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The Beatles. The Beach Boys. Blur, Bowie, Kylie Minogue, Kate Bush, and Coldplay. EMI was one of the big four record companies, with some of the biggest names in the history of recorded music on its roster. Dominating the music industry for over 100 years, by 2010 EMI Group had reported massive pre-tax losses. The group was divided up and sold in 2011. How could one of the greatest recording companies of the 20th century have ended like this? With interviews from insiders and music industry experts, Eamonn Forde pieces together the tragic end to a financial juggernaut and a cultural institution in forensic detail. The Final Days of EMI: Selling the Pig is the story of the British recording industry, laid bare in all its hubris and glory.
David Bowie: The Golden Years chronicles Bowie’s creative life during the 1970s, the decade that defined his career. Looking at the superstar's life and work in a year by year, month by month, day by day format, and placing his works in their historical, personal and creative contexts. The Golden Years accounts for every live performance: when and where and who played with him. It details every known recording: session details, who played in the studio, who produced the song, and when and how it was released. It covers every collaboration, including production and guest appearances. It also highlights Bowie's film, stage and television appearances: Bowie brought his theatrical training into every performance and created a new form of rock spectacle. The book follows Bowie on his journeys across the countries that fired his imagination and inspired his greatest work, and includes a detailed discography documenting every Bowie recording during this period, including tracks he left in the vault. The Golden Years is an invaluable addition to the Digital shelves of any true Bowie fan.
Steve Marriott, lead singer of the Small Faces and Humble Pie, had a voice coveted by Bob Dylan, Robert Plant, Roger Daltrey and David Bowie, amongst many others. All or Nothing, Simon Spence's oral history biography, is drawn from over 125 interviews with those who knew Marriott intimately: his wives, children, bandmates and closest friends, managers, record producers, record label bosses and his fellow musicians. Included are scores of people who have never told their story before.
Poly Styrene was a singer-songwriter, an artist, a free-thinker, a post-modern style pioneer and a lifelong spiritual seeker: a true punk icon. But this rebel queen with the cheeky grin was also a latter-day pop artist with a wickedly perceptive gift for satirising the world around her. Based on interviews with those who knew and loved Poly (whether personally or through music) this honestly and openly explores her exceptional life, up until her untimely passing in 1991. It is about her growing up mixed-race in Brixton in the 1960s, to being at the forefront of the emerging punk scene with X-Ray Spex in the 1970s, to finding faith with the Hare Krishna movement, to balancing single motherhood with a solo music career and often debilitating mental health issues.--
As one of Britain's best-loved and most successful fanzines, Jamming ran for an impressive 10 years and 36 issues, documenting the changing musical landscape between 1977 and 1986 as it developed from a 6-page school publication to a nationally distributed monthly. Fully illustrated throughout, The Best of Jamming features stand-out pieces from the zines' momentous run, from early features on The Jam, The Alarm, Adam & The Ants, and the Dead Kennedys, to surprise exclusive interviews with the likes of Paul McCartney, U2 and Pete Townshend. Personal letters from Mark E. Smith, Paul Weller and others are included along with previously unseen interview manuscripts and many of Jamming 's arts and politics features too. Editor Tony Fletcher provides an introduction to each issue, and former star contributors and now-established musicians reflect on their interviews and Jamming 's influence and impact.
A member of seminal new-wave band Magazine, the original bassist in the legendary Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, a Mercury-Prize-nominated solo artist, and pioneer of the imaginary soundtrack album--no matter where Barry Adamson's career has taken him, the result has been consistently impressive. Covering his early life up to the 1990s, 'The Barry Adamson Story' addresses Adamson's Mancunian and mixed-race roots, beginning in the late 1950s, through to the highs of his momentous musical achievements and the lows of psychiatric hospitals and drug rehabs. Using a 'noir' style of self examination, he also investigates the acute loss of his parents and sister in his early twenties, multiple failed relationships and arrives at the beginnings of a successful Hollywood soundtrack career.
"Along with its long-lasting influence on music, art, fashion and culture, the punk explosion in the late 1970s also fuelled a thriving underground press. A physical representation of punk's DIY attitude, fanzines rebelled against establish forms of expression surviving outside of the mainstream media and providing a voice for a generation. Punkzines features interviews with leading figures from the scene, including fanzine editors, bands, DJs, promoters and journalists, to provide exclusive anecdotes from this momentous period."--From back cover.
A collection of photographs from the late 1970s and early 1980s of musicians and others involved with the Punk culture, taken by photographer Sheila Rock and accompanied by select interview excerpts with the photographer and with those pictured.
Britain, 1971. A land of hot pants, porn trials, angry bombs, and bitter protest. As Marc Bolan is crowned the kids' teenage saviour, the forgotten hope called David Bowie secretly gathers the arsenal for his own revolution in his bohemian retreat. New friends Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, and The Pretty Things among the London gay scene. New songs about life on Mars and cosmic messiahs. New fashions fit for the ultimate 70s superstar... In the sequel to Bowie Odyssey 70 (a Sunday Times Book Of The Year), Simon Goddard continues his groundbreaking VR narrative into the world inside and around Bowie, year by year, through the decade he changed pop forever.
The original edition of this revered and authorised Queen biography explored every aspect of the legendary group's career from inception to 1992. Newly revised and updated with cooperation and insight from Brian May and Roger Taylor - and drawing on exclusive interviews with the bandmembers - this book completes the story of the Mercury era and the immediate years after his death.With numerous extra photographs and a new Foreword from Brian May, Queen - As It Began: Revised and Authorised is an informative and authoritative portrait of Queen's most fundamental period.