History & Criticism

Johnny Thunders: In Cold Blood is the definitive portrait of the condemned man of rock n roll, from the baptism of fire and tragedy that was the New York Dolls, through the junkie punk years of the Heartbreakers, to his sudden and mysterious death in...

Transformer, Lou Reed's most enduringly popular album, is described with varying labels: it's often called a glam rock album, a proto-punk album, a commercial breakthrough for Lou Reed, and an album about being gay. And yet, it doesn't neatly fit into...

From Rolling Stone, the definitive and lavishly illustrated companion book to one of the most popular and hotly debated lists in the world of musicWhen Rolling Stone publishes a list, the world listens. The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list was first...

In 2015 Chris O'Leary published the first folume of his two-volume exporation, Rebel Rebel, of every song David Jones / David Bowie ever wrote, in chronological order. This is the second volume. Ashes to Ashes covers every single Bowie song, whether it...

Whether you know him as Howard Coward, Napoleon Dynamite, or the Emotional Toothpaste, and are familiar with his work with the Attractions, the Confederates, or the Imposters, Elvis Costello's career has always been about reinvention and his vast...

"Pinkard's account... brings to light the ambition and artistry, the stress and frustration, and ultimately the joy of making this very special album."-Peter Katis, The National's engineer, and mixer on Boxer "I am spooked by how well [Pinkard] has...

'A flaming juggernaut of heavy-metal biog' GUARDIAN'This is the definitive account of heavy metal's biggest band of all' CLASSIC ROCK 'Truly enlightening' ROCK SOUND'ENTER NIGHT, Mick Wall's biography of Metallica confirms this grizzled veteran to be as...

A Sense Of Wonder is a new book about Van Morrison that concentrates on the Ireland that made him, and the Ireland that he has re-made through a stunning, sprawling body of work spanning almost six decades. Published to coincide with the 45th anniversary...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.AwardsLong-listed for Porchlight Business Book Awards - Big Ideas and New Perspectives 2022.Book InformationISBN 9780593132739Author Danyel SmithFormat PaperbackPage Count...

Bizet's Carmen Uncovered exposes the myths and stereotypes that so often surround this much loved opera by exploring its first staging, and the particularly Spanish contexts in which the opera was conceived, written, and staged. What were the forces...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781935950165Author Scott CarlsonFormat PaperbackPage Count 384Imprint Bazillion PointsPublisher Bazillion Points

'You never knew what you were going to be confronted with when you went on Later...' Nick Cave 'Later... is a voyage of discovery for us as well as the viewers' Dave Grohl Dave Grohl and Alicia Keys loved it, Bjoerk treasured it, Ed...

Rise of the Super Furry Animals tells the story of the greatest psychedelic pop band of our time. Welsh speakers with a lust for global communication, the Super Furry Animals shot to fame on Creation Records and found that, thanks to the...

'Clemmie writes about each piece of music with such energy and passion that you can't help but immediately want to stop what you're doing and seek it out' Eddie Redmayne'The only requirements for enjoying classical music are open ears and an open mind.'...

In 1958, an anonymous group of overworked and under-budgeted BBC employees set out to make some new sounds for radio and TV. They ended up changing the course of 20th-century music. For millions of people, the work of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was the...

A revisionist history of minimalism's transformative rise, through the voices of the musicians who created it. When composers like Philip Glass and Steve Reich began creating hypnotically repetitive music in the 1960s, it upended the world of American...

A long-overdue and definitive account of America's timeless rock bandSince exploding on the scene in the late 70s, Journey has continued to inspire generations of fans with "Don't Stop Believin'" and other hits. Celebrating the band's fiftieth...

A GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, PITCHFORK, NPR, METRO AND HERALD SCOTLAND BEST MUSIC BOOK OF 2018 'The definitive grime biography' NME 'A landmark genre history' Pitchfork ...

Cool. It was a new word and a new way to be, and in a single generation, it became the supreme compliment of American culture. The Origins of Cool in Postwar America uncovers the hidden history of this concept and its new set of codes that came to define...

'By mixing lo-fi charm into hi-fi science Into the Groove captures all the wonder and absurdity of its subject, jumping and skipping with real analogue delight.' - Sunday Times The story of recorded sound - the technological developments, the people...

Song Noir examines the formative first decade of Tom Waits' career, when he lived, wrote and recorded nine albums in Los Angeles; from his soft, folk-inflected debut, Closing Time (1973), to the abrasive, surreal Swordfishtrombones (1983). Starting his...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780983295785Author Bruce SpizerFormat HardbackPage Count 208Imprint 498 Productions, LLCPublisher 498 Productions, LLCWeight(grams) 1043gDimensions(mm)...

Foraging for mushrooms with John Cage: writing, art, photography and ephemera from an idiosyncratic chapter in the composer's life Imagined as an extended mushroom-foraging expedition, John Cage: A Mycological Foray gathers together Cage's...

2021 marks the 50th anniversary of the release of the first Electric Light Orchestra album. The ELO story is one of continued success for over 50 years. From inauspicious beginnings in 1971, where live audiences barely reached double figures, ELO...

Richard Cook and Brian Morton's Penguin Jazz Guide: The History of the Music in 1001 Best Albums is an indispensible guide to the recordings that every fan should know. Richard Cook and Brian Morton's Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings is firmly...

Through a series of interviews with a wide range of people connected to Pink Floyd in their earliest days (including Nick Mason, Peter Jenner, Jenny Fabian, Storm Thorgerson, Duggie Fields and Peter Whitehead), John Cavanagh paints a vivid picture of how...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.About the AuthorRalph J. Gleason (1917-1975) was cofounder of Rolling Stone magazine and the author of numerous articles and three highly regarded books on music and musicians...

'Beguiling ... Limpidly written, effortlessly learned' William Boyd, TLS, Books of the YearIn November 1838 Frederic Chopin, George Sand and her two children sailed to Majorca to escape the Parisian winter. They settled in an abandoned monastery at...

Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in June 2016, and seldom in recent years has it been more richly deserved. That a song writer's lyrics should be regarded as literature was an idea at which many were surprised. Others have...

More than 40 stories from the glory days of rock'n'roll, featuring Lou Reed, Elton John, Sting and The Clash. Allan Jones brings stories - many previously unpublished - from the golden days of music reporting. Long nights of booze, drugs and unguarded...

A new edition as part of the Faber Greatest Hits - books that have taken writing about music in new and exciting directions for the twenty-first century.Rob Young's Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music is a seminal book on British music...

A SUNDAY TIMES BEST PAPERBACK OF 2021* Shortlisted for the 2021 Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year prize* A critically-acclaimed Sunday Times, Spectator and Independent Book of 2020* Now with colour photography by Michael Turek'Richly absorbing.....

Dusty in Memphis, Dusty Springfield's beautiful and bizarre magnum opus, remains as fine a hybrid of pop and rhythm and blues as has ever been made. In this remarkable book, Warren Zanes explores his own love affair with the record. He digs deep into the...

The definitive survey, combining current scholarship with a vibrant narrative. Carefully informed by feedback from dozens of scholars, it remains the book that students and teachers trust to explain what's important, where it fits and why it matters...

With a foreword by Paul McCartney'It's semi-devotional -- a really special place' Florence Welch'There are certain things that are mythical. Abbey Road is mythical' Nile RodgersMany people will recognise the famous zebra crossing. Some visitors may have...

This title presents a compelling examination of the classic "Pavement" album, including interviews with all band members and record label staff. Upon its release in 1995, Wowee Zowee confounded a lot of "Pavement"'s fans. And yet, over the subsequent...

A corporeal history of music-making in early modern Europe.Music in the Flesh reimagines the lived experiences of music-making subjects-composers, performers, listeners-in the long seventeenth century. There are countless historical testimonies of the...

Find out what 20 rock journalists and writers have to say about Rush's 20 studio albums.Formed in Toronto in 1968, the rock trio Rush has gone on to multiplatinum success behind the distinctive high register and virtuosic bass-playing of frontman Geddy...

These are the songs that we have listened to, laughed to, loved to and laboured to, as well as downed tools and danced to. Covering the last seven decades, Stuart Maconie looks at the songs that have sound tracked our changing times, and - just sometimes...

A GUARDIAN AND INDEPENDENT BEST MUSIC BOOK OF THE YEAR 'At last an expert classicist gets to grips with Bob Dylan' Mary Beard 'Thomas's elegant, charming book offers...