Rock History

The Allman Brothers Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd helped usher in a new kind of southern music from Jacksonville, Florida. Together, they and fellow bands like Blackfoot, 38 Special, and Molly Hatchet would reset the course of '70s rock. Yet Jacksonville seemed an unlikely hotbed for a new musical movement. Michael FitzGerald blends eyewitness detail with in-depth history to tell the story of how the River City bred this generation of legendary musicians.

By turns fascinating, funny, and bizarre, this book offers insight into the peculiar choices and idiosyncratic psychologies of hundreds of top musicians from the 1960s to the present. Originally published more than two decades ago to great success, it's been out of print for years and has now been completely updated and expanded to feature dozens of exclusive interviews, including conversations with groups like The Black Keys, The Killers, Twenty One Pilots, Coldplay, Cage the Elephant, and Vampire Weekend.

A no-holds-barred narrative history of the iconic label that brought the world Black Flag, Hüsker Dü, Sonic Youth, Soundgarden, and more, by the co-author of Do What You Want and My Damage. Greg Ginn started SST Records in the sleepy beach town of Hermosa Beach, CA, to supply ham radio...

A comprehensive guide to rocks and minerals—a must-have for any rock hound’s library. Rocks & Minerals is a field guide to 50 varieties of rocks and minerals. In this book, you’ll find profiles on individual specimens, each showcasing characteristics, chemical composition, origins, and key...

A witty, revealing, sharply written work of memoir and criticism by the cofounder of Steely Dan Musician and songwriter Donald Fagen presents a group of vivid set pieces in his entertaining debut as an author, from portraits of the cultural figures and currents that shaped him as a youth to an...

A thought-provoking exploration of Bruce Springsteen’s iconic album, Born in the U.S.A.—a record that both chronicled and foreshadowed the changing tides of modern America On June 4, 1984, Columbia Records issued what would become one of the best-selling and most impactful rock albums of all...

**Kirkus Best Books of the Year (2013)** From one of our finest and most popular science writers, and the best-selling author of Your Inner Fish, comes the answer to a scientific mystery as big as the world itself: How are the events that formed our solar system billions of years ago embedded...

A complete and truly unique biography of Robert Smith and company, The Cure, chronicling their 40+ year history with hundreds of entries in A to Z fashion. Definitive and deeply researched, Curepedia will surprise and inform fans everywhere as they await The Cure's highly anticipated next album...

The inspiration for the HBO Original Documentary, Rock Hudson: All that Heaven Allowed, airing June 28! The definitive biography of the deeply complex and widely misunderstood matinee idol of Hollywood’s Golden Age. “Mark Griffin paints a vivid portrait of a man who lived a double life in...

Growing up in a small town in England, William Bradford lived during a time of upheaval and opportunity. Together with a group of Separatists, William escaped England to establish a new life in Holland and finally set out on the Mayflower on a perilous voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. The New World beckoned as a land of freedom and possibility. Yet wild waters, icy winters, Indian attacks, starvation, and treason threatened the European settlers' very existence. Through William's vision and steadfast leadership, the people of Plymouth Colony would endure

A veteran music journalist explores how four legendary rock bands—KISS, Cheap Trick, Aerosmith, and Starz—laid the foundation for two diametrically opposed subgenres: hair metal in the '80s and grunge in the '90s. It was the age when heavy-footed, humorless dinosaurs roamed the hard-rock...

England's Dreaming is the ultimate book on punk, its progenitors, the Sex Pistols, and the moment they defined for music fans in England and the United States. Savage brings to life the sensational story of the meteoric rise and rapid implosion of the Pistols through layers of rich detail and exclusive interviews. This fully revised and updated edition of the book covers the legacy of punk 25 years later and provides an account of the Pistols' 1996 reunion as well as a completely new introduction.

Iggy Pop's legendary career has been tumultuous, reaching great heights with mega-hits and then hitting rock-bottom lows in jail and mental institutions. Along the way, he's become a cult-rock hero, an inspiration for dozens of other famous rockers, and has had a pretty good time of it, too. But the image of Iggy Pop versus the man behind that image, James Newell Osterberg, Jr., is surprisingly contradictory.

From the world's leading authority on Bob Dylan comes the definitive biography that promises to transform our understanding of the man and musician—thanks to early access to Dylan's never-before-studied archives. In 2016 Bob Dylan sold his personal archive to the George Kaiser Foundation in...

“An affectionate portrait, one that recognizes Watts as musician, colleague, family man, obsessive collector and immaculate dresser.”—Sunday Times “Sexton, a longtime Stones chronicler, tells Watts’s story with warmth and diligence.”—Observer The fully authorized and official...

Crack explains why, in a de-industrializing America in which market forces ruled and entrepreneurial risk-taking was celebrated, the crack industry was a lucrative enterprise for the "Horatio Alger boys" of their place and time. These young, predominately African American entrepreneurs were profit-sharing partners in a deviant, criminal form of economic globalization. Hip Hop artists often celebrated their exploits but overwhelmingly, Americans - across racial lines - did not. Crack takes a hard look at the dark side of late 20th-century capitalism.

The Art of the Straight Line captures the energy of Lou Reed’s worlds of Tai Chi, music, and meditation. It was edited by his wife, the artist Laurie Anderson, with Stephan Berwick, Bob Currie, and Scott Richman. Lou Reed was a musician, singer, songwriter, poet, and founding member of the...

“One of the most casually insightful rock bios ever.”—Entertainment Weekly Told in the words of his musical accomplices, fellow-travelers, friends, and lovers, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead is an intimate and unusual biography of fabled singer–songwriter Warren Zevon, the musical force...

Don’t miss the TV series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee, & Manuelito novels, now on AMC and AMC+! Navajo Tribal cops Jim Chee and Bernadette Manuelito, and their mentor, the legendary Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, investigate two perplexing cases in this exciting Southwestern mystery from...

A fitting tribute to the troubled genius who revolutionized electric bass playing and bridged the gaps between jazz, R&B, rock, and funk. From his early days in R&B club bands through his international stardom with fusion group Weather Report and on to his solo career and tragic death at age 35, this book portrays the life and music of Jaco Pastorius, the self-proclaimed "world's greatest bass player".