Rock Music Memoirs

Crafting smash hits with Van Halen, the Doobie Brothers, Nicolette Larson, and Van Morrison, legendary music producer Ted Templeman changed the course of rock history.

Merging memoir, anecdotes, and masterclasses on guitar, songwriting, and the artist's mindset, Lay It on the Line offers insight and perspective into the many roles Rik Emmett took on. "It" was always a parboiling, psychological gumbo: and this book attempts to finally share the recipe.

"Surely make you lose your mind . . ." So the Eagles warn us about the outrageous and ruthless lifestyle of the ambitious rock-n-roller. In fact, Don Henley could barely listen to the track "Life in the Fast Lane" when they were recording it. He was so high that it made him sick. The band that embodied the American dream with globe-straddling success, impossibly luxurious lives, and almost supernatural talent also descended into nightmare with betrayal, hate-filled hubris, the skeletons of perceived enemies, brutally discarded lovers and former band mates left unburied in the road behind them.

Simply stated, Kurt Cobain changed the cultural conversation in his all-too-brief life, and even after his shattering death. With interviews and commentary from all corners of the pop culture universe, from the people who knew Cobain to those who continue to help his legend grow, Here We Are Now explores what a singular life meant, and how that meaning can be measured, when and if it can be.

How can so many people pledge allegiance to punk, something with no fixed identity? Depending on who and where you are, punk can be an outlet, excuse, lifestyle, escapism, conversation, community, ideology, sales category, social movement, punishable offense, badge of authenticity, reason to drink beer forever, or an aesthetic of belligerent incompetence. Sam McPheeters championed many different versions. Over the course of two decades, he fronted Born Against, released dozens of records and fanzines, and toured 17 times across the northern hemisphere.

William and Jim Reid, brothers and founding members of The Jesus and Mary Chain—a band that bridged the gap between the punk explosion and the emergence of grunge and Britpop—chronicle the chaos, confusion, and stories behind their music. For five years after they’d swapped sought-after...

Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers is the first book to celebrate the classic-era Motörhead lineup of Lemmy Kilmister, "Fast" Eddie Clarke, and Phil "Philthy Animal" Taylor. Through interviews with all of the principal troublemakers, Martin Popoff celebrates the formation of the band and the records that made them legends.

Limited Edition of One is unlike any other music book you will ever have hear. Part the long-awaited memoir of Steven Wilson, whose celebrated band Porcupine Tree began as teenage fiction before unintentionally evolving into a reality that encompassed Grammy-nominated records and sold-out shows around the world, before he set out for an even more successful solo career.

Get a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Megadeth’s iconic record, Rust in Peace, from the band’s lead vocalist and guitarist. When Rust in Peace was released in 1990, the future of Megadeth was uncertain. Fresh off their performance at the record-breaking Monsters of Rock festival, and...

Lou Reed was a musician, singer, songwriter, poet, and founding member of the legendary rock band the Velvet Underground. He collaborated with many artists, from Andy Warhol and John Cale to Robert Wilson and Metallica. Reed had a groundbreaking solo career that spanned five decades until his death in 2013.

John Corabi recounts his life from the mean streets of Philadelphia to the Sunset Strip. Take a look behind the scenes at Corabi’s time fronting Mötley Crüe, Union, and The Dead Daisies, as well as his time playing rhythm guitar with Ratt and even his stint as a long-haul trucker. Whether it’s detailing his parents' difficult divorce, his family’s dark history of abuse, his run-in with a serial killer, or simply the best way to arrive at a wedding—which maybe is by helicopter and maybe it isn’t—he pulls no punches and outlines the good and bad of it all in this raucous autobiography.

When Pete Shelley, lead singer of legendary punk band Buzzcocks, passed away in 2018, we lost one of music's brightest stars - as well as the chance to hear his story. Or so it seemed. Recordings have surfaced of a series of remarkable interviews in which Pete tells the story of his life, his band and his place at the beating heart of the punk explosion in fascinating detail. These remarkable recordings have now been brought back to life by professional actors in this audio edition of Ever Fallen in Love: The Lost Buzzcocks Tapes.

Phil Spector, born in the Bronx in 1940, grew up an outsider despised by his peers. But he formed a band, and had a number-one hit with "To Know Him Is to Love Him". He quickly became the top producer of early rock and roll and the originator of such girl groups as the Ronettes. Hit followed hit, and for all of them he used a new recording style called the "wall of sound". But the reign of the boy-man who owned pop music was doomed, and Spector spiraled into paranoid isolation and peculiar behavior.

Bestselling author and legendary Doors drummer John Densmore offers a powerful exploration of the "greed gene"-that part of the human psyche that propels us toward the accumulation of more and more wealth, even at the expense of our principles, friendships, and the well-being of society. This is the gripping account of the legal battle to control The Doors's artistic destiny. In it, Densmore looks at his conflict with his bandmates over the right to use The Doors's name, revealing the ways in which this struggle mirrors and reflects a much larger societal issue.

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.

Unlike all previous versions of rock 'n' roll history, this book omits almost every iconic performer and ignores the storied events and turning points everyone knows. Instead, in a daring stroke, Greil Marcus selects 10 songs recorded between 1956 and 2008 and then proceeds to dramatize how each embodies rock 'n' roll as a thing in itself in the story it tells, inhabits, and acts out - a new language, something new under the sun.

Steve Parish was never one to walk the straight-and-narrow, even during his childhood growing up in Flushing Meadow, Queens. Busted as a teenager for selling acid in the summer of 1968, Parish landed in Riker's Island. The experience changed him, and after getting out, he did his best to stay out of trouble, securing a job moving music equipment at the New York State Pavilion. The first show he worked was a Grateful Dead concert in July of 1969, and Parish was captivated by the music. A life seemingly headed nowhere had suddenly found its calling.

Discovered at last, the legendary lost manuscript of Grateful Dead co-founder and primary lyricist Robert Hunter, written in the early 1960s—a wry, richly observed, and enlightening remembrance of “the scene” in Palo Alto that gave rise to an incredible partnership of Hunter and Jerry...

Unearth a piece of music history with this definitive, no-holds-barred biography of John Entwistle, The Who's legendary bass guitarist. It is an unequivocal fact that in terms of rock bands, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Who represent Year Zero, the beginning of all things...

Robert Plant: The Voice that Sailed the Zeppelin follows the iconic singer through his heights of fame with classic rock giant Led Zeppelin, his second life as a multi-million-selling solo artist, and his more idiosyncratic pursuits. A wealth of former associates lend their voices and recollections to an account that steps far beyond the tried and tested tales of Zeppelin's life and times.