaches beyond the headlines to explore the cultural and social contexts that shaped this iconic guitarist, while also turning up the dial on a life lived at volume eleven.
In the late 1970s, aggressive, young bands are forming across Britain. Independent labels are springing up to release their music. But this isn't the story of punk. Forget punk. Punk was a flash in the pan compared to this. This is the story of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, a musical movement that changed the world. From this movement - given the unwieldy acronym NWOBHM - sprang streams that would flow through metal's subsequent development. Without NWOBHM there is no thrash metal, no death metal, no black metal. Without the rise of Iron Maiden, NWOBHM's standard bearers, leading the charge to South America and to South Asia, metal's global spread is slower. Without the NWOBHM bands -...
Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2019 Longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing 2020 'Fascinating . . . If you have even the slightest interest in Orwell or in the development of our culture, you should not miss this engrossing, enlightening book.' John Carey, Sunday Times George Orwell's 1984 has become a defining narrative of the modern world. Its cultural influence can be observed in some of the most notable creations of the past seventy years, from Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale to the reality TV landmark Big Brother, while ideas such as 'thought police', 'doublethink', and 'Newspeak' are ingrained in our language. The Ministry of Truth charts t...
In the vein of Sound Man and The Soundtrack of My Life, a lyrical memoir from the founder of one of the greatest music labels of all time, Island Records, about his astonishing life and career helping to bring reggae music to the world stage and working with Bob Marley, U2, Grace Jones, Cat Stevens, and many other icons. Since its founding in 1959, Island Records has been home to legendary artists representing wildly divergent musical styles, yet who share the same maverick, outsider spirit of its founder, Chris Blackwell. Time and again, Blackwell and his Island cohorts identified and nurtured musicians overlooked by other labels, including Bob Marley, U2, Cat Stevens, Grace Jones, Roxy Mus...
You'd be surprised how a simple thing like locking up your husband in the same room as you, makes you aware of something. Of being alive. The Scent of Roses begins with a wife who takes her husband hostage in order to have an honest conversation. This simple, transgressive act, and her demand for a straight answer, sparks a chain of conversations, interrogations, obfuscations and revelations, as they and those around them try to discover what is real and who they can trust in a post-truth world. Zinnie Harris's The Scent of Roses premieres at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, in February 2022.
LEAVING CALIFORNIA compiles 76 poems that merge the line of harsh reality and paranoia, beauty and reflection, and the wisdom of the escape artist. There are amends and curses amongst stories that one can only tell once they've seen everything and everything collapse. A brilliant work of true transformation, these poems also chronicle Lanegan's exit from California for the literal greener pastures of Ireland. As someone who has survived it all, he must have known this move was the next level of perseverance. There's a pacing anxiety leading up to the move, turbulence in the transition, and a calm consideration once he's settled. In many ways this is part two of Lanegan's best selling 2020 novel, Sing Backwards and Weep, where loose ends are tied and others left for dead. Intro by Wesley Eisold. Poetry.