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Follows the Oasis story from their unlikely beginnings as The Rain to their present day status as the most talked about band in the world.
Over the years, The Fall have given me more pleasure than any other band and, when people ask me why I always say, 'they are always different, they are always the same' John Peel. The first ever authorised biography of this most inscrutable of bands! Together music writer Mick Middles and Fall leader Mark E. Smith have written an exhaustive biography of The Fall. Spanning their years on the fringe of the Manchester punk scene, three dozen albums, numerous tours, two successful stage plays and various spoken word events, this book is as strangely compelling as the band itself. Laced with Smith's distinctive brand of working class intellectualism and trenchant broadsides this is a meticulously...
The story of the life and career of Ian McCulloch, lead singer of Echo and the Bunnymen. The biography examines his solo career and his two critically acclaimed solo albums, his battle to overcome drink and drugs, his nervous breakdown, and the return of Echo and the Bunnymen in 1997.
When Elbow won the Mercury Prize in 2008 for their fourth studio album - The Seldom Seen Kid - the accolade followed an organic 17 year long career marked by four classic albums and a cult following that cast them in the role of Manchester's best kept music secret. Elbow started out at a time when great songs and evocative lyrics were not generally recognised. Their music transcended genre, age and image, eventually finding its own distinctive global audience as Guy Garvey evolved into one of the most brilliant and intriguing lyricists of recent times. Reluctant Heroes charts Elbow's long journey from humble roots through modest success to international recognition. It features interviews with the band and those close to them to form the most complete band history to date.
This story details how, from the ashes of the Mondays, self-confessed heroin addict and ex-postman Shaun Ryder defied all the odds to emerge triumphant as the front man of Black Grape.
Singer of the sensational Black Grape and now-defunct Happy Mondays airs his views on sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll without reserve!
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The only way to appreciate the legendary musician Mark E. Smith is to encounter the man in his own words. 'May be the funniest music book ever written' Observer The Fall are one of the most distinctive British bands, their music - odd,spare, cranky and repetitious - an acknowledged influence on The Smiths, The Happy Mondays, Nirvana and Franz Ferdinand. And Mark E. Smith IS The Fall. 47 members have come and gone over the years yet he remains its charismatic leader, a professional outsider and all-round enemy of compromise, a true enigma. There have been a number of biographies of the legendary Smith, but this is the first time he has opened up in a full autobiography. For the first time we get to hear his full, candid take on the ups and downs of a band as notorious for its in-house fighting as for its great music; and on a life that has endured prison in America, drugs, bankruptcy, divorce, and the often bleak results of a legendary thirst. 'A riot' Independent on Sunday 'Unbeatable' Time Out 'Vicious' Daily Telegraph 'Hilarious' Scotland on Sunday
Lyrically unique, Morrissey saw post-industrial Manchester differently. Where most recognised the derelict remains of a Victorian powerhouse, he saw humour, where others saw post-industrial squalor, he felt the frisson of romance. As a result Manchester became as much a part of The Smiths output as the guitars, drums and vocals. As their fame grew, strangers in far away lands wondered about the location of the 'Cemetery Gates' or the setting of 'Vicar in a Tutu' . Unusually, these places still exist and provide the devotee with places of pilgrimage -- could Manchester offer anything else? In the first edition of this guidebook, Phill Gatenby set out three tours covering 20 or more sites that...
Many myths surround the explosion of punk in Manchester given its repercussions. The central fable being of how a city was re-born by the seminal act of one gig and one band attended by many of the people who would go on to play a central part in the transformation of the city from post-industrial wasteland into multi-cultural hub. Martin Ryan caught the punk bug in 1976 just like everybody else, it's just that his memory is not clouded by apocrypha. He was there, or not there, and can recall dates, times, gigs and the growth of the nascent Manchester scene. He and Mick Middles even put a lot of it down in print in Ghast Up!, one of a rash of fanzines to emerge in punk's wake which gave space for future NME contributors Kevin Cummins and Paul Morley among others. Concentrating on the years 1976, 1977 and 1978 'Friends of Mine' is a blow-by-blow account of how punk really happened in Manchester.