This brilliant biography of the cult guitar player will likely cause you to abandon everything you thought you knew about jazz improvisation, post-punk and the avant-garde. Derek Bailey was at the top of his profession as a dance band and record-session guitarist when, in the early 1960s, he began playing an uncompromisingly abstract form of music. Today his anti-idiom of "Free Improvisation" has become the lingua franca of the "avant" scene, with Pat Metheny, John Zorn, David Sylvian and Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore among his admirers.

Lifts the lid on an artistic ferment which has defied every known law of the music business

About the Author
Ben Watson is a writer on music and culture. He is the author of numerous books including Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play, Art, Class & Cleavage and Adorno for Revolutionaries.

Reviews
The ideal biographer of Derek Bailey. -- John Fordham * Guardian *
I am an enthusiast for the Watson method and I'm prepared to follow him, even to places where I wouldn't under other circumstances go ... His attack, his singularity. His indecent decency. -- Iain Sinclair



Book Information
ISBN 9781781681053
Author Ben Watson
Format Paperback
Page Count 480
Imprint Verso Books
Publisher Verso Books
Weight(grams) 567g
Dimensions(mm) 210mm * 139mm * 26mm