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The King and I
Par Anne Midgette, Herbert Breslin. 2004
Luciano Pavarotti's longtime manager and friend tells all. All.The King and I is the story of the thirty-six-year-old business relationship…
between Luciano Pavarotti and his manager, Herbert Breslin, during which Breslin guided what he calls, justifiably, "the greatest career in classical music." During that career, Breslin moved Pavarotti out of the opera house and onto the concert (and the world) stage and into the arms of a huge mass public. How he and Pavarotti changed the landscape of opera is one of the most significant and entertaining stories in the history of classical music, and Herbert Breslin relates the tale in a brash, candid, witty fashion that is often bitingly frank and profane. He also provides a portrait of his friend and client--"a beautiful, simple, lovely guy who turned into a very determined, aggressive, and somewhat unhappy superstar"--that is by turns affectionate and satirical and full of hilarious details and tales out of school, with Pavarotti emerging as something like the ultimate Italian male. The book is also enlivened by the voices of other players in the soap opera drama that was Pavarotti's career, and they are no less uncensored than Herbert Breslin. The last word, in fact, comes from none other than Luciano Pavarotti himself!The King and I is the ultimate backstage book about the greatest opera star of the past century--and it's a delight to read as well.I, Shithead
Par Joey Keithley, Jack Rabid. 2003
Joey Keithley, aka Joey Shithead, founded legendary punk pioneers D.O.A. in 1978. Punk kings who spread counterculture around the world,…
they've been cited as influences by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, Rancid and The Offspring; have toured with The Clash, The Ramones, The Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Nirvana, PiL, Minor Threat and others; and are the subject of two tribute albums. They are the band that introduced the term "hardcore" into punk lexicon and may have turned Nirvana's lead singer Kurt Cobain onto a career in music.But punk is more than a style of music: it's a political act, and D.O.A. have always had a social conscience, having performed in support of Greenpeace, women's rape/crisis centres, prisoner's rights, and antinuke and antiglobalization organizations. Twenty-five years later D.O.A. can claim sales of hundreds of thousands of copies of their 11 albums and tours in 30 different countries, and they are still going strong.I, Shithead is Joey's personal, no-bullshit recollections of a life in punk, starting with the burgeoning punk movement and traversing a generation disillusioned with the status quo, who believed they could change the world: stories of riots, drinking, travelling, playing and conquering all manner of obstacles through sheer determination.Praise for D.O.A.:"They rock out. They blow the roof off. Some of the best shows I've seen in my life were D.O.A. gigs. I've never seen D.O.A. not be amazing."--Henry Rollins (Black Flag, Rollins Band)"The proper medicine growing young minds needed."--Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedys)"Joey Shithead casts a long shadow."--John Doe (X)"They've changed a lot of people's lives."--Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters)Joey "Shithead" Keithley has long been an activist, including as a candidate for the Green Party, and is the founder of Sudden Death Records (www.suddendeath.com). He lives in Vancouver with his wife and their three children.Henry Mancini: Reinventing Film Music (Music in American Life)
Par John Caps. 2012
Henry Mancini, the first publicly successful and personally recognizable film composer in history, has practically become a Hollywood brand name.…
In his lifetime, he sold thirty million albums and won four Oscars and twenty Grammy awards. Through Mancini, mere background music in movies became part of pop culture--an expression of sophistication and wit with a modern sense of cool and a lasting lyricism that has not dated. The first comprehensive study of Mancini's music, Henry Mancini: Reinventing Film Music describes how the composer served as a bridge between the Big Band period of World War II and the impatient eclecticism of the Baby Boomer generation, between the grand formal orchestral film scores of the past and a modern American minimalist approach. Mancini's sound seemed to capture the bright, confident, welcoming voice of the middle class's new efficient life: interested in pop songs and jazz, in movies and television, in outreach politics but also conventional stay-at-home comforts. As John Caps shows, Mancini easily combined it all in his music. Mancini wrote his first dramatic music for a radio series in 1950. By the mid-1960s, he wielded influence in Hollywood and around the world with his iconic scores: dynamic jazz for the noirish detective TV show Peter Gunn, the sly theme from The Pink Panther, and his wistful folk song "Moon River" from Breakfast at Tiffany's. Following the evolution of Mancini's style, Caps traces the history of movie scoring in general: from the jazz-pop of the 1960s to the edgier, electro-funk harmonies of the Watergate 1970s, from the revisionist 1980s marked by New Age trends and new jazz chords to the frustrating New Hollywood of the 1990s when films were made by committees of lawyers rather than by artisans. Through insightful close readings of key films, Caps traces Mancini's collaborations with important directors and shows how he homed in on specific dramatic or comic aspects of each film to create musical effects through clever instrumentation, eloquent melodies, and the strong narrative qualities of his scores. Accessible and engaging, this fresh view of Mancini's oeuvre and influence will delight and inform fans of film and popular music.Bound for America: Three British Composers
Par Nicholas Temperley. 2003
Nicholas Temperley documents the lives, careers, and music of three British composers who emigrated from England in mid-career and became…
leaders in the musical life of Federal-era America. William Selby of London and Boston (1738-98), Rayner Taylor of London and Philadelphia (1745-1825), and George K. Jackson of London, New York, and Boston (1757-1822) were among the first trained professional composers to make their homes in America and to pioneer the building of an art-music tradition in the New World akin to the esteemed European "classical" music. Temperley compares their lives, careers, and compositional styles in the two countries and reflects on American musical nationalism and the changing emphasis in American musical historiography.A Language of Song: Journeys in the Musical World of the African Diaspora
Par Samuel Charters. 2009
In A Language of Song, Samuel Charters--one of the pioneering collectors of African American music--writes of a trip to West…
Africa where he found "a gathering of cultures and a continuing history that lay behind the flood of musical expression [he] encountered everywhere . . . from Brazil to Cuba, to Trinidad, to New Orleans, to the Bahamas, to dance halls of west Louisiana and the great churches of Harlem. " In this book, Charters takes readers along to those and other places, including Jamaica and the Georgia Sea Islands, as he recounts experiences from a half-century spent following, documenting, recording, and writing about the Africa-influenced music of the United States, Brazil, and the Caribbean. Each of the book's fourteen chapters is a vivid rendering of a particular location that Charters visited. While music is always his focus, the book is filled with details about individuals, history, landscape, and culture. In first-person narratives, Charters relates voyages including a trip to the St. Louis home of the legendary ragtime composer Scott Joplin and the journey to West Africa, where he met a man who performed an hours-long song about the Europeans' first colonial conquests in Gambia. Throughout the book, Charters traces the persistence of African musical culture despite slavery, as well as the influence of slaves' songs on subsequent musical forms. In evocative prose, he relates a lifetime of travel and research, listening to brass bands in New Orleans; investigating the emergence of reggae, ska, and rock-steady music in Jamaica's dancehalls; and exploring the history of Afro-Cuban music through the life of the jazz musician Bebo Valds. A Language of Song is a unique expedition led by one of music's most observant and well-traveled explorers.VJ
Par Gavin Edwards, Mark Goodman, Nina Blackwood, Martha Quinn, Alan Hunter. 2013
The original MTV VJs offer a behind-the-scenes oral history of the early years of MTV, circa 1981 to 1985, when…
it was exploding, reshaping the culture, and forming "the MTV generation."MTV's first VJs (along with the late J.J. Jackson) had front-row seats to a cultural revolution--and the hijinks of rock stars from Adam Ant to Cyndi Lauper. Their worlds collided, of course: John Cougar invited Nina Blackwood to a late night "party" that proved to be a seduction attempt. Mark Goodman partied with David Lee Roth, who offered him cocaine and groupies. Aretha Franklin made chili for Alan Hunter. After Martha Quinn interviewed Bob Dylan, he whisked her off to Ireland in his private jet. While the book has plenty of dish--secret romances, nude photographs, incoherent celebrities--it also tells the story of four VJs growing up alongside MTV's devoted viewers. Using MTV as a focal point, the book tells the story of the 1980s, from the neon-colored drawstring pants to the Reagan administration. Readers don't just get the inside scoop on music stars like Bob Dylan, Madonna, and Duran Duran, but a deeper understanding of how MTV changed our culture. Or as the VJs put it: "We're the reason you have no attention span."An epic joyride through three history-making tours in 1973 that defined rock and roll superstardom--the money, the access, the excess--forevermore.…
The Who's Quadrophenia. Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy. Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies. These three unprecedented tours--and the albums that inspired them--were the most ambitious of these artists' careers, and they forever changed the landscape of rock and roll: the economics, the privileges, and the very essence of the concert experience. On these juggernauts, rock gods--and their entourages--were born, along with unimaginable overindulgence and the legendary flameouts. Tour buses were traded for private jets, arenas replaced theaters, and performances transmogrified into over-the-top, operatic spectacles. As the sixties ended and the seventies began, an altogether more cynical era took hold: peace, love, and understanding gave way to sex, drugs, and rock and roll. But the decade didn't become the seventies, acclaimed journalist Michael Walker writes, until 1973, a historic and mind-bogglingly prolific year for rock and roll that saw the release of countless classic albums, from The Dark Side of the Moon to Goat's Head Soup; Goodbye Yellow Brick Road; Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.; and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. Aerosmith, Queen, and Lynyrd Skynyrd released their debut albums. The Roxy and CBGB opened their doors. Every major act of the era--from Fleetwood Mac to Black Sabbath--was on the road that summer, but of them all, Walker writes, it was The Who, Led Zeppelin, and Alice Cooper who emerged as the game changers. Walker revisits each of these three tours in memorable, all-access detail: he goes backstage, onto the jets, and into the limos, where every conceivable wish could be granted. He wedges himself into the sweaty throng of teenage fans (Walker himself was one of them) who suddenly were an economic force to be reckoned with, and he vividly describes how a decade's worth of decadence was squeezed into twelve heart-pounding, backbreaking, and rule-defying months that redefined, for our modern times, the business of superstardom.Shut Up and Give Me the Mic
Par Dee Snider. 2012
DEE'S NOT GONNA TAKE IT As lead singer and songwriter of Twisted Sister, Dee Snider became the poster boy for…
heavy metal, hair bands, and the wild side of rock. Now, in his twisted new memoir, he reveals the real stories behind the crazy makeup, the big hair, and badass hits like "We're Not Gonna Take It" and "I Wanna Rock." A classically trained countertenor who sang with his high school choir, Dee remembers the day he decided he was "not gonna take it" and stopped caring what people thought about him. Following in the footsteps of his idols Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath, Dee jumped from band to band before meeting Jay Jay French and Twisted Sister. But it wasn't until he met his costume-designing soul-mate Suzette that they developed his unique style. Dee's hard work finally paid off with an impressive resume that includes: a monster hit record; smash MTV videos; a long-running radio show, "The House of Hair"; appearances in film (Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Howard Stern's Private Parts, StrangeLand) and television (Growing Up Twisted, Celebrity Apprentice); and a starring role in Broadway's Rock of Ages. He even authored a teenage survival guide that was required reading in Russia! In his journey from every parent's worst teenage nightmare to Renaissance man, Dee avoided the usual pitfalls associated with rock stars. But that didn't stop Tipper Gore and the Parents Music Resource Center from targeting him--a fight that led him to testify before Congress with Frank Zappa. He may have been slapped with a Parental Advisory warning label, but, through it all, Dee stayed positive and focused on being the best he could be. Filled with entertaining anecdotes and candid confessions, Shut Up and Give Me the Mic takes you through the good times and bad with a heavy metal star who worked as hard as he played, and who did it all for his wife, four kids, and millions of "SMF" (Sick Mother F******) fans This story is mine. I'm the guy that gave it all to beat the odds, left everything he had on the stage each night, didn't screw around on his woman, took care of his kids, and was sober enough to remember it all and write about it . . . myself. The one thing that has surprised and confused me, though, is my unlikely transformation into a "beloved public figure." How did the unpopular kid, who grew up to be the angry young man, who became the '80s poster boy for the evils of rock 'n' roll, arrested for profanity and assault, and boycotted by parents and religious groups, become the likeable mensch he is today?Outlaw
Par Michael Streissguth. 2013
Waylon Jennings. Willie Nelson. Kris Kristofferson. Three renegade musicians. Three unexpected stars. Three men who changed Nashville and country music…
forever. By the late 1960s, Nashville, Tennessee, was firmly established as the center of the booming country music industry and home to what was known as the Nashville Sound, characterized by slick production and adherence to an increasingly overused formula. But the city was changing. Young people from all over the country were streaming into the bohemian West End and colliding with three trailblazing artists who would soon rock the foundations of Nashville's music business. Surrounded by the street vibes of the West End's burgeoning underground scene and the outlaw protest tradition of Nashville's unlikely civil rights leaders and antiwar protestors, Waylon, Willie, and Kris began resisting the unspoken rules of Nashville's music-making machine and instead forged their own creative paths. Their music, personal and not easily categorized, was more in the vein of rock acts like the Allman Brothers and Bob Dylan, and it communi-cated a stark rawness and honesty that would influence artists of all genres for decades to come. Studded with a diverse secondary cast including Johnny Cash, Rodney Crowell, Kinky Friedman, Billy Joe Shaver, and others, Streissguth's new book brings to life an incredible chapter in musical history and reveals for the first time a surprising outlaw zeitgeist in Nashville. Based on extensive research and probing interviews with key players, what emerges is a fascinating glimpse into three of the most legendary artists of our times and the definitive story of how they changed music in Nashville and everywhere.Sex, Drugs, Ratt & Roll
Par Sam Benjamin, Stephen Pearcy. 2013
A jaw-dropping tell-all from the lead singer of the 1980s supergroup Ratt: the groupies, the trashed hotel rooms, the drugs--and…
just how much you can get away with when you're one of the biggest hair metal stars of all time.In the mid-1980s, Ratt, alongside Motley Crüe, Poison, and Quiet Riot, were laying down the riffs and unleashing the scissor kicks that would herald the arrival of music's most flamboyantly debauched era. Now with Sex, Drugs, Ratt & Roll, Ratt frontman and chief rabble-rouser Stephen Pearcy divulges all the dirty details of the era when big-haired bands ruled the world. Stephen was primed for a life of excess from an early age--his father died of a heroin overdose when he was twelve, and by the age of fifteen, Stephen was himself a drug addict. When Stephen met the thrill-seeking Robbin Crosby, he knew he'd found his perfect partner in crime--both in music and partying. Ratt's 1984 debut single, "Round and Round," became one of the top-selling metal songs of all time, but it was the band's off-stage escapades that were the stuff of legend. "Our tour bus is like our pirate ship, it's where we rape and pillage," said Pearcy in 1987. Now Pearcy's memoir reveals all the rock star excess--the partying, the women, the $2,000-a-day drug habits--letting fans see into this harrowing hair-metal lifestyle and what it's really like behind the scenes when you're a rock star.The Soul of It All
Par Michael Bolton. 2012
After four decades in the music industry, Michael Bolton has become one the most successful musicians of our time. THE…
SOUL OF IT ALL is his backstage pass into his life lived thus far-into the venues, busses, limos, and hotel rooms of stardom, and finally into his home and heart. His story will go long and dive deep, not only into his self-proclaimed "vagabond vampire" life, but also into the belly of the beast that is the music industry, with its joys, follies, and torments.From a 14 year old kid performing in dive bars in his hometown of New Haven, CT, to struggling to provide for his wife and kids, to finally breaking through with the Soul Provider album, and going on to sell more than 53 million albums and singles worldwide, Bolton has fought for and earned a life most just dream of. THE SOUL OF IT ALL is his life, chock-full of all the incredible stories, and the star-studded cast you'd expect, including: Luciano Pavarotti, Paula Abdul, Cher, Bob Dylan, Barbara Streisand, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Lady Gaga, Otis Redding, Ray Charles, Placido Domingo, Renee Fleming, Bon Jovi, Wynonna Judd, BB King, Patti LaBelle, Carlos Santana, Nicolette Sheridan, Teri Hatcher and others...Mo' Meta Blues
Par Ben Greenman, Ahmir Questlove Thompson. 2013
"You have to bear in mind that [Questlove] is one of the smartest motherfuckers on the planet. His musical knowledge,…
for all practical purposes, is limitless." --Robert ChristgauMO' META BLUESThe World According to QuestloveMo' Meta Blues is a punch-drunk memoir in which Everyone's Favorite Questlove tells his own story while tackling some of the lates, the greats, the fakes, the philosophers, the heavyweights, and the true originals of the music world. He digs deep into the album cuts of his life and unearths some pivotal moments in black art, hip hop, and pop culture. Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson is many things: virtuoso drummer, producer, arranger, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon bandleader, DJ, composer, and tireless Tweeter. He is one of our most ubiquitous cultural tastemakers, and in this, his first book, he reveals his own formative experiences--from growing up in 1970s West Philly as the son of a 1950s doo-wop singer, to finding his own way through the music world and ultimately co-founding and rising up with the Roots, a.k.a., the last hip hop band on Earth. Mo' Meta Blues also has some (many) random (or not) musings about the state of hip hop, the state of music criticism, the state of statements, as well as a plethora of run-ins with celebrities, idols, and fellow artists, from Stevie Wonder to KISS to D'Angelo to Jay-Z to Dave Chappelle to...you ever seen Prince roller-skate?!? But Mo' Meta Blues isn't just a memoir. It's a dialogue about the nature of memory and the idea of a post-modern black man saddled with some post-modern blues. It's a book that questions what a book like Mo' Meta Blues really is. It's the side wind of a one-of-a-kind mind. It's a rare gift that gives as well as takes. It's a record that keeps going around and around.Poker Face
Par Maureen Callahan. 2010
In just a two-year span, Stefani Germanotta, a struggling performer in New York's Lower East Side burlesque scene, has become…
the global demographic-smashing pop icon known as Lady Gaga. She is a once-in-a-decade artist, a gifted singer, composer, designer, and performance artist who mixes high and low culture, the avant-garde with the accessible, authenticity with artifice.Who is Lady Gaga? She is a twenty-five-year-old woman whose stage mantra--"I'm a free bitch!"--is the polar opposite of who she is offstage: isolated, insecure, and unable to be alone. She is an outrÉ artist who wanted to be a sensitive singer-songwriter. She is a woman who says no man can ever compete with her career, but who goes back and forth with the ex-boyfriend who said she was too ambitious. She claims not to care what people think, but spends her downtime online, reading what people have to say about her. She claims to be a con artist and utterly authentic. She is never less than compelling.Based on more than fifty original interviews with friends, employees, rivals, and music industry veterans, Poker Face is the first in-depth biography of the extraordinary cultural phenomenon that is Lady Gaga.Nobody Likes You
Par Marc Spitz. 2006
The full story of the rise and spectacular comeback of the band hailed as the saviors of punk rock and…
the next U2It's hard to believe that in early 2004 Green Day was considered over--the band was still together, but they were dismissed as a strictly 90s phenomenon, incapable of re-creating the success of their groundbreaking album Dookie. Then American Idiot debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts, stayed on the charts for nearly 18 months, and went on to sell more than four million records and to win Record of the Year (for "Boulevard of Broken Dreams") at this year's Grammy's.Combining unique access to Green Day with a seasoned journalist's nose for a great story, Marc Spitz gives the complete account of the band, from their earliest days to their most recent explosion of popularity and critical acclaim. Foremost, Nobody Likes You is a story of friendship and the transporting power of playing very loud music. It is the story of how high school dropout Billie Joe Armstrong came to write song lyrics that inflamed the political conscience of fans in a way that two Yale graduates couldn't. Green Day's story--from rise, to fall, to rise again--has never before been fully told.Lennon
Par Tim Riley. 2011
In his commanding new book, the eminent NPR critic Tim Riley takes us on the remarkable journey that brought a…
Liverpool art student from a disastrous childhood to the highest realms of fame.Riley portrays Lennon's rise from Hamburg's red light district to Britain's Royal Variety Show; from the charmed naiveté of "Love Me Do" to the soaring ambivalence of "Don't Let Me Down"; from his shotgun marriage to Cynthia Powell in 1962 to his epic media romance with Yoko Ono. Written with the critical insight and stylistic mastery readers have come to expect from Riley, this richly textured narrative draws on numerous new and exclusive interviews with Lennon's friends, enemies, confidantes, and associates; lost memoirs written by relatives and friends; as well as previously undiscovered City of Liverpool records. Riley explores Lennon in all of his contradictions: the British art student who universalized an American style, the anarchic rock 'n' roller with the moral spine, the anti-jazz snob who posed naked with his avant-garde lover, and the misogynist who became a househusband. What emerges is the enormous, seductive, and confounding personality that made Lennon a cultural touchstone.In Lennon, Riley casts Lennon as a modernist hero in a sweeping epic, dramatizing rock history anew as Lennon himself might have experienced it.It Ain't No Sin to Be Glad You're Alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen
Par Eric Alterman. 1999
This highly praised celebration of Springsteen's artistry & influence is the most perceptive portrait yet of the remarkably gifted musician…
who, since the media anointed him "the future of rock 'n' roll" in the mid-1970s, has redefined the image of the rock star & emerged an authentic American hero -- a man to whom millions of loyal fans look as a voice for their yearnings, hopes, fears, & dreams. "Part biography, part lyrical deconstruction, & part fan letter, Alterman's book locates the singer-songwriter's strength in his ability to connect the small struggles of the common man with the broad political & social forces that engulf us, & to do so with a human touch." --Time. "It Ain't No Sin to be Glad You're Alive celebrates Springsteen's enduring legacy & reaffirms his position as a recording artist & performer who personifies America in the same way that Woody Guthrie, Walt Whitman, John Steinbeck, & Bob Dylan have in their work." --Cleveland Plain Dealer. "Fascinating, well researched, & serious: three qualities not often found together in biographies of musicians. It Ain't No Sin to be Glad You're Alive ranks with Peter Guralnick's work & is an essential document in evaluating Springsteen's legacy." --Rosanne Cash.El Tono Universal
Par Ashley Kahn, Carlos Santana. 2015
The intimate and long-awaited autobiography of a legendIn 1967 in San Francisco, just a few weeks after the Summer of…
Love, a young Mexican guitarist took the stage at the Fillmore Auditorium and played a blistering solo that announced the arrival of a prodigious musical talent. Two years later -- after he played a historic set at Woodstock -- the world came to know the name Carlos Santana, his sensual and instantly recognizable guitar sound, and the legendary band that blended electric blues, psychedelic rock, Latin rhythms, and modern jazz, and that still bears his name.Carlos Santana's unforgettable memoir offers a page-turning tale of musical self-determination and inner self-discovery, with personal stories filled with colorful detail and life-affirming lessons. The Universal Tone traces his journey from his earliest days playing the strip bars in Tijuana while barely in his teens and brings to light the establishment of his signature guitar sound; his roles as husband, father, recording legend, and rock guitar star; his indebtedness to musical and spiritual influences -- from John Coltrane and John Lee Hooker to Miles Davis and Harry Belafonte; and his deep, lifelong dedication to a spiritual path that he developed from his Catholic upbringing, Eastern philosophies, and other mystical sources. It includes his recording some of the most popular and influential rock albums of all time, up to and beyond the 1999 sensation Supernatural, which garnered nine Grammy Awards and stands as arguably the most amazing career comeback in popular music history. It's a profoundly inspiring tale of divine inspiration and musical fearlessness that does not balk at finding the humor in the world of high-flying fame, or at speaking plainly of Santana's personal revelations and the infinite possibility he sees in each person he meets. "Love is the light that is inside of all of us, everyone," he writes. "I salute the light that you are and that is inside your heart."Hank: The Short Life and Long Country Road of Hank Williams
Par Mark Ribowsky. 2016
A heartbreaking and unforgettable portrait of country music's founding father. After he died in the backseat of a Cadillac at…
the age of twenty-nine, Hank Williams?a frail, flawed man who had become country music's most compelling and popular star?instantly morphed into its first tragic martyr. Having hit the heights in the postwar era with simple songs of heartache and star-crossed love, he would, with that outlaw swagger, become in death a template for the rock generation to follow. But unlike those other musical giants who never made thirty, no legacy endures quite like that of the "Hillbilly King." Now presenting the first fully realized biography of Hiram King Williams in a generation, Mark Ribowsky vividly returns us to the world of country's origins, in this case 1920s Alabama, where Williams was born into the most trying of circumstances, which included a dictatorial mother, a henpecked father, and an agonizing spinal condition. Forced by his overbearing matriarch to do odd jobs--selling peanuts, shining shoes--young Hank soon found respite in street-corner blues man Rufus "Tee Tot" Payne, who showed him how to make a guitar sing. It wasn't long before young Hank found his way onto those nascent American radio airwaves, where his melodic voice and timely tunes slowly garnered a following. On that dusty path to early stardom, Hank was indefatigably supported by his overbearing mother, who would shepherd his band, the Driftin' Cowboys, to shows along backroads of the Jim Crow South. Yet it was a different woman who would supply Hank with the fuel he needed to explode out of the local spotlight: his sometimes wife, Audrey Mae Sheppard. As Ribowsky brilliantly evokes, their fiery relationship--as abusive as it was passionate--would inform nearly every song he ever wrote, and provide a template for country music for generations to follow. In chronicling Hank's rise to stardom, Ribowsky also explores all those cautionary tales that have, until now, remained secreted beneath the grooves of his records. Drawing from new interviews, Ribowsky connects those seemingly eternal afternoons and nights spent choked in booze and desperation to the music that Williams would create. With remarkable nuance and insight, Ribowsky allows us to witness the man behind the tipped cowboy hat--the charismatic troubadour who hid the wounds of his domestic quarrels, relied on painkillers to get through the day, and was always teetering on the edge of tragedy, even when he saw the light. Tracing the singular rise of a music legend from the street corners of the Depression-era South to the now-immortal stage of the Grand Ole Opry, and finally to a haunting, lonely end on New Year's Day 1953, Hank uncovers the real man beneath the myths, reintroducing us to an American original whose legacy, like a good night at the honkytonk, promises to carry on and on.Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin
Par David Ritz. 2014
The definitive biography of the Queen of Soul from acclaimed music writer David Ritz.Aretha Franklin began life as the golden…
daughter of a progressive and promiscuous Baptist preacher. Raised without her mother, she was a gospel prodigy who gave birth to two sons in her teens and left them and her native Detroit for New York, where she struggled to find her true voice. It was not until 1967, when a white Jewish producer insisted she return to her gospel-soul roots, that fame and fortune finally came via "Respect" and a rapidfire string of hits. She has evolved ever since, amidst personal tragedy, surprise Grammy performances, and career reinventions.Again and again, Aretha stubbornly finds a way to triumph over troubles, even as they continue to build. Her hold on the crown is tenacious, and in RESPECT, David Ritz gives us the definitive life of one of the greatest talents in all American culture.David Bowie: Starman
Par Paul Trynka. 2011
"Ziggy Stardust," "Changes," Under Pressure," "Let's Dance," "Fame," "Heroes," and of course, "Starman." These are the classic songs of David…
Bowie, the artist whose personas are indelibly etched in our pop consciousness alongside his music. He wrote and recorded with everyone from Iggy Pop to Freddie Mercury to John Lennon, sold 136 million albums, has one of the truly great voices, and influenced bands as wide-ranging as Nirvana and Franz Ferdinand. Paul Trynka illuminates Bowie's seemingly contradictory life and his many reinventions as an artist, offering over 300 new interviews with everyone from classmates to managers to lovers. He reveals Bowie's broad influence on the entertainment world, from movie star to modern-day icon, trend-setter to musical innovator. This book will define Bowie for years to come.